Growing? Yes, but smarter: Why Project Operations helps professional services firms scale with confidence
Content
Highlights
- Professional services firms often struggle with disconnected systems, limited visibility, and manual processes that hinder growth.
- Dynamics 365 Project Operations connects sales, resource management, project delivery, finance, and reporting in one platform.
- AI-powered insights and advanced analytics help improve forecasting, profitability, and project performance.
- HFA used Project Operations to eliminate data silos, streamline operations, and support rapid business growth.
- Strong governance, user adoption, and scalable processes are key to long-term digital transformation success.
“With great power comes great responsibility.” This popular phrase also applies to the growth of organizations. The more you scale a business, the bigger challenges you have to solve, such as operational complexity, manual overload, and data silos.
A solution that once seemed sufficient to manage operations quickly reaches its maximum capacity. So, how can professional services firms grow sustainably and with confidence while making sure their systems keep up with the pace?
In this article you will learn how Dynamics 365 Project Operations can help services companies scale more efficiently and have real impact, as demonstrated by the success story of one of our clients, the architecture and engineering firm HFA.
What challenges are professional services firms facing in 2026?
The challenges project-based service businesses face in 2026 are not much different than in recent years. They impact various business areas, such as sales and accounting, and are all strongly connected to a common issue: the lack of a single, end-to-end platform able to cover the entire project’s life cycle.
Before stepping into how exactly a project delivery solution like Project Operations can help services companies grow confidently, let’s explore what challenges they are facing today:
1. Limited visibility and control over data
In most cases, departments do not use the same system to operate, leading to outdated margins, project progress, and delivery health. Due to delayed data in the systems, projects are at risk of failing completely, and issues are often discovered after revenue or reputation is already impacted.
2. Misaligned resources
Another challenge that services companies face is resource misalignment. When there is limited visibility into future capacity vs. pipeline demand, key team members might be overworked while others remain underutilized. Consequently, teams get burnout and cannot scale delivery.
3. Manual reporting and billing
Finally, organizations in the professional services sector also struggle with high amounts of manual reporting and billing, which results in delayed invoicing, slow cash flow, and longer delivery times. In the long run, teams lose motivation, are unable to forecast revenue accurately, and clients may lose trust in the quality of their services.
You want to keep up with customer expectations?
Great responsibility requires an even greater solution: Project Operations for services companies
When diverse teams work together on projects, data is spread across systems and reporting can become challenging. With Dynamics 365 Project Operations, marketing, sales, project, HR and accounting teams can work on the same platform with no need to manage data on Excel sheets anymore.
In short, Project Operations helps professional services firms manage the entire project lifecycle by unifying resource management, time and expense tracking, finance, sales, and project delivery. There are three different deployment models, which can be chosen based on business needs and task ownership. For more information, click here.
If we look closer at the specific features of Project Operations that can help teams of services companies scale more efficiently, we can sum up the following:
- AI-powered insights (Copilot Agents): Teams can get access to AI-powered insights thanks to Copilot agents integrated within the Project Operations platform. In just a few clicks, users can get project status reports, risk assessments, and draft project plans automatically. This feature can improve profitability and help generate accurate forecasts.
- Advanced analytics & Power BI dashboards: With these features, services companies can ensure up-to-date project financials and manage KPI dashboards that compare budget vs. actuals, monitor margins, and track portfolio health at a glance.
- Unified Project Portfolio View: Last but not the least, with the Unified Project Portfolio View teams can all have an overview of sales, project execution, and finance under the same roof.
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From theory to practice: How HFA modernizes operations with Dynamics 365 Project Operations
The challenge
HFA, an architecture and engineering firm from Arkansas, USA, known for its multidisciplinary expertise, started expanding to several countries and quickly grew to 250 employees in just a few years. This rapid growth led to data silos and exposed existing challenges more clearly, including disconnected systems, manual workarounds, and inconsistent data.
The lack of visibility into their key financial and operational metrics made reporting challenging, which led the company to look for a more unified, future-ready operational system.
The solution
Choosing a solution that would make operations across multidisciplinary teams more efficient was a no-brainer for HFA: they were already familiarized with the Microsoft stack (e.g. Power BI, Power Apps) so implementing Dynamics 365 Project Operations checked all the boxes for uncomplicated integration and scalability.
HFA began enhancing its Microsoft Dynamics ecosystem in 2020 and started working with the Sales Module. Although at first it fulfilled the needs of the firm, it lacked a clear project adoption direction and proper application lifecycle management, resulting in messy customizations.
