Top Step LLC
Expertise, Consulting, and Automation for Streamlined Operations

A professional services organization (PSO) that has people with prized skills and domain-specific knowledge can be any winning company's best-kept secret. However, for a PSO to perform to its maximum potential, it needs to have its house in order, and that can happen only if it has automated a significant chunk of its internal operations. Although many PSOs invest heavily in professional services automation (PSA) tools, such as NetSuite OpenAir, they struggle to use these tools optimally for efficient resource planning and utilization as well as budget planning and invoicing. A granular view of real-time activities within their firm will help them plan proactively and deliver the customer experience that they are capable of.

Top Step is a certified NetSuite Alliance Partner and Solution Provider focused on professional services automation (PSA) tools. For the last 12 years, Top Step has worked with NetSuite OpenAir to help PSOs improve their usage of this cutting-edge PSA platform to optimize processes, add desired functionality, and improve their efficiency. "With our technical expertise in NetSuite OpenAir and functional knowledge of the PSOs, we have covered all the bases for our clients, helping them to overcome challenges in customization, third-party system integration, reporting, and KPI optimization for improved business results," says Ronn Breaux, President and CEO of the company. "We believe in chiseling clients' business process to perfection and then bringing in the tool as additional support vs. force-fitting a tool into the existing business process."

Top Step enables clients to automate resource management, doing away with the traditional excel based workflow. The focus is to provide the decision-makers with up-to-date information through smart dashboards for enhanced resource management and allocation as well as improved visibility into the key metrics. Such capabilities, in turn, enable knowledge workers to be light on their feet and channel their energy to solve their clients' pressing problems.

“On the technical front, Top Step enables clients' PSA systems to talk to their CRM, HR, workflow, and financial systems," says Breaux. "We combine our vast technical expertise and tools such as NetSuite APIs and even third-party tools to that end."

We believe in chiseling clients' business process to perfection and then bringing in the tool as additional support vs. force-fitting a tool into the existing business process

In an implementation highlight, one of Top Step's clients, using spreadsheets and different products for managing financials and resources, was struggling to achieve real-time visibility into the assets, billing, revenue, and so on. Top Step implemented NetSuite OpenAir and integrated it with other systems in the client environment. This helped the client achieve a streamlined workflow that paved the way for simplified resource planning, project management, invoice management, and other operations. More importantly, the client was able to pre-plan all of their daily operations in a single window. What earlier used to take fifteen days now took only two days.

To improve the value proposition of PSOs, Top Step has doubled down on its efforts to introduce additional functionality as part of NetSuite OpenAir for greater automation and agility of the operations.

Top Step and NetSuite have together emerged as the unified force to simply PSA adoption while enhancing its business value. "As a NetSuite Alliance Partner, we implement NetSuite OpenAir even for some of the largest PSOs having complicated operations and specific business cases,” says Breaux. Acting shoulder-to-shoulder with NetSuite's team, Top Step supports product demos and develops proposals for the implementation, driving NetSuite adoption. "Our partnership with NetSuite helps us not only solve some of the toughest process challenges but also enhance our knowledge and bring best practices to the domain."

A value-centric business culture has earned Top Step a straight ten-year recognition of the “Best-of-the-Best professional services organizations” by SPI Research, a leading independent technology services research firm. With Breaux at the helm, Top Step is marching ahead with new partnerships, bigger team, and tremendous growth.