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The professional services industry is worth $6,382 billion each year, with a compound annual growth rate of 6%. Even though the sector is growing quickly, it has a lot of problems, such as managing risks, keeping staff, keeping cash flowing, and grappling with competition.
NetSuite software, like OpenAir, was designed to help you manage professional services projects by helping with resource, expense, and timesheet management. This article will share the features and benefits of NetSuite OpenAir and show how it can support your professional services firm to deliver value for your clients and achieve better business outcomes.
What is NetSuite OpenAir?
If you run a professional service delivery business, you'll know resource optimization is a constant challenge. When managing and assigning work, service providers have to deal with three important project management questions:
- Do we have the capacity to deliver the work?
- What is the right mix of skills needed to complete the project?
- Who are the best employees to deliver maximum value and revenue?
NetSuite OpenAir is a cloud-based solution for automating professional services. It helps with project management and delivery throughout the entire lifecycle of an assignment. It helps businesses and project managers answer these questions quickly and confidently.
OpenAir assists your businesses with:
- Resource management
- Project management
- Time and expense tracking
- Project accounting
- Billing and invoicing
NetSuite Openair: Features, Benefits, and How It Can Help Run More Effective Projects
NetSuite OpenAir is a cloud-based SaaS solution that helps professional services businesses run projects with greater efficiency. It provides automation and visibility across your entire business operation, helping you unlock the following:
- Increased project profitability
- Real-time insights into projects and your business
- Efficient billable resource utilization
- Powerful tools for data-driven solutions
OpenAir is highly flexible and can integrate with any ERP solution you already use. The solution can serve businesses of all sizes, no matter if you're a small team or a multi-subsidiary organization.
Let's explore some of the features and benefits of OpenAir and show how it can help your business.
NetSuite OpenAir Features
NetSuite OpenAir is packed with features that help professional service businesses achieve maximum efficiency. By centralizing project management, resource allocation, and billing, your organization can benefit from greater control and oversight of your services and finances.
Here are the main features of OpenAir you should know.
Project management
NetSuite OpenAir is a cloud-based solution that can help you track and report on project status — anytime and anywhere. Efficient project management is made easy by a collection of tools that support meeting project deadlines and driving maximum productivity and revenues.
Authorized personal benefit from real-time views of each project. Also, OpenAir's advanced modeling tools let project managers run what-if scenarios to find the best combination of staff size, price, billing rates, and profit.
Resource management
OpenAir includes resource management tools that help you get the most value from your employees, no matter where they are based. Professional services businesses face stiff competition. Profitability relies on maximizing productivity and output by matching the right employees to the right projects that allow you to make the most of their time.
Resource allocation tools help you get the most out of your people by putting them to work based on what each project needs. Additionally, OpenAir lets you find the right matches based on skills, interests, experience, and availability.
Project accounting
OpenAir's project accounting capabilities help you deliver projects on time by tracking expenses and revenues — improving project profitability. The robust billing engine ensures accurate invoicing, boosting cash flow in the process. Additionally, advanced revenue recognition functions facilitate the separation of revenue types to meet revenue recognition standards.
Timesheet management
Professional services businesses, especially those with mobile teams, have a hard time keeping track of time and expenses. OpenAir's cloud-based functionality allows teams to generate timesheets from anywhere via mobile or web browser. The data is linked to tools for managing projects, so your records are always up to date and accurate.
Expense Management
Many professional services spend too much time on expense management and reimbursement. However, OpenAir was designed to streamline and automate the process. Your employees can upload expenses to the cloud from any location or device with just a photograph of a receipt. This process ensures your project accounting and billing are always on point.
Dashboards and reporting
Sophisticated, customizable dashboards and reports help project managers gain real-time visibility into pertinent details of any project. Data and metrics can be accessed from everywhere, supporting high-quality decision-making.
Enterprise system integration
One of the most powerful aspects of OpenAir is its ability to integrate seamlessly with your current front and back office systems.
While NetSuite does offer you the opportunity to run your entire business on one unified system, we understand that many organizations have existing software stacks and business processes that they are comfortable with or that have been assembled at considerable expense. OpenAir's flexibility allows you to keep these tools while unlocking the benefits of the cloud.
OpenAir enables you to maintain productive areas of your workflow while boosting efficiency with an end-to-end system that offers excellent automation options and reduces manual processes between services and the wider business.
NetSuite OpenAire works with customer relationship management (CRM) and service resource planning (SRP) systems in the front office. Similarly, it also integrates with back-office accounting and ERP applications.
Collaboration
OpenAir supports better project outcomes by connecting business leaders, project managers, teams, and customers. By making these connections easier with good tools for collaboration, all parties can stay informed and pull in the same direction.
Automated status reports, alerts, document sharing, and messaging tools help spread the word about a project and keep everyone in the loop.
NetSuite OpenAir Benefits
NetSuite OpenAir has shown that it helps companies grow and get bigger by making them more efficient.
Here are a few of the key benefits:
1. Better resource management
Improving your margins while still delivering each project on time requires careful resource allocation. OpenAir simplifies the processes by using simple drag-and-drop tools to help you assign the right resource to each project.
2. Project Financial Management
If you don't keep track of and assign specific project activities to your company's finances, your billing will be wrong and your company will lose money. OpenAir fixes these problems by putting all of your accounting in one place, so you can charge for every service you offer.
3. Track Attributes and Availability
Efficient resource utilization is at the heart of effective project management. Getting the most from your team involves knowing each worker's skillset, experience, and interests, and of course, their availability. Armed with this information, you can deploy resources where they'll do their best work.
4. On-time and on-budget project delivery
OpenAir helps improve collaboration between project managers and teams. The solution lets you keep track of project status and costs, as well as spot possible threats to service-level agreements and take action before it's too late.
5. Real-Time Resource visibility
Optimal decision-making requires reliable data. OpenAir helps you get more out of the consultants you already have because you always know what their status is. You can get more out of your staff and save money on subcontractors by giving downtime to employees or teams.
6. Revenue Recognition
While OpenAir helps you track project billing and expenses, it also allows you to recognize revenue separately. This benefit can help with financial standard compliance and give you better insights into profitability.
What Businesses Can Benefit From A Project Management Solution Like NetSuite Openair?
NetSuite OpenAir can help global service businesses that deal with multi-currency, subsidiary, taxation, and language requirements. It's a great set of tools for the mobile services industry because it can be used well from a distance.
NetSuite OpenAir is a great solution for companies with more than 500 employees that offer professional services. Companies with fewer than 500 employees should also consider NetSuite Services Resource Planning (SRP). It does the same things and has the same features, but it was made with smaller businesses in mind.
Which Suites Offer Openair?
OpenAir is accessible via:
- Professional Suite for SMB business package
- The Enterprise Suite package, which includes Resource planning
Is Openair User-Friendly?
OpenAir has lots of powerful features and functions. With such a broad level of capabilities, it can be overwhelming for new users. However, with the right training and guidance, each user can get up to speed and begin to unlock the benefits of the solutions.
Seller Universe helps businesses implement and deploy NetSuite properties like OpenAir. We also provide access to high-quality, expert support to help you get the most from your investment.
Final Thoughts
Seller Universe is a trusted service provider with deep experience assisting businesses like yours in implementing and deploying NetSuite properties. We know the problems that professional services businesses face, and we're here to help you find the best solutions and put them into action.
NetSuite OpenAir can help you get the most from your resources, which is essential in our ultra-competitive modern business environment. So reach out today to discuss how we can assist and support your team with implementing a NetSuite solution that makes a difference to your productivity and bottom line.
