Small Business Case Studies

Professional Services Case Study

Marie Management has helped 42 professional services entrepreneurs with for-profit companies  across 6 states with operational systems and strategies that resulted in 30% of the companies new earnings from scaling to philanthropic arms of their own through building a corporate responsibility program, nonprofit, NGO or trust with us.

Professional Services Business Problems

Problem #1 The Owners Balance: Often professional services entrepreneurs are self-employed and lack the direction and intent to transition into governance of their business instead of a laboring employee. Therefore high performing professional service entrepreneurs and business owners complete long hours at the office, on projects and with clients with zero consideration of a personal life. This eventually begins to affect their performance, business results, business outcomes, personal health and goals.    

Problem #2 Reliable Staff: Professional Services Entrepreneurs often control too many aspects of their business for too long which directly contributes to the high turnover or unreliable staff issues in the industry. Providing staff the proper training, development, boundaries, standard operating procedures, operating tools and autonomy often lack and contribute to the owner still completing the tasks of the staff to keep the business afloat.

Problem #3 Business Systems: Professional Services entrepreneurs and business owners are experts at their skillset and often wish not to be involved in the other crucial aspects of business systems that directly impact their companies income long term: human resources, marketing, advertising, sales, management, information technology, customer relations and operations. Therefore these systems become partially built out only within a crisis and result in the firm being noncompetitive in its industry among others.

  • Law Firms gained a streamlined method to onboard, manage and retain contractors for typical firm management while implementing systems for professional services in order to contribute time to additional pro-bono projects.
  • Accounting Firms gained lead generation systems and integrated methods in order to operate consistently at scale.
  • Information Technology Consultancies transitioned from contracting and freelancing into developing their own firms with a built in scalable model.
  • Public Relations Consultancy transitioned from contracting and freelancing into developing their own firms with B2B systems designed for long term diversified income.
  • Human Resources Consultancies transitioned from contracting and freelancing into developing their own firms with B2G systems designed for long term diversified income.
  • Fund Development Consultancies transitioned from contracting and freelancing into developing their own firms with B2B systems designed for long term diversified income.

Identify the Ways Marie Management Can Solve Your Problems As a Professional Services Business Entrepreneur

After an initial assessment, audit, strategic plan development and consulting all inefficient processes, existing technology systems and operating management systems required solutions in the following areas:

  • Customer Acquisition and Retention: Entrepreneurs had to concentrate on increased competition, customer loyalty and trust, capturing customers’ attention, new business models and changing market trends, markets crowded with advertising messaging.
  • New Technology Implementation: Entrepreneurs had to concentrate on understanding their technology needs, keeping an eye on trends in the industry that may influence your services and employees, evaluating the team’s, using new technologies effectively and comparing technology options based on their impact to the business not just by costs alone.
  • Talent Sourcing and Retention: Entrepreneurs had to concentrate on how to offer competitive pay packages, creating career development plans, giving employees a voice and autonomy, developing a recruiting and onboarding process, develop an actual training program and develop a means of collaborating among all teams for the basis of clear communication and outcomes/results.  
  • Managing Cash Flow: Entrepreneurs had to concentrate on how to review their billing and invoicing schedule for accuracy in addition to staff involvement supported by a method to verify, clarify, approve or reject any part of the financials. Provide operating tools to the financial department to handle accounts and processes of all sizes, methods for accounts payable, methods for accounts receivable and budgeting beyond bill pay across the company needs. Lastly, leveraging technology in order to automate the majority of day-to-day financial tasks to eliminate payment delays and negative activities.
Professional Services Industry Businesses scale to invest their profits in programs that provide services to vulnerable populations.

With these implemented solutions our Professional Services Industry companies become equipped to scale in order to implement their philanthropic arms with the following new operations and management processes in the following places:

  • Human Resources Systems
  • Training and Development Programs
  • Management Protocols
  • Policies and Procedures
  • Standard Operating Procedures
  • Project Management  
  • Customer Relations Management Systems
  • POS Systems
  • Financial Management System
  • Marketing & Advertising System
  • Communication System
  • Referral Management

Upon completion of streamlining and scaling the for-profit, Marie Management consultants began to build the philanthropic arm of the entrepreneurs choice (nonprofit, non-governmental organization, philanthropic arm, corporate responsibility program, private foundation, association or trust) with the following steps:

Step 1: Organizational Structure Development  

Step 2: Board & Business Network Development

Step 3: Committee Development

Step 4: Program Development

Step 5: Strategic Planning & Logic Model Development

Step 6: Fund Development

Step 7: Outreach Strategy & Development

Step 8: Department Development

Step 9: Operational Systems

Step 10: Marketing, Advertising & Sales Systems

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