The services economy is picking up. According to SPI Research, annual revenue growth, headcount increases, size of deal pipeline, and percentage of revenue in backlog were all up in 2012, almost recovering to the pre-cession highs seen in 2007.

At first sight, that’s good news, but as professional services organizations look at significant expansion plans, you need to prepare for challenges that can stifle consultants and paralyze business.

The services economy is picking up. According to SPI Research, annual revenue growth, headcount increases, size of deal pipeline, and percentage of revenue in backlog were all up in 2012, almost recovering to the pre-cession highs seen in 2007.

At first sight, that’s good news, but as professional services organizations look at significant expansion plans, you need to prepare for challenges that can stifle consultants and paralyze business.

With growth, whether regional or global, the multilingual, multicurrency and regulatory considerations are expected. What is less obvious is the widespread lack of real-time visibility into the business. Only with visibility can organizations – and the critical web of consultants surrounding them – successfully adjust to growth. To help your organization operate as one in the face of growth opportunities, consider the following tips that will optimize resources, business processes and knowledge, regardless of physical location.

Don’t think provincially.

To take advantage of growth, you need to play a tricky game of load balancing to ensure you have the right skill sets in the right places. You may see growth from different markets at different rates, or see unexpected growth coming from a new region. Even if you’re small, don’t get caught in the mindset that other regions are silos. Instead, think globally about resources and engage sub-contractors in other regions in order to take advantage of the opportunity.

Be skeptical about growth… but not too skeptical.

Best practices dictate not to add resources until you see revenue. And with the downturn still in the rearview mirror, chances are you’re more skeptical about growth; you’ve been burned before by adding new head count before payment comes through. Identifying growth early turns that assumption on its head.

The key to sensing early growth is to join sales and services at the hip, both in terms of daily interaction, as well as integration between professional services automation (PSA), customer relationship management (CRM) and financial systems. This will allow you to differentiate between when opportunities are coming in and when resources come on board, for example. Pay close attention to ramp-up and consider a three to six month window before someone is fully trained and productive. You can account for this by defining part utilization for each consultant, e.g. start at 50% during training, and then increase over time. This will help you plan appropriately to balance caution with growth.

Make the pipeline transparent.

The key to clarity between what’s sold and what’s delivered is real-time visibility into the pipeline. With connected PSA and CRM systems, as well as social tools like Salesforce Chatter, consultants can look ahead for opportunities. They gain a chance at work outside of their local geographic area, and managers can tap a broader pool of expertise across departments or even countries. Consultants can broadcast questions to get up to speed more quickly on projects, and also engage earlier in the sales cycle – even in the preliminary client exploration phase.

Don’t cling to manual systems.

The two most important questions you can ask about your technology systems are: ‘Do they have the flexibility to adapt to change?’ and ‘Can they scale as volumes grow?’

As you scale, the Excel spreadsheets that so many organizations still rely on become unmanageable. Plus, while a resource manager may be able to keep all relevant information in his head when the organization is small, that model poses obvious risks with growth.

For example, if you’re an IT organization that has an opportunity to generate more revenue from Customer Support, you’ll need to tie PSA into a support management system to generate consulting projects directly based on support cases. Or, if you’re a managed services business, you’ll likely need to modify workflow and build out new functionality as the service model evolves. Finally, don’t let growth trump billing efficiency; to avoid a cash flow situation, ensure your systems can keep up with added volume and complexity, such as new payment terms or contractors with variable terms.

And you can do this by leveraging systems that are native to the Cloud. The Cloud provides unparalleled visibility to help executives, project managers, consultants and salespeople generate higher win rates, improved utilization and exceptional customer satisfaction.

Don’t let admin costs skyrocket alongside growth.

As you grow, you’ll need to bring on more administrative help to handle volume, but make sure your admin costs don’t outpace growth. Growth should go right to the bottom line.

One of the best antidotes to inefficiency is mobility. With mobile expenses and time cards, consultants can quickly and easily handle billing regardless of where they’re working. Managers will cut several hours per month, while consultants will be set up to meet utilization targets; for example, many have been able to reduce billing from 30 minutes to 5 minutes per week.

Stay laser focused on quality.

As sales pipelines and consulting teams grow, so does the probability of introducing more inefficiency. Sales may sell the wrong services, or consultants may not work out, resulting in a decline in quality. To avoid the pitfall of poor quality as you scale, demand a tight relationship between sales and services that’s characterized by constant communication and connected information. It’s also critical to productize services with repeatable processes and develop intellectual property to help teams successfully on-board and scale.

Conclusion: Replace “Hand-Off” with a “Handshake”

The old world of siloed sales and services departments is just that: old and passé. No longer is it acceptable for sales to simply pass off a project once the deal is brokered, or on the flip side, for services to sit back and passively wait for the next project. It’s time to replace the “hand-off” with a “handshake,” where real-time visibility into the business aligns finance, sales and service for profitable growth.