Professional services are occupations in the tertiary sector of the economy requiring special training in the arts or sciences. Some professional services require holding professional licenses such as architects, accountants, engineers, doctors, and lawyers. Other professional services involve providing specialist business support to businesses of all sizes and in all sectors; this can include tax advice, supporting a company with accounting, IT services or providing management advice. The professional services industry is usually the largest employer and contributor to GDP in most developed economies.
The rapid growth of the professional service market according to the recently published report Professional Services Market Global Report 2017 by The Business Research Company. The market is forecast to register a 5.4% growth rate from 2016 to 2020, reaching almost USD $5 trillion.
Back-end services automation is increasingly becoming important for companies to eliminate paper-driven processes. Professional service companies such as accounting and legal services are automating back-end processes to match front-end services. Companies are increasingly shifting to electronic check records from old processes of scanning and filing paper checks.
Automation enables companies to reduce operational costs and time to service customer requests. For instance, according to a report by McKinsey, a leading bank automated about 900 of its back-end operations to relieve about 50% of its full-time employees from their back-end tasks.
On the other hand, automation also adds to the overall growth of the information technology market which is forecast to reach 1.2 trillion by 2020. Professional services companies should consider automating their back-end operations to reduce their operational costs and customer requests service time.
To sum all points above, the professional services industry is changing rapidly, and in order to stay up-to-date, firms in this industry should focus on engaging social media for communicating with their clients and growing brand awareness, create and engage virtual teams for cutting company costs, change the working model to the value-oriented revenue model, implement modularization to provide services to a wide range of businesses, and automate all back-end services to eliminate paper-driven processes.
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