PSA: Professional Services Automation: Optimizing Project and Service Oriented Organizations (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Ludwig Melik (Author), Albert S. Bitton (Author), Gus Berdebes (Author), Ara Israilian (Author) "A considerable amount of literature and software is available regarding supply chain management (SCM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and customer relationship management (CRM)..." (more)
Key Phrases: timesheet management, services automation solutions, destination app, Human Resources Self-Service Survey, Number of Employees Figure, Self Service Survey (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

" this book is worth reading "(Project Manager Today, August 2002)

"...this book is worth reading..." -- Project Manager Today, August 2002

Product Description

PRAISE FOR Professional Services Automation

"SPO/PSA should be viewed by the market as a cost of doing business or, in other words, a competitive necessity for conducting business in the services economy."
–Ted Kempf, Principal Analyst, Gartner

"The depth and breadth of coverage is extraordinary. Any professional or firm considering the implementation of PSA must stop here first–to make a PSA decision without consulting this book first would be foolish."
–Rick Freedman, author, The IT Consultant and The eConsultant

"I have requested each and every department in my organization to look at their respective chapters for incredible insight and concrete solutions."
–Jean Denis Talon, President and CEO, AXA

"This is the reference book that you need to pick up and consider periodically as you plan, analyze, select, and roll out enterprise software."
–Stuart Sackman, Vice President, ADP

"This book is a perfect starting point for any organization wishing to improve their services delivery through the implementation of a PSA product. It provides a clear overview of all of the aspects to consider when evaluating PSA products as well as how to avoid the stumbling blocks to successful PSA implementation."
–Michael Lines, PMP, Publisher, allPM.com–The Project Manager’s Homepage

"This guide addresses appropriately the subject of project management as an integral component of the PSA business environment–a sensible and pragmatic approach."
–Lloyd Bartlett, P. Eng., MBA, PMP, Lecturer in Project Management, McGill University

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (May 3, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471230189
• ISBN-13: 978-0471230182
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #374,168 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Before this book, PSA was a mystery to me, May 27, 2002

By	Charles Right (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

I was not sure exactly what a PSA does, how one can justify the investment, what are the key factors to consider and when can I expect a return.

This book breaks down PSA into its core and extended components, explains every component and provides diagrams and hard numbers to justify the phased role out of every module. I really liked the chapter on business intelligence. It is amazing to see how the information can be used to create real time and live charts, this will definitely help me as a director.; I had not seen business intelligence be used in the content of workflows.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Optimized and Specialized ERP for White Collar PSORGs, September 2, 2002

By	Turgay BUGDACIGIL (Istanbul, Turkey) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

"The primary focus of traditional Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems is the blue-collar world of factory automation and the world of accounting systems, where the raw data tends to be rolled up and summarized into the organizational structures that were built to conform to the accounting view of the enterprise. These accounting views are useful in the production of general ledgers and other high-level accounting snapshots of the enterprise, but they usually bear little relationship to the dynamic way project-focused organizations are structured and continually restructured around new projects...Regardless of the acronym used, whether it is PSA (Professional Service Automation), SPO (Service Process Optimization), SRM (Service Relationship Management), or any other variation, they all refer to the same thing. Their ultimate goal is also the same: Maximize the performance of white collar project-and-service oriented organizations (PSORGs) ant their staff...These solutions automate and integrate core business processes with the intent of increasing the efficieny of how projects are planned, budgeted, created, staffed, scheduled, implemented, and billed in the real world...Very few PSORGs efficiently deliver their projects or services. Due to increased industry complexities and inefficiient corporate processes, service workers are not focusing on their key responsibilities. Instead, they are being bombarded with increasing numbers of administrative tasks, technology issues, unmanageable workloads, and either a lack of useful information or an inundation of useless detail (or both). There is a great need and an increasing demand for software applications to make PSORGs more productive and more profitable. PSA applications, or the many other similar acronyms, descriibe a set of software solutions that have been designed to achieve such a goal" (from the Preface).

