Project Operations as source of truth for Professional Services Organizations 

If you are a decision maker at an organization and looking to strategize the information at your organization and how the systems should source information from one to another, then this post is for you. 

Systems for source of truth at the organization is the question you are looking to get answered. 

Dynamics 365 Applications involved for Professional Services firms 

Let’s break down the systems from Dynamics 365 Application stack-standpoint –  

Sales and Project Management 

If you are a Professional Services firm in Construction, Engineering, Accounting, IT Services etc. and you have a Sales cycle running from Opportunity generation all the way to Project and Resource Management, then you need Dynamics 365 Project Operations – below is what Project Operations handles –  

1. Sales Cycle from Lead to Opportunity to Contract creation. 

2. Project with a WBS structure on which Resources are assigned 

3. Resource Management giving you ability to book resources on the projects 

4. Budget vs Actuals tracking for insights in Project Profitability. 

5. Pro-forma Invoicing that is later integrated into an Accounting platform. 

6. Reporting to give insights into the Project lifecycle and Resource utilization.

Accounting 

Dynamics 365 Project Operations itself isn’t designed as an Accounting platform – it can create up to Pro-forma Invoices. But here’s to consider some options for Accounting –  

1. Given you have applications like Dynamics 365 Project Operations or Field Service, these applications handle the front-end operations from Sales to Project Management only. 

2. Accounting applications are Dynamics 365 Business Central and Finance & Operations. BC primary for SMB market and F&O for large organization with manufacturing and inventory needs. 

3. If not for Microsoft applications, your existing or desired applications could be QuickBooks Online, Zoho Books or Xero. 

4. Then, consideration should be to integrate the Sales/PM and Accounting platforms together. I’ll talk about it in the next sections.

Marketing 

Marketing is a key aspect for an organization which primary deals with data like Accounts and Contacts – Here are some options to look out for – 

1. Dynamics 365 Marketing is inhouse application to Microsoft and ties with Dynamics 365 Project Operations/Sales through configuration and integration. 

2. If you are looking for third-party which are not outside the Microsoft Business Applications stack, then ClickDimensions (now called as Click) and Touchdown are great choices. 

3. If you are looking for third-party outside of Microsoft stack – then Mailchimp or Klaviyo are the choices to consider with integration back to Dynamics 365 Sales/Project Operations.

HRMS 

Maybe you are coming from an existing HR platforms, but here are some thoughts –  

1. You could be coming from HR platforms like UKG, Employment Hero or Zoho People + Recruit. Most of these provide from Hire to Retire scenarios. 

2. If you are looking for a closely knit application with Dynamics 365, then you could look at something like Dynamics 365 HR or Hubdrive (which is third-party but built on top of Power Platform). 

3. You’ll need to source Resource data from these platforms into Dynamics 365 Project Operations so that your Bookable Resources (or rather, the resources who’ll work on projects come from an HRMS system through integration or configuration). 

Tying it all together 

As you’ve seen so far, the source of truth being Dynamics 365 Project Operations or core CRM application because of its flexibility, it is pivotal to source data from this system to other systems and all CRUD operations are tied to Project Operations upon integration. 

Other systems are then used to perform their respective operation and send updates back to Project Operations through integration. 

Conclusion 

Making Dynamics 365 Project Operations as source of truth works for our customers as they find the information clean, consistent and available for correct reporting through just one system. 

This gives a true view of the organization without having siloed systems which result in inconsistencies in data and information mismatch if integrations are not architected correctly. Making a system as source of truth gives you improved accuracy and trust in your organizations’ data and drives efficency in the longer run. 

We hope you found this article useful, and if you would like to discuss anything, you can reach out to us at transform@cloudfronts.com