Introduction
As a result of these challenges and many others, 63% of executives stated that it has become harder to operate a services business, a significant increase compared to the 52% polled by Kantata just a year earlier.
Despite the pressures to become more profitable, 65% of services businesses polled told us that they had to turn down work in the past 12 months. Most often, it was due to not having enough of the right resources. The result is that services companies are simultaneously fighting to increase their margins while also being forced to turn down work more and more often.
These are just a few of the pressures being experienced in the industry today. The six most common types of pressures experienced by services firms are:
- Increased competition from new and expanding firms
- The move to short-term, project-based work
- Eroding margins that eat away at profitability
- More remote teams and subcontractors
- The generational shift in workforces that demands a new way to work
- Expectations of greater speed and transparency from clients
The five steps detailed in this ebook are meant to improve service firm profitability from a variety of angles.
Each of these methods will not only help address the pressures being experienced by businesses today but are designed to make each project more profitable.

1. Increase the Accuracy of Your Estimates
What Makes an Accurate Estimation Model?
The estimation model should break the project down into multiple phases, which will act as containers that you track time against throughout the project lifecycle. Having differentiated phases will help clients understand the many aspects that lead to the overall estimated cost. These phases can quickly reveal what is costing your business more or less when comparing actuals to estimates.
The estimation model you have created can be replicated to track actuals on projects. However, keep in mind that each project will be executed slightly differently depending on client size, location, client history and more, which will impact your project lifecycle.
Today, clients expect greater transparency in the services process, wanting to know who is working on their project, how long it will take and why it costs as much as it does. At the same time, it’s becoming more difficult for services businesses to maintain a healthy project margin. Creating an accurate estimate up front will help balance both sides by setting client expectations and preventing surprise costs from compromising profit margins.
Having an accurate, reusable estimation model plays a pivotal role.
The Importance of Estimation Models
Your estimation model and process is your secret sauce. With the right estimates, your project lifecycle will be based on informed decisions that are focused on both executing a project well and keeping a healthy margin from the very start. Estimation tools, methodologies and assumptions that inform how an estimate is determined must be continuously reviewed and improved. Industries change, employee rates increase and client expectations shift as time goes on. Your estimation model should change with them.
Monitoring Scope Creep
Have a clearly defined statement of work (SOW) created before any tasks begin, which will help set client expectations. The SOW should have an agreed-upon plan of action that includes timelines, deliverables, responsibilities and milestones.
Projects and related tasks should have well-documented timelines, assigned resources, budgets and deliverables. A project requirements document should also include a section where your team reviews task statuses and compares them against the SOW.
Your business should have a process for change management in place and stick to it on each project. When a client requests additional tasks and deliverables be added to an ongoing project, the established change management process can begin.
Excessive revisions can eat away at margins due to the unexpected amount of time and resources required to meet shifting client expectations. Prevent these cascading costs by setting parameters and a cap for the number of revisions upfront. These should be defined in the contract.
The Estimation Process Review

2. Match the Right Skills for the Right Task
Can you confidently say that you have the optimal capacity of resources to meet your current project demand? How about the right capacity to meet project demand in the next three, six, or nine months? Understanding your workforce’s skill sets at a detailed level and being able to accurately match them to upcoming projects is vital for effectively running a services business.
The Benefits of Accurate Skill Matching
Your business should create an inventory of team member skills.
First and foremost, your business should create an inventory of team member skills. This means not only knowing how they can be used most effectively, but when they have time in their schedule to be placed on a project.
Having these insights available in an organized, easy-to-use resource management solution prevents confusion, delays and inaccuracies in project assignments. Skill matching can also help create accurate and timely resource forecasting. Anticipating upcoming projects and employee schedules can prevent conflicts in resource assignments that can delay project completion and lower client satisfaction.
Core vs Peripheral Skills

Those that are directly tied to your business’ most essential and frequently used services, such as client management. These skills are a crucial part of how your business serves clients and require full-time commitments to keep clients satisfied and projects on schedule.
Peripheral Skills
Only used for some projects, even if they are important. These projects do not happen frequently enough to compose the majority of a full-time work schedule and the skills required are not broadly applicable. For example, video editing is a specialized skill that requires in-depth experience, but may not be needed on a daily basis for a services firm.
The key is to hire people who will largely provide core skills while you contract those who provide the peripheral.
Tap into your peripheral skills resources only as you need them for individual projects to prevent high costs that come with keeping full-time workers on the bench and rarely utilized.
The Contractor Network
This balance between an effective full-time team and a consistently utilized network of contractors is the key to staying profitable while not losing your ability to take on bigger projects.
Stay in contact with contractors and show them that you value them, even if you are not constantly using them. Check up on them with a friendly email, keep them up to date on company news and possibly send small tasks between larger projects. Fast contractor responses will prevent you from losing client deals while waiting for workers to agree to a gig.

