Teams | Collaboration | Customer Service | Project Management

Projects are super important to a service-based business. But the actual intake process can be complicated, usually due to a lack of organization and formal processes. How do you decide what to take on? How do you make sure you don’t overpromise and underdeliver? The answer is a Project Intake Process, and if you aren’t using PSA (Professional Services Automation) software like OneDesk to handle it, you’re probably working harder than you need to.

When you first start a business, spreadsheets are a great way to stay organized. They are flexible, easy to use, and free. But as your team grows and you take on more clients, relying on spreadsheets to manage your operations usually leads to more work, not less. If you feel like you are spending too much time updating rows and columns instead of focusing on your actual work, here is why a PSA (Professional Services Automation) tool like OneDesk is a better fit for your growth.

If your customer support strategy still involves people logging into one shared Gmail account, you’ve likely experienced a kind of ‘support black hole’. This problem involves missed emails, agents replying to the same customer with different answers, and losing track of which issues are resolved and which are still in progress. The problem is Gmail isn’t a ticketing system, so eventually your team will outgrow using just email.

If you’re running a service-based business or managing complex projects, you might be familiar with ‘tab fatigue’. This is when all your requirements are in different places. This means switching tabs to check dates in one tool, update your client via email, log time in another tool, and manually copy data between them all. When your data is fragmented, things slip through the cracks. Deliverables are missed, a timeline slides, or a milestone is reached but the invoice is never sent.