7 Reasons Why You Should Use Project Management Software in Your Consulting Firm

Consulting firms face challenges in managing multiple projects, clients, and goals simultaneously, while keeping an eye on long-term success. Project management (PM) software has become essential for project-based businesses of all sizes and industries, including consulting firms.  

For consultants, PM software can streamline workflows, enhance client relationships, increase efficiency, and more. In this article, we'll explore seven reasons consulting firms should use project management software and its potential benefits. 

Benefits of Using Project Management Software in Your Consulting Firm 

Streamline Workflows  

When juggling several clients, projects, and goals at once, it’s difficult to stay organized and work optimally without the right tools. With automated workflows and a central platform for scheduling, task assignment, budgets, and progress tracking, project management software can make all the difference. Using fewer tools and steps, you have a simplified home for client data, project timelines, and prioritized team tasks.  

With a project’s key details and data in a single place, you spend less time searching, compiling, and messaging team members. This can help improve productivity and reduce the time and effort required to manage your firm’s projects.  

Automating workflows reduces your team’s manual work, prevents errors, and removes delays from your project process. When you’ve effectively streamlined more of your firm’s work related to project setup, execution, and reporting, you can apply the same workflows to similar projects. 

Improve Collaboration  

Consulting firms rely heavily on collaboration between team members and clients to be successful. You need a way to help your team maintain standards, have visibility into timelines, receive real-time updates, and access shared documents.  

PM software improves collaboration by speeding up file sharing, task assignment, communication, and reporting. Everyone has access to what they need, keeping all collaborators on the same page and working more efficiently toward shared goals.  

On a large project, several members are assigned individual tasks, often timed to and dependent on the work of other team members. With a project management solution, when team members have questions, they can immediately get answers from features like a team dashboard, file sharing, or built-in messaging, by communicating with the right person and accessing the documents, timelines, and status updates they need to stay on track.   

BQE CORE, firm management software for professional services firms, improves collaboration by sending regular updates and automated notifications about important assignments, tasks, reports, and other aspects of a project that need attention. These notifications are automatically sent out to alert team members about the progress of a project or certain tasks, so team members respond and resolve issues faster. 

Increase Efficiency  

Consulting firms are constantly under pressure to deliver multiple projects on time and within budget. Additionally, your projects may have several phases, with numerous tasks within each phase. All of these complications can negatively impact efficiency. 

Luckily, project management software for your consulting firm boosts efficiency by providing real-time visibility into your progress, identifying potential bottlenecks, and enabling quick decision-making, so you deliver projects on time at a higher quality level.  

Using one software to integrate front office (project management and customer relationship management) and back-office activities (billing, accounting, and time and expense tracking) enables you to work more efficiently, remove human error, leverage the data your software collects, and increase revenue. 

BQE CORE gives you access to real-time views at every level of profitability, including firm, client, project, phase, and employee, so you better understand what helps productivity and remove any barriers to efficiency. 

Manage Resources Effectively  

Consulting firms often have to manage various resources, including staff, technology, and budgets. Project management software designed for consulting firms can help you oversee resources by providing insights into utilization, forecasting, and allocation, so you properly staff projects, manage finances, and maximize your billable time.  

To better plan and manage resources, PM software offers features like time tracking, shared calendars, project templates, and automated reporting that allow you to:  

• Save time on resource planning 

• View team members’ schedules and workloads 

• Assess how long tasks take based on time-tracking entries 

• Spot bottlenecks early

• Monitor resources regularly 

With a precise tool like BQE CORE, you can easily monitor utilization to ensure your team isn’t over- or under-worked, while accounting for every billable hour and expense on a project.  

Enhance Client Communication  

Consulting firms rely heavily on smooth communication with clients to ensure projects go well. The consulting industry especially faces difficulties in gaining and maintaining a client’s trust. It’s a crowded, competitive field, and consulting clients often have very high expectations and limited budgets. One way to foster client relationships is with clear, consistent communication. 

Project management software for consulting firms can enhance client communication by providing a central platform for client updates, feedback, and collaboration. Keeping this information organized enables you to deliver projects that meet or exceed their expectations, or document requests that may affect project scope. 

As a project develops, it’s not uncommon for clients to change their goals or request something additional, but shifting demands can cause the project to delay, restart, or cut into your profit margins. The more you communicate at the beginning of a project to set expectations, and the quicker you share updates as work progresses, the likelier you are to avoid last-minute changes that dramatically affect project requirements.  

Monitor Project Risks  

Every project comes with some level of risk. Your consulting firm must proactively identify potential risks, develop strategies to mitigate them, and minimize the impact on your process, deadlines, costs, and final results.  

A project management platform like BQE CORE makes it easy to monitor project risks by providing real-time insights into potential bottlenecks and spotting issues before they escalate. This can help you minimize the impact of unexpected events and keep projects on track.  

The earlier you spot a potential risk, the more time you have to prepare a contingency plan for your project. BQE CORE regularly sends alerts and insights, so you're always up to date on the status of a task or project and able to react quickly to risks, avoiding costly delays. 

Improve Project Reporting  

Consulting firms often have to share detailed project reports to clients, stakeholders, and management teams. Project management software can improve project reporting by providing up-to-date insights into progress, results, resource utilization, and financial metrics. This helps your firm deliver accurate and timely project reports that meet the needs of all stakeholders.  

Of course, as a business owner, you want every firm your project takes to positively impact your firm. With BQE CORE, you can integrate your project management and accounting to track the true profitability of all your work, with detailed profit & loss statements, budget tracking, and other reports that optimize your resources and margins.  

Make your Consultancy more Profitable with BQE CORE 

Consulting firms face rising competition and high expectations from clients. To remain innovative, on track, and profitable, you need project management software to help your consulting company: 

• Automate and speed up workflows for invoicing, accounting, and reporting 

• Take control of budgets, tasks, and documentation 

• Track progress on your projects, employees, resources, and tasks  

• Enhance communication for all collaborators 

• Increase efficiency across your team 

BQE CORE is powerful all-in-one software for consultants with time tracking, project planning, accounting, billing, automation, and more. It helps your firm improve efficiency, collaboration, and decision-making for sustained success.  

Spend less time on billing, tracking hours, and creating reports from scratch. Instead, focus on delivering better results, retaining clients, and growing your company. Start your free trial of BQE CORE today.