In the modern workplace, technology has taken center stage.  In an environment that’s rapidly morphed from onsite to hybrid or fully remote, having the right technology in place has become crucial.  Companies have added additional technologies and support resources to quickly adapt while still being in a position to conduct their daily businesses with maximum efficiency.  Not only is technology more plentiful, it’s also more powerful than ever – but only if you’re mining the data that your system provides in a way that puts that power squarely in your management’s hands.

A strong practice management system gives you access to insights on your clients, the time your professionals spend supporting them, billing, expenses, workflow, and productivity/staff performance.  Assigning an individual within your organization or the right team of “data analysts” to periodically review each of these elements can help you make improvements that will better align you with the “new normal”.  An added benefit is that practice management systems are designed to provide you with this data in real time. Those who continuously monitor the factors that are being tracked in these systems will certainly be ahead of the game when it comes to sustaining their businesses, even in turbulent times, and finding the opportunities that help to position themselves for growth.

The richness of data that can be pulled from your practice management system is equally important to the daily task management functions that system provides.  Utilizing your system to help complete tasks and ignoring the data analysis capabilities of that system is akin to winning the lottery and not cashing your prize-winning check.  The true value that lies within the system can be found in the insights you glean from looking at what the data is telling you.  If used properly, you’ll note areas where you can improve how assignments transition from department to department, eliminate bottlenecks, improve communication, and analyze the emerging patterns that show where your corporate strengths lie.  You can find areas where the firm is vulnerable and understand how you’re tracking against newly emerging organizational areas that you may not be focused on and need to add new resources or move existing resources to in order to keep in step with marketplace changes. Taken together, you gain access to a clearer picture of your entire organization – where you demonstrate the greatest strengths over your competition and where you may be falling behind them to help you point you in a better direction when marketing your product, service, or organization.

Employing a practice management system affords your management the opportunity to make decisions both more quickly and more accurately.  Internally, the data insights your practice management system provides affords your management team the ability to make critical business decisions regarding when and how many individuals to hire by practice area, ways in which you’d benefit from expanding, and even when the time may be right to engage in a merger or acquisition.  At the granular level, the system gives you essential information about the performance of individual staff members so that you can see who are top performers, ready for a promotion, who should be moved to a different area of your firm, and who may be better suited for another organization. 

Of course the biggest plus of having a single-source practice management system in place is being able to fully trust the data that comes from it and having everything housed in one system so you don’t have to start mixing and matching disparate sources of data to create the full picture of what’s happening in your organization. 

To learn more about how to delve more deeply into the insights your practice management system provides, contact us for a PracticePro 365 demo.