Characteristics Of Professional Service Firm

a) 1. The characteristic of Professional Service Firm (PSF) is “Everything revolves around the client”. In PSF, client is the reason for existence because clients are dominant force. Everything is driven by client service – vision, value and culture; infrastructure and governance; equity and compensation; talent management; service development; brand, marketing and sales. You live or die in a PSF by your ability to acquire, serve and retain client.

Organizational structures are extremely simple. Even the global, multibillion-dollar professional service organizations we studied are essentially lean, flat organizations with few leaders at the top and minimal administrative layers. In professional services, autonomy and entrepreneurship are encouraged and valued. Most professional aspire to practice their skills and work with their clients, not lead the organization. Too much bureaucracy driver them crazy. In fact, if the firm’s structure becomes too cumbersome and rigid, more often than people will simply ignore or bypass it.

It’s about the work more than the money. Profit is not the primary driver in professional services. People typically enter the business because they really like what they do so and often have spent many years studying and training to perfect their skills. They typically don’t join the industry to start their own firm or built a giant business. They want to do what they have spent years learning to do practice the law, design and built a bridge, launch a global ad campaign, or solve a complex business problem.

Any technology that facilitates social interactions and is enabled by a communications capability, such as the Internet or a mobile device. Examples are social software (e.g., wikis, blogs, social netwo...

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...process of identifying, measuring, and communicating financial information was documented in the form of paper records, columns of numbers and hand written statements (“How Technology,” n.d.). An accountant had to be a very methodical, detail oriented person.

Towards the end of the twentieth century the accounting profession began to take on a whole new look. Computers and accounting software has changed the industry completely. With programs such as Microsoft Excel an accountant now had an electronic spreadsheet. The need for adding machines, calculators, ledgers and pencils was eliminated. The job became less tedious with less of a margin for error. The core training for accountants which included the basic accounting, auditing and tax preparation was a thing of the past. With use of the computer an accountant can now perform statistical accounting or forecasting