An Introduction to Effort in Professional Services

Setting the stage to thinking about your work.

We built the Professional Services function of ScopeStack around the concept of defining minimum units of effort to complete a piece of work. Identifying those pieces of units of work allows you to figure out a few different things:

  • You can calculate the total PS effort on a project by scaling different portions of the individual efforts.

  • You can associate the pieces of effort with a  person who will complete the work.

  • That person has a cost to your company and a rate you will bill the client for their work.

  • Using the amount of total effort for a particular person (resource) and their billable rates,  you can calculate a project's price.

  • Using the amount of total effort for a resource and its cost, you can determine what the project will cost your company.

  • You can use price and cost to determine your margin on the project as a whole.

This core financial function allows ScopeStack to take three variables (Effort, Rate, and Cost) and determine the Professional Services' financial picture.

Need more complex pricing or price breaks? Check out Variable Rates.

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