Planisware Luma

• PSA Demo Series Episode 1: Intake Management — Follow a new opportunity from intake to a winning proposal, with integrated financials, activity libraries and resource conflict analysis.
• PSA Demo Series Episode 2: Proposals & Bidding — See proposals built and edited quickly, with win-likelihood modeling, e-signature approvals and real-time financial dashboards.
• Professional Services Automation: The Unique Outcomes That Differ From PPM — Explains where PSA overlaps with PPM and where it goes further on financial management, contract tracking and automation.
• 7 Proven Ways to Manage Service Engagements Efficiently — Seven practices covering centralized data, scored intake, capacity planning, financial governance, reporting, change management and integration.
• Top Professional Services Automation Software for Client Billing — A guide to how PSA connects time capture, contract rates, approvals and invoicing in one quote-to-cash flow, with evaluation criteria.
• Resource Management: What is the Real Role of a PMO? — A 45-minute webinar on which resource challenges belong to the PMO, how far its authority extends and which levers it has.
• Brochure: Professional Services Automation — A solution overview of the templates, reports and workflows for estimating, resourcing, tracking and reporting on contracts and projects.

Professional services automation (PSA) is software that connects the commercial chain behind customer projects: proposal and bid, contract, staffing, delivery, time capture, billing and margin. Any organization that earns revenue by delivering projects to a paying customer can use it, including consultancies, engineering firms, research organizations and industrial suppliers.

The deciding test is contract direction: who is the project for, and does it generate revenue? If the answer is an external customer and yes, the organization runs a customer project business, even if it never described itself as a services firm. PSA is well established: 68.9% of surveyed professional services firms already run a PSA platform (SPI Research, 2026 Professional Services Maturity Benchmark).

A PSA solution typically covers:

• Bids and proposals: structured estimates and a proposal P&L before a price is committed
• Contracts: fixed-price, time-and-materials and milestone models, with change orders
• Resources: skills, availability and pipeline-aware capacity
• Billing and close: invoicing rules, accruals and a managed period close
• Margin: project and portfolio P&L

The article Professional Services Automation: The Unique Outcomes That Differ From PPM and 7 Proven Ways to Manage Service Engagements Efficiently go deeper on each area.

The three categories answer different questions. An ERP project module records what was spent, a PPM tool prioritizes internal work, and PSA manages the commitment made to a customer, from the bid to the invoice.

PSA does not replace the ERP. It sits above the ledger, pushing approved budgets and pulling actuals and commitments, which is covered in Seamless integration with your critical enterprise applications. For the contrast with PPM, see the PSA and PPM outcomes article, and for the quote-to-cash flow, the client billing guide.

No. Recognition entries stay in the finance system. PSA maintains the operational data those entries depend on and shows the revenue forecast against target while there is still time to act.

The reason is where the data lives. Standards such as ASC 606 and IFRS 15 work on performance obligations and progress, which sit with the delivery team, not in the ledger. A simple test: how does the ERP know percent-complete on a fixed-price milestone? In many organizations, someone rebuilds it in a spreadsheet every month.

The connection between the two is what removes rework. At Tractebel, integrating Planisware with the ERP halved approval time. The client billing guide shows how time, rates and approvals flow into invoicing.

Because time is the foundation of every PSA number. Utilization, billing accuracy, margin and progress cannot be calculated without complete, well-structured time data.

1. Structure. Time collected in the ERP follows the ledger: cost centers or generic grades. Time collected in PSA follows the work: phase, work package, deliverable or contract line, so actuals can be reconciled with progress.
2. Completeness. Entry is universal, not optional. Billable utilization fell to 66.4% in 2025, below the 75% SPI considers optimal (SPI Research, 2026 PSA End User Survey), and it can only be managed against target when every hour is captured.
3. Adoption. Everyone who touches billable work enters time, so a PSA rollout reaches the whole delivery organization and needs a change plan accordingly.

Planisware supports task-level time entry on desktop and mobile with configurable approvals; the interactive Time Card demo shows it, including warnings on missing or out-of-policy entries. For the link to billing, see the client billing guide, and for the governance angle, 7 Proven Ways to Manage Service Engagements Efficiently.

PSA gives leaders one trusted view of margin, capacity and cash, so they can steer engagements while the outcome can still change. Success is measured by a small set of delivery and financial indicators, tracked against a baseline.

Beyond benchmarks, track bid accuracy, how many change orders reach the contract, close duration, DSO and forecast against actual. Customers see the effect: Tractebel cut project creation time by 40%, and ABB reports reduced margin erosion and shorter execution times. See the client billing guide, 7 Proven Ways to Manage Service Engagements Efficiently and Episode 2: Proposals & Bidding for the real-time financial dashboards.

Start with a focused first phase and build outward. PSA touches sales, delivery and finance, so sequencing and change management decide the outcome.

1. Define the foundation. Agree contract types, rate cards, the close calendar and the structure time will be booked against.
2. Phase the rollout. ABB Process Automation began with scheduling and resource management, then added cost management, then reporting.
3. Connect CRM and ERP early. Pipeline in and budgets and actuals out make the numbers trustworthy from the start.
4. Plan for adoption. Training, ownership and feedback reach the whole delivery organization.

The scale is achievable: ABB runs 2,500+ users across 50 local units, and Tractebel has run its project managers on Planisware since 2021. Read How 2,500 Users Achieved Project Success at ABB Using Planisware, watch Episode 1: Intake Management, or request a demo.