Use Subcontractors on Projects? Make it Seamless for Your Customers

If your professional service organization (PSO) is like most, you leverage a substantial number of subcontractors to deliver successful projects. The more seamlessly you incorporate subcontractors into everything you do, the better your customer relationships will be.

In this post, we describe how the right project management system will help you bill and manage subcontractors on projects and improve customer relationships.

Moving to a Single System

Until recently, PSOs have relied on multiple systems, administrative staff, and manual processes to capture subcontractor activities for use in payroll, calculating revenue, scheduling project activities, understanding costs, tracking issues, invoicing customers, and quoting new projects. As a result, customer relations have been less than ideal.

What’s missing from the PSO landscape is a single system to manage subcontractors in a way that treats them as if they’re internal employees. Imagine a system that automatically integrates project-related data input by employees and subcontractors – they enter their time and expenses for a project once, managers approve them once, and the finance department processes all relevant outputs once.

With a single system both employees and subcontractors can access, you can streamline all project-related processes and activities and roll them up into accurate invoices that your customers will be happy to pay on time.

Today’s Integrated PSM-CRM-ERP

Thanks to the integration of TimeLinx’s project management system with both Infor CRM and Sage CRM, your PSO can incorporate subcontractors into your projects so seamlessly that your customers will never notice. TimeLinx project management solutions integrate bi-directionally with your ERP system, so your subcontractors’ time and expense entries are automatically accounted for. This allows you to generate accurate revenue and cost reports in real time, based on the parameters your project managers define in CRM, with no manual processes or data keying.

Recognizing that many of your subcontractors work remotely, TimeLinx also provides mobile service management. Subcontractors working in the field can enter time, expenses, and progress updates from their mobile phones or tablets. That data then automatically flows into your CRM system for everyone to see and use in real time. Also, if you’re currently using Infor CRM or Sage CRM, you can choose to either leverage their ERP integrations or the TimeLinx ERP integration. Either way, you seamlessly combine subcontractor billing and management.

Conclusion

Your customers expect convenience and accuracy when they hire a PSO to perform a project. If they find themselves wasting time and effort reconciling inaccurate information from their PSO, they’ll find a replacement. Maintain the best customer relationships you can by using TimeLinx to integrate everything you do on your projects with the information and invoices you share with your customers.

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About TimeLinx
TimeLinx delivers innovative project & service management software as a complete solution that perfects the sell-track-manage-support-bill cycle that services organizations must have to delight their customers; TimeLinx brings the cycle together in a single application that offers less frustration, better project management, complete reporting, and improved profitability – all specially designed for Infor and Sage.

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