Consulting, accounting, engineering and advisory firms run a health check when pipeline, staffing forecasts and client data stop lining up across Salesforce and delivery systems.
For professional services firms, a health check follows an engagement from first conversation through proposal, statement of work and handoff to delivery. We review how opportunities capture service lines, roles and estimated hours, how won work reaches the professional services automation tool, and whether client and engagement data is restricted appropriately. Partner and principal adoption, relationship ownership and practice-level reporting are measured too. The findings rank risks to client confidentiality, revenue forecasting and resource planning, with clear notes on which fixes affect the sales side, the delivery side or the link between them.
In a services firm, what you sell is people's time, so the CRM has to feed resource planning, not just revenue forecasts. Opportunities need enough detail about roles, timing and practice to support staffing decisions, yet partners often resist entering it. Client relationships are also personal and shared: several partners may serve one client across different practices, and ownership disputes affect credit and compensation. Many firms, particularly in accounting and advisory work, have independence or confidentiality rules that limit who can see certain client information. A review that ignores the handoff to delivery, or the incentives around relationship credit, will miss the most expensive problems.
We trace a sample of won opportunities into the delivery system and check whether scope, roles, rates and dates arrived intact. Duplicate projects, manual rekeying and fields that mean different things in each system are documented. The findings show where resource managers are planning from incomplete information and why forecasted revenue and scheduled work drift apart as engagements start. Change orders are sampled too.
Firms reorganize practices and rename offerings regularly, which leaves Salesforce with obsolete picklist values, product records and reporting groups. We review how service lines are tagged, whether historical opportunities were remapped after reorganizations and whether practice leaders can trust win rates and pipeline by offering. Inconsistent tagging is usually the root cause of disputes about practice performance. Cross-practice deals are checked for split coding.
We examine how client ownership, origination credit and account team membership are recorded, and whether they match how the firm actually pays partners and allocates credit. Account team records that are outdated, split credit handled in spreadsheets and orphaned accounts after partner departures are all common findings. Clear documentation here prevents both compensation disputes and clients falling through the cracks.
For accounting, audit and advisory firms, certain client relationships limit what other services can be offered or who can see engagement details. We review how restricted clients are flagged, whether sales users can see restricted engagements and whether any automation checks independence status before an opportunity advances. The review documents gaps rather than interpreting the professional standards that apply to them.
We begin with the chief operating officer or head of growth and the owners of Salesforce and the delivery platform, since the handoff between them drives most findings. A few partners, a resource manager and a proposal or pursuit lead are interviewed next. Access is read-only, and we schedule around fiscal year-end and busy season for accounting firms. The report groups findings by sales, delivery and the connection between them, so the right owner can act without waiting for a firm-wide program.
We check how won work creates projects, whether roles and estimates carry over and whether actual hours and utilization flow back for account team visibility.
We review how invoicing and realized revenue reach Salesforce, and whether account profitability views use current figures or old imports.
We confirm that proposals and statements of work link to opportunities, that versions are clear and that client documents inherit appropriate access restrictions.
Accounting and audit firms work under professional independence standards that can prohibit certain services for attest clients. If Salesforce lets anyone open an opportunity for any client, that control depends entirely on memory. Show risk and quality leaders exactly where the system is and is not checking, and let them decide the fix.
Resource planning from CRM data requires consistent estimates. If some partners enter hours, others enter fees and others leave both blank, staffing forecasts are guesses. Agree on minimum data at each stage before investing in forecasting tools, dashboards or AI-driven staffing suggestions.
AI tools that draft proposals or suggest relevant experience need accurate records of past engagements, industries and outcomes, plus clear limits on client confidentiality. Clean engagement tagging and confirm that confidential client names cannot surface in drafts meant for other clients.
Client names are anonymized.
It will show why, which is where change begins. We compare what partners are asked to enter with what they get back, look at mobile and email capture options and check whether reports answer questions partners actually care about. Recommendations focus on reducing entry and making the system useful for client planning, rather than on mandates that rarely last.
It can assess whether that is currently possible. We check which opportunities carry role, timing and effort estimates, how reliably that data reaches the delivery system and whether probability and stage definitions support capacity planning. The findings show the specific data gaps between today's pipeline and a staffing forecast your resource managers could trust. Bench reports tell us how far off current forecasts run.
Acquired firms often bring their own client lists, service names and ways of recording relationships. We usually find duplicate clients across former firms, inconsistent service line tagging and account teams that never merged. The review maps these differences and recommends a common structure, while flagging any client conflicts or restrictions that surfaced when the combined data was loaded.
Yes. Services quoting often involves role-based rate cards, blended rates, discounts and approval rules for margin. We review how rates are maintained, whether approvals match your pricing policy and whether quotes reflect current costs. Outdated rate cards are a frequent finding, and they can quietly erode margin on every engagement quoted from them. Discount approval history is sampled as evidence.
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