Enterprise Services Transformation in the Cloud

December 13, 2013

Posted by Kim Odom - Vertical Marketing Director, Software at NetSuite

The significant changes that Kronos made not only to their overall business model, but also to their professional services strategy was a story ideally suited for the theme at the recent Technology Services World conference -- ‘Transformation.’

Held each year in October this event, presented by TSIA, brings together over 1,000 services professionals from the world of high tech for three days of learning and peer networking. NetSuite returned to TSW this year as a sponsor, and hosted a breakout session with our customer Kronos titled Enterprise Services Transformation in the Cloud: Achieving Service Organization Breakthroughs at Kronos. The session chronicled a story that we’re very familiar with at NetSuite – how professional services automation (PSA(opens in new tab)) is the key to unlocking growth and visibility within the PS discipline at software companies(opens in new tab).

Like other professional services (opens in new tab)organizations that have undergone a transformation of their business, Kronos, the workforce management software company, recognized that business-as-usual was getting in the way of achieving its goals. In this case, Kronos was not only doubling down on the cloud but also moving towards more fixed bid and other billing challenges. Combined, these changes added a great deal of complexity to billing and invoicing for the services and finance organizations, and highlighted the lack of flexibility in their existing PSA solution. Poor visibility into the business only exacerbated the problem.

Kronos’ journey provides software industry professional services teams with a blueprint for a successful professional services automation overhaul.

  1. Goals –Kronos wanted a single PSA solution to handle resource management, project management, time and expenses, as well as complex billing. The solution had to provide a flexible foundation for future growth, and it had to integrate with their Oracle financials system. Focusing on these three goals set the company up for success.
  2. Decision – Kronos invited several vendors to pitch, and through a series of demos and requirements sessions they quickly narrowed it down to two. After numerous bake-offs, Kronos selected NetSuite OpenAir.
  3. Buy-In – Since the new solution would touch more than 750 users and have a major impact on company performance, the services organization worked closely with both the IT and finance teams during the vendor evaluation process. Champions were established in each organization at various levels and a great deal of planning went in to implementation.
  4. Adoption – By involving the field early with working designs and demos, Kronos took advantage of the improved functionality, while simultaneously applying tighter controls as part of the system implementation. The champions they established early on became grassroots evangelists for the solution.

Using NetSuite OpenAir, Kronos enjoyed the following functionality and benefits:
Replaced point systems with a single integrated solution

  • Gained flexible and robust billing capabilities
  • Built-in audit trails and controls
  • Improved system performance
  • Mobile access to the system anytime, anywhere
  • Real-time visibility into the services line of business

Kronos is just one of the many success stories chronicling how software companies streamline their business operations with NetSuite OpenAir. If you are interested in reading more NetSuite customer case studies, please visit: http://bit.ly/1deYZ0j(opens in new tab). We look forward to seeing you again at TSW next year!

NetSuite has packaged the experience gained from tens of thousands of worldwide deployments over two decades into a set of leading practices that pave a clear path to success and are proven to deliver rapid business value. With NetSuite, you go live in a predictable timeframe — smart, stepped implementations begin with sales and span the entire customer lifecycle, so there's continuity from sales to services to support.