SAP for Professional Services

The SAP for Professional Services solution helps professional services companies deal with the complexity of their business requirements and achieve profitable growth by improving their operational efficiency, business responsiveness, and the customer relationship. SAP for Professional Services covers the entire business process of cross-industry professional services, from lead generation, opportunity management, project management, and project resource planning through to the follow-up processes in engagement management, such as invoice creation and analysis.

Features

Using SAP for Professional Services, you can:

Control profitability by identifying and concentrating on profitable projects and customers.
Optimize the utilization of service capacity.
Simplify the process of recording time and expenses for both consultants and service employees.
Bill clients timely and accurately by managing complex billing agreements.
Ensure the transparency of service contracts and the corresponding service delivery.

The SAP for Professional Services solution provides tools that support the following business processes:

Business Process	Tools
Planning and Analysis	Analyze cost and profitability. Monitor execution of sales plan.
Marketing and Sales	Plan sales activities. Build, monitor and execute pipeline.
Contract Management	Define terms of contract. Create project structure. Plan deliverables, activities and project schedule. Plan project financials.
Service Delivery	Execute planned activities. Record working times. Collect expenses. Confirm service execution.
Billing	Create invoices based on work in process. Execute billing plans.

Example

The following list describes some example scenarios to illustrate how to make use of the key capabilities provided by the Professional Services solution:

Consulting companies:
Manage spot consulting as well as complex implementation projects and cover all relevant processes from contract to cash, for example: contract management, time and expense recording, billing, revenue recognition and profitability analysis.
IT service providers:
Increase the efficiency of IT service-related business processes by offering a variety of functions for the delivery of services and the maintenance of technical assets. Manage service level agreements and warranty contracts, and run the entire service process from service notification to service billing.
Enterprise Management and Support:
Support accounting for service companies by offering an automation of accounting processes and a unification of financial data across multiple companies and business units. The management accounting functionality provides information about cost center budgets and order profitability.
Subcontractor Management:
Manage the entire service purchasing process from purchase requisition to vendor invoice settlement.
Marketing and Sales:
Improve marketing effectiveness and drive customer demand for products and services.