Support Services
Support services are those common services that can be leveraged across all the staff. They are typically items that can be centralized relatively easily and they use standard processes to control scheduling and quality.
Support services are also activities that need to be routinely performed to support the professional staff in the normal course of their work (e.g., document duplication and filing). Support services sometimes require the acquisition of capital equipment (e.g., copying machines, graphics workstations, postal equipment). Plotters, high-end printing, paralegal services are just a few examples of support services.
When deciding which activities to support at a centralized office level, consider those which:
• Are required by all staff.
• Exhibit economies of scale.
• Can be effectively executed by lower-cost administrative staff than by professional staff.
• Are experiencing labor pool scarcity.
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In most cases, any service that is required by all staff should be supported if not managed centrally. If most client work requires some kind of graphics production for reports, in most cases, it will be appropriate to have a graphics production group managed centrally. This ensures a unified look to graphics and that best practices can be easily adopted and adhered to, as well as achievement of scale economies in production. If this function is not centralized, then each professional staff group or project team would need to hire their own graphics production resource wasting valuable time and increasing costs.
Support services typically have some economies of scale, for example, copy machines. You wouldn’t want each principal in the firm purchasing his own copy machine (with the resulting disparity of machine types, speeds, service plans, etc.). The benefits of centralizing purchasing and management where there are economies of scale is well-explored territory. Obviously, by grouping the purchase better pricing can be negotiated and volume discounts will apply lowering overall purchasing costs. Additionally, the expensive equipment can be located optimally so that appropriate staff can access and use it easily. Finally, this keeps your expensive professional staff billing clients for services, and not negotiating equipment leases.
Support activities also experience economies of scale in labor. For example, rather than hiring three half-time personnel to do estimating, you can centralize the function and do the same amount of work with one full-time person thus saving the fractional utilization of a half person. These activities are labor intensive and the firm can reduce costs by managing a centralized highly leveragable unit. These services include postal mail management, graphic production, paralegal services, administrative services, and so on.
Finally, you need to consider availability (or scarcity) of resources when analyzing centralization. For example, if most professional staff need a small but critical function for each client engagement, for example a project financial controller, and the labor pool for this function is small, the firm will be better off hiring one full-time equivalent and leveraging that resource across the business rather than having each principal try to procure the resource individually. Decentralization in this case would lead to low utilization of a full-time resource or the procurement of many high-cost part-time contractors neither of which is desirable. If each client proposal or project needs some specialized research for a short period of time, the firm is likely to create a centralized support group that provides research rather than having each principal hire their own research associate.
The most common support services include:
• Administrative staff management
• Document reproduction
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• Travel booking and trip management
• Mail rooms
• Record keeping and document management
Administrative Staff Management
It is almost always more efficient to centrally manage the administrative staff. The job function of the entire administrative staff is usually similar, the pool of staff can share responsibilities, they typically have standard duties, and they keep the professionals billable and efficient. Professionals are notoriously poor managers of administrative staff, and will benefit from the improved attention to administrative staff management, careers and development accompanying a centralized management approach.
Developing standard administrative roles across the company is a best practice. The office manager can do this relatively easily. First, define the work requirements of each type of administrative staff. Next figure out the duties needed to support each level of professional staff and the required hours per week needed to support each professional staff type. For example, an associate may only receive filing and travel support thus requiring only four hours a week. A senior associate may require calendar scheduling assistance and expense management assistance thus requiring about eight hours a week of an assistant. A principal requires all of the above plus dictation, presentation support, marketing campaign support, and so on, thereby consuming at least 20 hours per week. Given this load, a single assistant could handle only one principal, two senior associates, and one associate. Alternatively an assistant could handle one principal, one senior associate, and three associates. The ratio that works for a given will depend on the specific type of work, number of professional staff and administrative burden for each.
Typically junior professional staff only receive basic administrative services (mail delivery, photocopying), while senior staff receive the full suite of services from the administrative team.
Document Reproduction
Document reproduction, copier centers, and scanning stations are provided through similar products and service models, and are well suited for central office management. Some firms charge out these services while others factor the cost into their services. Regardless, the most critical aspect of running one of these services is the process for requests, the turnaround time, the delivery of finished product, and billing for the services. Most firms will determine that the tradeoff of a $10 to $20 per hour resource doing this work is well worth saving the high cost of a professional doing the same.
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Travel Booking and Management
Travel planning, scheduling and management is another service worthy of centralizing. Travel agents and administrative staff know the travel market and keep traveler preferences, and so on. Firm-wide travel policies can be implemented routinely. Travel agents are much better at locating low cost airfares, car rentals and accommodations than the typical layman thus lowering overall travel costs. Depending on the size of the firms annual travel budget, travel agencies may provide this service for free because they will be paid a commission by the airline, hotel, and rental car companies. In any case, having someone who can check f lights and make rapid changes for professional staff on the f ly (e.g. while they are en-route to the airport) can be an enormous time-saver and benefit.
Mail Room
The mail room is a basic and familiar centralized resource in most companies.
This function is important to an efficient operation. The scale and scope of this function will depend on the type of firm and the volume of outbound and inbound mail received. For most small to mid-size firms, assigning this task as one part of administrative persons duties will suffice. Many third-party delivery services (UPS, Federal Express, DHL, et. al.) will provide high-quality outsourced services for outbound mail management on-site and can keep the mail-room effort to a minimum.
Record Keeping and Document Management
Record keeping is critical for most firms, particularly medical practices, law offices, architects and other document-dependent services. Record keeping is typically a subset of administrative duties. In many cases, record keeping can be mandated by the law. A good filing system is critical. Storage and retrieval of files should be a core competency of the administrative staff. The office manager is responsible for ensuring an efficient system. Today many firms are going paperless which consists of scanning paper documents, particularly original signed documents, and storing them on a computer system for easy indexing, search, and retrieval. Today’s office manager should be well aware of these systems and be able to implement one with outside help if requested. A variety of cost-effective, feature-filled systems such as Microsoft SharePoint are available and can be economical even for the small office.
Other Services
Depending on the type of professional service organization, other services may be candidates for centralized support. These services should be looked
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at individually and using some of the criteria discussed earlier determines whether any should be centralized in your firm. Other services may include:
• Local technology support
• Appraisal and professional staff career track support
• Paralegal support
• Graphics support
• Telecommunications support
• Tele- and video-conferencing support
• Research services
Whenever deciding to centralize a support function, consider several additional infrastructure issues. Ensure that whatever you are centralizing can be done as or more efficiently than what the typical professional could do on their own. If the professional can complete a job faster without use of the support function, then they will not use a centralized support function. Therefore it is incumbent on the office manager to maintain efficiency and fairness when operating the function. Professionals will not want to:
• Wait an inordinate amount of time before receiving the support.