Systems Survey

How effective are your business systems and what should you be using?

In November, we conducted an important business systems review of professional service businesses, in partnership with the Association of Consulting Architects Australia. This review was done to assess the use and effectiveness of the various business systems across the architecture, engineering, and consultants industry.

There are a myriad of business management systems available to businesses and the industry to manage your finances, projects, clients, and documents. We have collated the results to review the effectiveness of business systems across accounting, time and invoicing, project control, resource management, contact/ client management, project information, and contract administration.

Insights from this year’s survey include:

• Xero is the only accounting system considered “very effective”

• There are a number of systems that manage time and invoicing that are considered “effective” or “very effective”

• There are many project control systems that are used and not considered “effective”

• 41% of respondents did not have a resource management system in place

• Almost 60% of businesses don’t have a system for managing client relationships

• More than 40% of businesses don’t have a formal document management system

• There are no systems across project control, resource management, and client management that are consistently rated “very effective” by our respondents