In this context, Rudolf Melik et. al. define this invaluable book's goal is to assist the reader in identifying the key concepts of PSA solutions, their principle features, criteria for selecting them, and their implementation requirements. According to them, PSA functionality can be divided into following multiple core components and extended components:

I. Core Components:

* Performance analysis: Executive reporting, OLAP-based multidimensional data analysis, ROI, and decision support. Quick and customizable home, portal, and dashboard views and peer reviews.

* Operations: Organization breakdown structure (OBS) management, site management, scoping, business rules, component-based security profiles, access rights, audit trails, general ledgers, and terminology settings.

* Resource management: Skills and expertise assessment and matching. Resource allocation, search, scheduling, leveling, forecasting, and availability.

* Project management: Work breakdown structure (WBS) and engagement tracking. Multiple levels for budgeting amounts, duration, schemes, thresholds, and estimate to complete (ETC). Project scheduling, quality control, and R&D claim management. Seamless integration with major project management applications.

* Revenue & cost accounting: Cost and billing rate engine, support for dependencies, history, custom rules, fixed, hourly, daily, custom, WBS, and split billing settings. Multicurrency support, tax category and jurisdictions, Invoicing and payroll wizards and payment processing.

* Timesheet management: Timesheet submission, validation, and approval, compliance reporting, supervisory controls, automatic approval, notes, document attachments, and work assignment. Regional holiday, overtime, and administrative task processing, constraints, validations, and usage rules. Adjustment, status indicators, and mass update. Compliance to regulations for govermental and regional guidelines.

* Expense reporting: Expense submission, validation, and approval, compliance reporting, markups, business rules, document/receipt attachment thresholds, foreign currency conversions, supervisory controls, automatic approval, and work assignment. Offline expense reports and multiple expense report views from which to choose.

* Knowledge management: Hierarchical view of the entire organization, knowledge repositories, document management, full text searches, best practice templates, keyword searches, advanced queries, company policies, coorporate handbooks, and collaboration.

* Strategic sourcing: Requisitions, purchase orders, suppliers, customizable workflow engine, document attachments, staff purchasing, and receipts.

* Request and issue tracking: Call tracking and escalation, change and process management, help desk, classification, notes, document attachments, and a customizable workflow engine.

II. Extended Components:

* Customer and partner relationship management (CRM and PRM): Some PSA solutions include CRM and PRM functionality. CRM includes customer self-services, contact management, marketing campaigns, and a more sophisticated demand management system. PRM automates the workflows and processes of finding, training, and managing partners.

* Human resource management (HR): HR systems process the staff requisition, purchasing, and recruitment process.

* Complete enterprise accounting: Invoices, accounts payable/receivable, revenue recognition, and other such information generated by a PSA solution is exchanged with the organization's accounting system.

Finally, they write that "PSA is the first class of software that provides a comprehensive end-to-end solution that uniquely addresses the needs and problems of PSORGs. This class of software solutions is rapidly evolving into the ERP for white collar project- or service-driven organizations...Every PSA solution has its unique set of strengths and limitations. Determining which areas are important to your business is the key to selecting the most effective solution. PSA is no longer a way to have software or a means to gain competitive advantage; PSA is rapidly becoming a must-have tool for project and service oriented organizations" (pp.339-341).

Highly recommended.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An informative description of a wide open market space, May 27, 2002

By	Jordan (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

I have just completed this book. Since I have worked within the IT service industry for several years now, I have found that the "buzz" around PSA solutions is growing faster and faster. The application that is called PSA is as wide a concepts as what we call ERP. However this book does a good job of detailing the modules within a PSA solution, their overall benefits and the points to cover in an implementation of such a system. PSA solutions need to be evaluated more carefully by IT departments and service firms for the true ROI they bring. The systems that we have ALL been using upto now are not adequate to meet the robust requirements most have in PSA specific functionality. Reading this book should be viewed as a minimum requirement during your quest at choosing an effective PSA solution.