The Power of Pairing Productivity with a Practice Management System

When it comes to assessing your organization’s overall productivity levels, a practice management system can prove to be an invaluable tool.  A practice management system’s greatest asset to a professional services organization is that it structures data inputs to eliminate duplicate data entry and facilitate analytical reporting on various aspects of that data.  You can quickly and easily access insights into how well your organization, and those individuals within it, are meeting deadlines and how swiftly they’re moving various projects along at every stage from implementation to completion.  Capitalizing on the power of this information can help you identify where your processes are bottlenecking and where they’re more fluid.  It can point the way to multiple areas you should be focusing on to help you create a roadmap for improvement.  Here are a few ways you can utilize the features within a practice management system to monitor productivity. 

  • Keeping Track of the Numbers – An effective practice management system allows you to measure the efficiency of your staff and your service groups using data that compares productivity percentages to percent of budget. Aggregating data within the system can help you establish target utilization and realization numbers for everyone to use as a definitive guide.  A review of individual employees’ utilization and realization numbers can demonstrate exactly where everyone stands in contributing to the organization’s overall profitability.  
  • Examining Project Status – Not only can you keep track of your numbers, practice management also permits you to look at specific projects that are open, analyze which stage they’re currently in, and determine why they may still be open. You can see all of your WIP in a snapshot and the age of that WIP.  Because all individuals associated with various WIP are captured in the system, it’s easy to see who has been assigned to various projects and who to follow up with to ask questions about why a particular job may be stalled at a certain stage.  
  • Monitoring Staff Performance – You can also use your practice management system to monitor and track how individual staff members or groups of employees are performing. You can access visuals to track performance over a period of time, based on the date ranges you set.  You have the flexibility to analyze productivity by specific service lines, staff levels, unique roles, and even by individuals.  
  • Determining Staff Level Promotion Status — Although this information can be helpful in showing you which areas of your organization may need shoring up from an operational perspective, it can be equally valuable from a human resources perspective. By pulling productivity reporting, you gain the ability to establish baselines by which individuals and their effectiveness can be assessed.  If shared with employees at the outset, you can use this feature to have a conversation about individual performance and can use the data as a benchmark via which you can set expectations, monitor progress, and hold the employee accountable for their ultimate performance.  By tracking progress through productivity reporting, you can readily see who may be eligible for promotion, who may need more time, and who is struggling and would benefit from extra guidance.  
  • Moving Managerial Staff to Partner Levels – This same reporting also helps you assess your more seasoned managerial staff. Since your practice management system gives you the ability to break down productivity information by distinct employee teams and service lines, it will show you which managers are over-performing and may be ready to be promoted to the role of senior manager or partner. In addition, the practice management system tracks those responsible for developing, servicing, and billing new and existing client relationships. 

To see how real time, actionable data you can trust can help you make productivity decisions simpler and more accurate, contact us to request a PracticePro 365 demo.