With over 20,000 SOWs, Proposals, Change Requests and Estimates generated on WorkRails this year, we’ve seen it all.
Here are the top 10 trends we’ve identified from Customers and Partners in 2022.
#1. Quickstart Services Packages Are On The Rise
Companies are moving to include more ‘Quickstart’ packages to simplify the implementation process significantly. A Quickstart service package is a set of services or resources that are designed to help Buyers get started with a particular product or service as quickly and easily as possible. Quickstarts can include documentation, tutorials, and other resources that can help you understand how to use the product and get the most out of it. Some Quickstart packages may also include additional services such as training, support, or consulting to help you get up and running faster.
#2. Keeping Statements Of Work Simple
Companies are reducing the length of their statements of work by linking to online standardized Ts&Cs, significantly reducing the length of their Statements Of Work (SOWs). Additionally, our Customers have seen that providing their Clients with a shorter, clearly written SOWs in plain language can help improve the approval turnaround time and allow the buyer to have a better understanding of the project details without navigating through confusing legal jargon.
#3. Bye-Bye Time & Materials
T&M continues to give way to defined outcomes (packages) as teams look for improved accuracy and easier measurement of budget and resources. Most commonly seen in global organizations, quoting delivery hours for similar projects in different regions has too much variability. Moving to packaged services allows teams to define and price projects by outcome making it easier to track, measure and deliver.
#4. Staff Augmentation Dominates
Staff augmentation, or hiring external contractors to complete specific services’ tasks or projects allows companies to bring in specialized expertise or additional resources on a temporary basis without the need to hire permanent employees. This can be an effective way to meet the changing needs of a business, such as during periods of increased demand or when a specific skill set is required for a short-term project.
#5. Change Requests Are Huge
Change requests; a Client’s request to change the agreed upon deliverables of an existing project, can be extremely complex for both the Service Provider and Buyer. Even the most sophisticated companies can receive dozens per day. Using customer-facing decision-tree logic, available in WorkRails, Buyers can now configure the request to meet their specific needs, electronically sign their acceptance, and submit for approval. This reduces the Seller’s pain points, minimizes delays, and eliminates tedious manual processes like data entry.
#6. Self-Serve Is Hot
Sales teams have a lot on their plate, and selling small to medium sized service packages often gets missed. We have seen a change in mindset, a shift in how our customers are thinking about self-service. Companies are designing not just service packages and bundles for customers, but they are embracing the opportunity for their customers to self-discover, configure and purchase those services without ever speaking to a rep or PS person.
#7. Marrying SKUs To Service Packages
Many SaaS providers are taking their automation one step further. Mapping their product codes in their CRM or CPQ to the relevant services within WorkRails allows complete solutions to auto-populate, without the hassle of a sales person having to worry about matching the wrong product and service.
#8. “We’ve Got A Partner For That”
For implementations and other services projects, teams are looking to their Partner networks for delivery. Project volume and corporate restructuring has caused teams to offload their services projects to reduce costs and increase speed of delivery. This trend will continue to accelerate.
#9. Legal Leveraging “Productization”
In 2022, “productization” wasn’t just for standardizing services offers. Legal teams have started leveraging productization for common legal documents like DPAs, MNDAs, and MSAs. The standardization and accelerated configuration of these documents allows Legal teams to reduce the time it takes to get prospects and customers through the contract phase faster and more efficiently.
#10. Embracing The Move To Digitization
Professional Services teams, typically reliant on manual and out-of-date processes, are moving towards digitizing portions of, or entire processes. Teams are moving away from manual, error-prone spreadsheets to organized services catalogs, like the native functionality within WorkRails, allowing them to generate SOWs in an e-commerce like fashion with ease and efficiency while eliminating errors. This simplifies the scoping process resulting in positive impacts on deal cycle time, acceleration of revenue, adoption and reduction of churn.
WorkRails helps companies build professional services quotes quickly and easily. We are ideal for teams who sell complex services but struggle with accuracy and timeliness. Leveraging a true guided selling experience from your CRM (or standalone), WorkRails streamlines the selling of packaged, configurable and custom services offerings. Pricing and SOWs are stored natively within a CRM Opportunity or Quote, complete with workflow approvals, if required.
More than 50,000 Professional Services quotes have been configured with WorkRails’ Services CPQ. WorkRails customers have cut service quote creation time from weeks to hours, reducing overall sales cycle times, increasing product adoption and lowering churn. Request a demo here!
