Running a professional services firm can be a rewarding, entrepreneurial experience. It can also be a very challenging endeavor. At times, it is easy (and even necessary) to get caught up in the day-to-day minutiae of operations and services delivery. “What do I need tomorrow?”, “How am I going to staff this project that is starting next week?”, and “What am I going to do about this project that is running over budget” are all challenges that require immediate attention. Looking past the day-to-day can be hard to do but developing and tracking towards a longer-term plan is necessary if your firm is going to grow.

So, what does “longer term plan” mean? Well, it means different things to different people – everyone has a unique approach to defining their plan. Regardless of how you might develop your long-term plan, you will be tracking to some basic goals / measurements that are key indicators of performance and growth. Some of these include:

• Revenue
• Services Gross Margin
• Employee Headcount
• Utilization
• Average Bill Rate

We talk more about KPIs for Professional Services Firms in our e-book, Compass.

Once you have set the growth and metrics goals for your business, how do you plan on achieving them? It is one thing to have goals in mind but steering your business towards those goals requires a plan of action.

Sure, you will need to add billable personnel to your team to meet your growth goals – but what roles will you be adding? When? Will you be adjusting your margin and utilization targets to accommodate an influx of personnel? What measurements will you be attributing to those team members to reach your goals? What utilization targets will be set for which roles? How about bill rates? Will you be considering salary bands for roles and evaluating margins at a role level? How many business development professionals will you need to drive sales? When do you expect to hire those salespeople? What is an acceptable gross margin for your business in times of growth?

The questions are mounting -- are you getting to that level of detail in your plan?

Delivering to goals as a business is no different, in theory, than to delivering to project goals as a project team. You set performance and growth criteria, you create a plan to execute, and you track your performance as a measure of actual-to-plan. If you are creating goals for your business – fantastic! If you are creating goals but not creating a business plan to get there, consider doing so and doing so at a level of detail that you would if you were a project manager running a project.