Apr 19, 2024
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Accelo is a way to manage all of your client work in one place. It gives service companies - be it Digital Agencies, IT Consultants, or Architects - a central hub to run their entire operations including sales, projects, requests, ongoing success, and billing.
By combining cloud systems and automation, Accelo can answer “what happened today?”
Is this client partnership profitable?
Is my team fully utilized and doing good work?
Did the client email us back so we don’t miss our deadline?
These questions are critical to the success of professional service businesses where client relationships drive growth and profits.
Running a Service Business:
Because no two clients are the same, service businesses have vastly different relationships with, and provide unique solutions to, each of their clients. With so much variability between clients, service businesses have found that designing a standard process is essential to delivering on expectations and ensuring profitability. But without a streamlined system, the opposing forces between bespoke services and streamlined operations can pull a business apart, even with the best efforts and hard work of individuals on the team.
That’s why Accelo exists - to provide a flexible, intelligent platform that can mold to the varying business needs along the client journey.
It captures client and team communication across all touchpoints and creates a shared workspace to lay down plans and expectations so that everyone is aligned on what needs to be done.
Additionally, professional service businesses must deliver quality work to different clients all while constrained by time, cost, and scope. Schedules and priorities shift constantly. Budgets often depend on how the project team is working with each other and the client. Scope can be hard to define with custom work because teams may not understand the solution well into the project.
Accelo creates a safety net of automation and notifications around those constraints so the team can focus on doing the work they love rather than constantly worrying about time, costs, or scope on complex client work and requests.
What the New, Digital Service Business looks like:
Service businesses are tackling more complex problems with more complex, automated, and cloud-based tools.
In the architecture field, clients, citizens, and city boards are demanding wholistic buildings that integrate energy best practices with a better occupant experience. So firms are using digital tools like Building Information Modeling, Grasshopper, and Virtual Reality to build the dwellings of the future.
Likewise, the Internet has made it possible for industries such as hospitality to connect with their guests across multiple channels, reserve a place online, check-in, and stay connected through and after their stay. Digital technology studios are using Amazon Web Services, Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, eCommerce platforms, marketing automation, and SMS technology to design these new services and guest experiences.
The tools of the professional trade - like those mentioned above - are getting more complex, faster, and better at solving problems by using cloud and automation.
Recently, the tools of the business that help next-gen digital service firms run their business are getting smarter and faster too. In sales and marketing, Hubspot and Salesforce have used automation and cloud technologies to drive client growth. Likewise, in accounting, Xero and QuickBooks Online have made it easier to ensure that there’s cash flow to make payroll next month.
The slowest area to adopt the new way of running a service business is services and operations: where the promises of marketing are made a reality through doing client work. And where your business can make or break relationships and profit.
That's exactly why we built Accelo!
It came out of our own business needs as a modern, digital agency, and now we’re sharing it with the rest of you to run a more successful service business and to finally answer the simple (but challenging) question of what happened today?
John started working at Accelo in 2014 and is our Lead Solutions Engineer. He's played an integral role in the Accelo product as a key contributor to the product development team. Got a question for John? Leave it in the comments section below.