For many services engagements, getting a Statement of Work (SOW) approved can feel like a marathon. Finalizing a SOW is an infamously lengthy process—but understanding the factors behind these challenges can help you navigate them effectively and get SOWs out the door faster.
Here are 6 reasons why SOW approvals take so long for professional service firms and solutions to speed up the process.
1. Complex Project Needs
Services engagements are inherently complex, often involving intricate technical details and multifaceted requirements. There’s often no way around that complexity, and capturing it all in a comprehensive SOW takes time and effort.
The Solution: Divide and Simplify
While the complexity of the project itself is often unchangeable, the process of breaking it down within an SOW can be simplified. If possible, divide the project into distinct phases, each with its own set of deliverables and milestones. This not only simplifies the SOW but also allows for more efficient progress tracking and client engagement throughout the project.
2. Excessive Back-and-Forth
Clients often have specific expectations for their services engagements. Aligning these expectations with your team’s capabilities and resources requires thorough negotiation and discussion. This can often lead to back-and-forth with approval teams as SOW language is modified multiple times—dragging out final approval.
The Solution: Align Expectations
Scoping a project often involves laboriously adding details to a SOW, piece by piece. But the firms that move SOWs along quickly find other ways to manage the process. Generally, this looks like using advanced tools that allow firms to configure resources, add-ons, and modifications in a matter of clicks.
Beyond tools, PS teams can conduct comprehensive workshops with key client stakeholders to uncover hidden requirements and preferences. With more information up front, teams can minimize the number of scoping sessions they need before getting aligned.
3. Legal Trouble
All professional services SOWs must adhere to certain legal and compliance standards. Upholding these standards can involve time-consuming reviews and approvals from legal and compliance departments.
The Solution: Standardized SOW Templates
To cut down on the time it takes to approve SOWs, PS teams can work across departments to create standardized SOW templates that adhere to all relevant regulations. Taking this a step further, you can create multiple templates with varying language to cover each type of service offering. The goal should be to drastically reduce the need to manually adjust key terms or legal clauses within each and every SOW. With fewer manual changes required, you can build much faster approval workflows.
4. Too Many Stakeholders
SOWs typically involve a multitude of stakeholders, including project managers, developers, quality assurance teams, and business analysts. Coordinating their input and feedback can add unneeded time to the approval process.
Solution: Centralized Project Views and Teams
The key here is fostering faster and more effective transparency and collaboration between stakeholder teams. Firstly, establish a cross-functional project team consisting of representatives from all relevant departments. Then, ensure project details and SOW drafts can be quickly seen, commented on, and approved by this team in a centralized, digital process. BigTime’s quoting tools handle this by offering a robust SOW draft history and approval workflow capabilities.
5. Inflexible Budgeting
Financial considerations, including budget allocation and resource planning, are integral to getting a new SOW approved. But keeping a SOW aligned with your firm’s financial constraints and resource availability can be an intensive process. Staying on track takes careful consideration and ongoing negotiation, both of which have a habit of extending the approval process.
The Solution: Dynamic Budget Model
Basic budget breakdowns are helpful for planning, but less helpful when things evolve. The alternative is a dynamic budget model. These budgets can adjust in real time, reflecting changes to project variables.
Many PS teams use free tools like Google Sheets to keep budgets updated, but free tools are often difficult to keep up-to-date and integrate into existing systems. It’s generally much easier and faster to invest in a dedicated Services CPQ where advanced pricing logic and margin calculations are built into the services configuration.
6. Scope Creep
Scope changes and revisions are common culprits behind SOW approval delays. Every time a client requests a modification or addition, you add more time to your approval workflow.
The Solution: Updated Billing Methods
If you struggle with changes to scope, you might need to adjust how you bill. Instead of offering defined outcomes that risk scope modification pre-sale and scope creep post-sale, consider shifting to more time and materials-based offerings. Time and expense billing allows your team to handle scope and project details after the sale is already made. That way, you can finalize the SOW in fewer rounds of revisions, without worrying about possible changes.
Get SOWs approved faster with BigTime’s quoting tools
BigTime Quotes
If you want to take your SOW automation process to the next level, consider a dedicated solution like BigTime Quotes. With intelligent SOW generation, approval workflows, and full template libraries, BigTime Quotes can shave days off your overall sales cycle. BigTime Quotes balances power with accessibility, ensuring you have the tools you need to win deal quickly, without long implementation or training timelines.
BigTime Services CPQ
While BigTime Quotes is quick to adopt and easy to put to immediate use, it’s not the right choice for every firm. For teams that need a highly configurable sales platform, BigTime Services CPQ may be a better fit. BigTime Services CPQ helps firms manage highly complex engagements with completely custom guidelines, powerful workflows, and eCommerce-style services catalogs.
Not sure which solution is right for you? Schedule a free consultation and we’ll walk through your current process, your firm’s priorities, and what quoting products are best for your team.