In 2021, Project Operations was still fairly new to the Dynamics 365 ecosystem, but nonetheless, HFA experienced a smooth integration of Project Operations Core thanks to its partnership with proMX.
This partnership builds on proMX’s many years of experience with complex, multi-entity environments and its understanding of the unique demands of a growing, project-driven AEC organization like HFA:
“proMX not only understood the challenges we were navigating but provided a clear and viable path forward with options for scope, budget, and timing.”
Danny Henkel, ERP Project Lead at HFA
Scaling with Project Operations
For HFA working with Project Operations meant choosing a solution that could actually grow and scale at the same pace as the company itself.
The early adoption phase of Project Operations focused on usability, quick iteration, and operational wins. It was made available to 100 active users, consisting of pilot groups and super users.
Later, in phase two from 2024 onwards, the focus was on reporting maturity through Power BI and getting a standard ALM and environment cleanup in place. This time it was all about seeing what problems the platform could solve and how flexible it could be. The result was a positive adoption amongst teams and time savings by using Project Operations as the hub linking to different systems instead of using legacy systems, such as Excel for reporting purposes.
As headcount grew (to 350, then 600+) in the last few years, adoption expanded, with super users driving internal advocacy and operational teams focusing on project and resource management.
Transition to ERP Integration
Since early 2026, proMX has been supporting HFA with transitioning from Project Operations Core to ERP-integrated deployment with Dynamics F&O. This transition will improve visibility, strengthen forecasting, and support enterprise-level decision-making with new concepts such as project contracts, legal entities, and intercompany structures.
The challenge lies in scaling processes for 600+ employees to keep pace with increasing demands such as multi-currency management, intercompany transactions, and evolving legal structures, creating an opportunity to strengthen the platform for long-term expansion.
Some key lessons and best practices
At the proMX Project Operations + AI Summit 2026, Danny Henkel, ERP Project Lead, has presented some of the main lessons learned during HFA’s Project Operations journey:
· Start adoption where possible: By identifying the recurring manual processes (e.g. Excel), you can easily transfer them to Project Operations.
· Early governance design is critical: Starting early with governance helped HFA ensure security and smooth adoption, especially with AI and Copilot features becoming increasingly relevant for business operations.
· Use reporting to build trust: Thanks to the reporting functionality of Power BI, it becomes easy to build trust and get teams to adopt the platform.
· Expect your data model to evolve: HFA started the modernization of its systems with Project Operations Core and after growing into a 600+ headcount moved on to an ERP-integrated F&O deployment. This transition has allowed the company so far to scale and handle data
· Choose a partner that supports you over time, not just at go-live: Partnering with experts (e.g., proMX) that value long-term guidance supports change management and prepares you for new features and scaling.
To dive deeper into HFA’s success story, feel free to watch the entire proMX Project Operations + AI Summit 2026 session below:
Conclusion
Professional services companies are still facing some challenges that are blocking them from growing with confidence: they often don’t trust their data, are misaligned on resources, and are still using Excel sheets to centralize information.
Platforms such as Dynamics 365 Project Operations can fill in this gap and unify business operations across different departments. What practice has shown us is that companies, such as HFA, that implement this solution see rapid adoption and scale much more efficiently thanks to the ability of the platform to adjust easily to the growing needs of the company.
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FAQ
What is Dynamics 365 Project Operations?
Dynamics 365 Project Operations is an end-to-end project management solution that helps organizations manage the entire project lifecycle. It brings together sales, project delivery, resource management, time and expense tracking, and financial processes in a single platform.
Why do professional services firms need Project Operations?
Professional services firms often struggle with disconnected systems, limited project visibility, resource misalignment, and manual reporting processes. Project Operations helps address these challenges by providing a unified platform that improves collaboration, data accuracy, and operational efficiency across departments.
How does Project Operations help organizations scale?
Project Operations supports growth by centralizing business processes, improving visibility into projects and financials, and enabling more effective resource planning. As organizations expand, the platform can adapt to increasing operational complexity while helping teams maintain control and consistency.
Does Dynamics 365 Project Operations include AI capabilities?
Yes. Dynamics 365 Project Operations includes AI-powered capabilities through Copilot. Users can generate project status reports, assess risks, and create draft project plans more efficiently, helping teams improve forecasting, decision-making, and overall project performance.
What should companies consider before implementing Project Operations?
Successful implementation goes beyond technology alone. Organizations should focus on governance, user adoption, reporting practices, and long-term scalability from the start. Working with an experienced implementation partner can also help support change management and future growth.
