The nature of IT and technology services businesses is changing rapidly. Cloud computing has opened alternative revenue models based on recurring income, monthly Software as a Service and smaller, niche services projects.
IT and technology services companies usually offer a range of services and products including:
- Software/cloud solutions
- Annual maintenance and support
- Implementation and associated project services
- 3rd party cloud solutions
- Traditional on-premises solutions
As the traditional business model for IT Services companies changes, there are multiple new opportunities and challenges. In an industry that is constantly changing, IT resellers and services businesses need to adapt to get ahead of the competition. New metrics have emerged:
- Recurring income by client
- Client acquisition cost
- Customer churn
- Annual recurring income
- Net new recurring income
As the number of supported solutions, services options and revenue streams grow, the back-office accounting, billing and project reporting requirements for any services business tend to increase exponentially. The finance team must deal with increased complexity:
- Contract billing
- Timesheets
- Project billing
- Project profitability
- Cloud invoicing – with different billing cycles
- Usage-based billing
- Upsell and Cross-sell billing
- Multiple payment schedules – milestone, monthly etc.
- Multiple billing types – do and charge, fixed price etc.
If your IT services business is operating multiple solutions for each area of the business (finance, projects, billing, cloud billing, timesheets etc.) you run the risk of creating islands of information, manual data input and errors in the consolidation of information across departments.
Sage Intacct is a financial management and accounting solution with functionality built for SaaS contract billing, project services management, subscription management, timesheets and contract revenue management across a strong multi-company and general ledger configuration.
The full range of functionality on offer allows IT Services companies to streamline back-office operations and get access to meaningful data for reporting and quick decision making – across the entire business. Some of the feedback we are receiving suggests that IT Services companies are typically looking to implement Sage Intacct in two phases:
Phase I – financials, divisional reporting, multi-company, consolidations, timesheets and project accounting/billing.
Phase II – contract billing, contract management, advanced allocations (revenue and expense) and team scheduling.
If your IT services business is looking to streamline operations, get access to better reporting and wants access to the latest cloud technologies to achieve real business benefits, contact the Sage Intacct team at Leverage Technologies on 1300 045 046.