TOP Step Consulting Bringing a new approach to business systems automation

Companies providing professional services face many challenges from market changes, resources shortage, and corporate spin-offs. And with the company’s growth, the maintenance of data and accessibility of information also becomes tough. Therefore, upgraded automation is of paramount importance for organizations looking to optimize efficiency and attain higher productivity. For example, some companies rely on spreadsheets for resource management, but that doesn’t contribute well for management visibility or support company progress and scalability. A sensible business case that leads to a quantifiable ROI would be the introduction of a PSA (Professional Services Automation) solution. A PSA can be adopted to provide a more real-time information access to the resources instead of using shared tracking documents where data is owned by specific resources. TOP Step consulting is one such organization providing the right PSA tools to help its client companies manage operations and make strategic decisions, impacting growth and profitability.

TOP Step Consulting was founded in June 11, 2007. With a focus on enhancing business efficiency and productivity for Professional Services business operations, TOP Step helps its clients achieve their profitability goals allowing them to concentrate on building their business. The team has extensive experience in professional business services operations, professional services automation (PSA) technologies, system integration technologies, and project management. Serving over 280 organizations across the globe, TOP Step Consulting has been awarded “Best of the Best” by SPI Research 7 separate times in the past and named as one of the fastest-growing private companies by Inc. 5000 2 years running. TOP Step attributes this success to the stance that each engagement is as important to them as it is to their client. “Our mission is to enable and empower Professional Services Organizations to become profitable, scalable, and efficient through change management, processenhancement, technology deployment, and skill set training with a Customer First approach.”

Providing the right tool for a specific business model

“With our PSA tool know-how and our business operations experience, we are 100% confident we can help you quickly receive the value you are expecting from your Professional Services Automation investment,” says Jodi Cicci, President & CEO. TOP Step’s services are designed to help organizations manage their operations and make strategic decisions impacting growth and profitability. The PSA solutions supported by TOP Step provide time and expense tracking, invoicing and billing management, revenue and resource management, analytical reporting and dashboarding. By working with various technologies and types of professional service organizations, TOP Step offers a wide variety of assistance ranging from assisting customers in evaluating their business model to determine the best-fit PSA solution to PSA deployment and administration support to business process re-engineering for more efficient operations. 

With its Business Efficiency Assessment, TOP Step Consulting identifies the gaps between a customer’s professional services business model and their Professional Services Automation system, providing an actionable plan for optimization to support organization goals. The PS business operations experts of TOP Step, experienced in PSA systems, provide independent review along with best practice discussions and customized implementation plans with cost/benefit for informed decision making.

Maximizing data accuracy and consistency with PSA extensions and integrated solutions

For customizing the system functions, the company offers PSA system extensions. The PSA Extensions plug into the PSA system features to provide customized new behavior and functionality to support business processes. TOP Step’s library of system extension best practices and software components can be effortlessly applied and customized to your specific system.

Lastly, TOP Step Consulting follows a simple and direct approach to ensure the delivery of a superior integrated PSA solution. Organizations improve their efficiencies by using best of breed tools within the organization that are connected or integrated to other systems; a PSA tool for the Professional Services team, a CRM system which overlaps pipeline and project mapping, an ERP for financial management, HR system for user administration and resource management, etc. Integrations require an understanding of more than simple field mapping and data rules – they require business process workflow consideration, end user behavior expectations, timing and dependencies, and system data ownership controls. TOP Step makes sure these aspects and more are reviewed and implemented while integrating your PSA system to other critical operational systems.

“Our PSA experts provide ongoing services, support, and guidance to ensure your team is getting the most out of your PSA investment.” 

Let’s meet the leader who made it happen, CEO Jodi Cicci 

Jodi Cicci has been named as one of 30 Most Influential Women in Business by Insights Success, a business solutions magazine whose platform focuses on emerging and fast-growing businesses as well as leading tech companies. Its content provides a guide to the diverse business challenges and news on effective and collaborative business solutions. Jodi Cicci began TOP Step Consulting in 2007 to provide solutions to an under-served Professional Services industry. She saw the need for business efficiency solutions within this industry where the product is services and comes with unique challenges of managing a profitable professional services business. Since 2007 TOP Step consulting has grown year over year into a thriving consulting organization.

“Our approach begins with understanding your business model and vision of your organization then implementing a change management plan to evolve the organizational business processes along with the deployment or enhancement of the PSA Solution.”