3. Create Healthy Tension Between Resource and Project Management
Creating a healthy tension between your resource and project managers can help balance their needs, result in better margins and create a more efficient workforce.
What Resource Managers Want
What Project Managers Want
Finding the Perfect Balance
Creating a process for regular interaction/evaluation between RMs and PMs in order to maintain a healthy tension is critical. Consider a regularly scheduled meeting where managers review past, current and upcoming projects to discuss their needs. As they review worker skill sets and budgets, managers will be able to see each others’ points of view for better communication.
Keep the lines of communication between them open and make sure they understand each other’s true needs before a project begins, as well as during and even after its completion. Data-driven decisions will also help alleviate the unnecessary tension between them by basing budgeting decisions on what past project data proves, rather than one manager overriding the other. Data will also aid PMs in understanding project costs at a more detailed level, leading to more accurate project planning in the future.
4. Measure Profit & Loss at the Project Level
Being able to see the true costs and profits associated with individual projects means that your business can make informed decisions about which projects to replicate, which processes to streamline and what types of clients you should focus on in your long-term business strategy.
How to Track Profit and Loss for Individual Projects
Being able to see the true costs and profits associated with individual projects means that your business can make informed decisions about which projects to replicate, which processes to streamline and what types of clients you should focus on in your long-term business strategy.

A project-level profit and loss template should track and calculate the following elements:

Incentivize Project Managers to Take True Ownership
Consider your project manager as the “Captain of the Ship.” It’s natural for projects to have changes in scope, cost and client expectations during execution. As such, you need to enable your PMs to be dynamic, empowered and solution-oriented so they can respond appropriately. Empower them to make decisions by providing the right data at the right time, but also hold them responsible for where the project ends up. If they feel like they can’t adjust strategies and priorities when needed, PMs will be less likely to take financial responsibility for the project, which can affect margins.
Consider associating financial rewards to PMs for financial performance, which can further tie financial responsibility, project management and bonuses together for greater ownership. But this must be balanced. This is an incentive, not a punishment. The more successful a project, the larger the bonus for a project manager.

Balance Customer Satisfaction
5. Make the Most of the Post-Mortem Process
After determining that a project is truly complete, it’s time to look back on the many different aspects of your project lifecycle planning and execution. Every project can be a learning experience for a services firm, but taking the time to review them in detail means that granular insights can be found, rather than general takeaways.
Hopefully, your services organization is consistently learning from the past. Post-mortem reviews provide you with the time and forum necessary to learn real lessons from completed projects and turn them into actionable improvements.
It’s important to note that the post-mortem review process should be a designated phase of the project lifecycle and not simply something done quickly as an afterthought or cut from a project to move on to the next. Give yourself enough time to review completed projects in detail for useful takeaways that can inform how you execute and improve your next project.
While it may be tempting to devote all of your time to the next project, it’s important to review the project you have just finished. The postmortem process will help you continually refine profitability and improve future projects based on your takeaways, with each completed project informing the next through full-cycle resource management.
What to Analyze in the Post-Mortem Process
There are a few major measurements that should be applied to every project’s post-mortem process.

COMPARE YOUR ESTIMATES VS. ACTUALS FOR PROFITABILITY INSIGHTS:
Were there delivery challenges? What were your resource challenges? Did you create inaccurate estimates? What updates need to be made to the estimation process? You need to see how your estimates and execution align, which will help improve estimation skills and highlight areas that negatively impact project execution.

CREATE AN INTERNAL REVIEW TO EVALUATE TEAM PERFORMANCE AND ASSESS EMPLOYEE SKILLS:
How well did individual team members perform when completing tasks? Did their skills effectively align with the project’s demands? Learn how you can finetune performance and better determine core skills and peripheral ones. This internal review only becomes more important the larger you become.

GAUGE CUSTOMER SATISFACTION FOR FUTURE EXECUTION ON DELIVERABLES:
Are there opportunities for more projects with the customer? Would they make for a good reference or case study? What were your key performance indicators both before and after project completion? Understanding customer satisfaction will help you keep future clients happy with your work and more willing to return for future projects.
Recap
This should break down projects into phases and all appropriate team members should agree to use the model before the start of each project.
The skills stored in your system should be reviewed every three months to ensure accuracy, as well as any blind spots in your task assignments.
Regular communication ensures healthy interactions and a consistent balance between needs.
This should calculate every project’s gross margin, operating income and net profit to stay aware of your company’s true income.
Detailed analysis and comparison of estimates vs actuals create deep insights before the next project begins.
“With Kantata, not only will our people be more fully engaged, but we’ll also be able to easily resolve downtime and get the most out of our internal talent. This improves collaboration across the organization and provides our clients with even more cost-effective solutions.”
MGT Consulting Group