A Quick Look at Professional Services Management Software

As we come up on tax time, we’re reminded just how important the professional services are. There is very little that businesses do without consultation. After all, consultants are just professionals in a field giving you advice on how to navigate forward. Lawyers, financial consultants, accountants, and advertising and marketing specialists are just a few of the crucial people that provide the average business with outside expertise.

These individuals run and work for businesses just like the rest of us. As a result, they find themselves scratching their collective heads when looking to upgrade their organization’s IT to fit their respective businesses. Today we will take a look at some technologies that the modern professional services company should be looking at.

SaaS
Cloud computing can be a major benefit for the professional services firm, but today, we will focus on one aspect of utilizing cloud technology. Software as a Service (SaaS) is the delivery of software through the cloud for a monthly fee, typically billed per user. Solutions like Office 365 and G Suite are examples of SaaS technology. Today, software developers are creating applications and deploying them in the cloud more often than not, so most industries have some form of cloud-based software built specifically for them.

Mobile Solutions
Mobility can be a huge benefit for any organization. For the professional services firm, there are additional considerations that have to be made. Firstly, many of professionals need to stay compliant with federal, state, and industry mandates; and, therefore require extra layers of security to send and receive data. Since the benefit of having access to the files would precipitously improve their ability to conduct business on the go, building a mobile computing solution with enhanced security is attractive to many professional services firms.

One solution that can be deployed is a virtual private network solution (VPN). The VPN provides a layer of strong encryption around the connection between mobile endpoints and the central computing infrastructure. This provides enhanced security to any information sent and received through the VPN. This technology works perfectly for an organization looking to move off of paper records.

Document Management
Having access to information allows those who work in professional services to be as knowledgeable as their clients need them to be. Implementing a document management system is a great way for these companies to have a working database of all the files they have accrued over the years.

Professional technicians will scan an organization’s paper files, and using a special software, they will be filed away inside of a database, usually as PDF files. Using a database and a Relational database management system (RDBMS), an end-user can simply search the DMS for keywords found in any scanned documents and immediately get access to the information they need from anywhere with an Internet connection.

By coupling the DMS with a VPN and SaaS offerings, any professional services company can have a fast, reliable, and secure way to get any information they could possibly need about their business and/or clients. If you are interested in learning more about IT services that SCW provides, call us today at (509) 534-1530.