Professional Services Surge Continues in 2013 According to New SPI Research

Professional Services Maturity™ Benchmark report from Service Performance Insight (SPI Research) projects a stronger 2013 for professional services. Additionally, the 2013 report rated two FinancialForce Professional Services Automation Customers Rated Best-of-the-Best. End Quote

(1888PressRelease) March 19, 2013 - FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced that the professional services market is set to have a strong 2013, according to this year's Professional Services Maturity™ Benchmark report from Service Performance Insight (SPI Research). Additionally, the corresponding 2013 Professional Services Maturity™ Best of Best report rated two FinancialForce Professional Services Automation (PSA) customers, NTT Centerstance and Perceptive Software, among the top five percent best-of-the-best performing Professional Services (PS) organizations benchmarked against more than 230 leading firms.

Professional services as an industry in 2012 grew across all leading indicators - annual revenue growth (11.5%), headcount increases, size of the deal pipeline (193% of forecast), and percentage of revenue in backlog (43%) - its strongest results in five years. SPI Research found there is significant pent-up demand for professional services and consequently, PS organizations are experiencing shorter sales cycles. SPI Research also projects that 2013 will be another strong year for Professional Services, setting the stage for key growth trends that will shape the industry over the next five years. PS firms planning to capitalize from this expected surge require technology that allows for integration, mobility, ease of use and complete visibility.

"The bottom-line is that the PS market is very much alive and growing with no let-up in sight," said Jeanne Urich, managing director, SPI Research. "The greatest challenge going forward for PS providers will be finding the skilled talent they need for growth, which means both large and small firms will have to develop innovative new talent management techniques, as well as technology, to support increased demand and productivity to stay ahead of the curve."

According to the report, the best performing firms focus intently on aligning sales and service delivery, and have initiated efforts to productize their service portfolio. Productized services enable the entire organization to more efficiently sell and execute very profitable services at higher levels of quality. A key underpinning of effective sales and delivery alignment are integrated CRM and PSA applications, which gave them a 360-degree view of clients; ensuring prospects fluidly become projects. They also are focused on providing visibility for both sales and delivery to the pipeline to ensure they are selling what they can deliver and delivering what was sold.
Average growth:

SPI Best of Best - 2013 KPI comparison

SPI Best of Best - Comparison - Demographics

"Based on these numbers, the Best of the Best winners are taking a larger share of the growth in the industry at the expense of their competitors and are achieving higher profitability," continued Urich. "Going forward, these companies will be more competitive because they are growing faster than the market."

SPI Best of Best - Comparison - Human Capital
FinancialForce.com customers NTT Centerstance and Perceptive Software have illustrated exemplary performance across leadership, finance, operations, human capital alignment, service execution and client relationship categories in 2012, as evaluated by SPI Research. NTT Centerstance, a consulting firm that specializes in helping companies identify and move key business processes to the cloud, has a single system to manage sales and service and is enabling their services teams to base their decisions on the same data, in real time, so decision-making is efficient and effective. Perceptive Software is a stand-alone business unit within Lexmark International, which builds enterprise content management software to help organizations effortlessly manage the entire lifecycle of their documents and information. The company relies on Salesforce CRM integrated with FinancialForce Accounting and FinancialForce PSA to deliver competitive advantage.

Both companies were among the top organizations that showed significantly higher revenue growth, as well as a high percentage of billable employees. They achieved productivity enhancements by reducing data entry, making resource assignments faster and providing more flexibility to adapt to changing project needs on the fly.

"Centerstance and Perceptive are stellar examples of companies that have the powerful combination of maturity and connected applications," said Jeremy Roche, CEO, FinancialForce.com. "Their inclusion in SPI's best-of-the-best validates why our PSA customer base continues to expand exponentially year after year."
About FinancialForce.com

FinancialForce.com is the cloud applications company. We focus 100% on building business applications for Force.com, the world's leading cloud computing platform from salesforce.com. Our applications include Accounting, Billing, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Services Resource Planning (SRP). We serve fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. We are backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com.

To learn more please follow us on Twitter ( @ ) FinancialForce, visit our Facebook page or visit www dot FinancialForce dot com dot

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