Certinia announces major AI updates in Summer 2024 release

Certinia has announced its Summer 2024 release, which aims to enhance efficiency and scalability for its technology and professional services customers. The update includes a range of new features designed to streamline resource management, improve financial tracking, and leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to unlock new business opportunities. The enhancements have been rolled out across Certinia's Professional Services (PS) Cloud and Customer Success (CS) Cloud solutions along with improvements for accounting teams.

The new release introduces 'Resource shortlisting,' which automates and tracks the decision-making process for staff assignments. By enabling an inclusive workflow, this feature allows other key stakeholders besides resource managers to partake in the selection, thus making the process more transparent and scalable. It also provides opportunities to analyse and learn from selection patterns.

Certinia has added 'Mass actions for project resource requests,' a feature that allows resource managers to handle multiple assignments with a single click. This functionality enables consistent updates to several requests simultaneously, thereby enhancing productivity by eliminating repetitive tasks.

The 'Demand-side resource requests' feature aims to assist customers in managing project schedules more effectively. This feature retains schedules even when resources are unassigned, facilitating a better understanding of work patterns at scale. It also enables early visibility for staffing, more accurate forecasting, and provides detailed information for capacity and demand planning.

The latest updates to 'Estimate Builder' include a user experience overhaul, incorporating spreadsheet-like functionalities such as copy handles and cell dragging. These updates are designed to help organisations transition from traditional spreadsheet-based estimations to platform-managed estimations, thereby integrating estimation processes into the broader service sales cycle.

Features to enhance financial tracking within services have also been introduced. Real-time notifications now alert project managers as they approach budget limits, thereby allowing timely decisions to either expand customer purchase orders or adjust project deliverables. This is expected to help avoid overbilling and ensure projects remain within agreed budgets. Additionally, billing caps will prevent charges beyond the agreed purchase order amounts, safeguarding both services organisations and their customers from unexpected costs.

The release brings significant improvements to Certinia's CS Cloud capabilities. The new 'Editable Success Tracker' allows Customer Success Managers (CSMs) to directly edit tasks, dates, resources, and statuses. 'Activity Tracker' supports the creation and editing of customer insights by any team member. These features aim to optimise team productivity, monitor customer health, and track value delivery more seamlessly.

'Account Health Score' has been introduced as a customised heat map that helps teams prioritise actions based on data signals. This feature supports account segmentation and automated action triggers, enabling CSMs to proactively set up metrics for each customer segment and trigger interventions as needed.

Furthermore, CS Cloud now captures customer objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) from the sales cycle through to adoption, thereby ensuring no loss of information or duplication of effort. This enables a seamless handover that aligns customer success with initial sales promises.

The release also leverages generative AI through Salesforce Einstein Copilot, introducing new functionalities to Certinia's PS Cloud. 'Copilot Actions for Services CPQ' aims to offer hyper-personalisation by using account and delivery data to generate accurate project scopes. This enhancement is expected to accelerate the process of creating estimates and Statements of Work (SOWs), opening up new opportunities for innovative service delivery and revenue growth.

The accounting functionality has been enhanced, featuring updates like automated year-end closing playbooks, templates to streamline financial year-end operations, and period-end adjustments for currency revaluation. The update also includes flexible cash matching capabilities for Accounts Receivable and streamlined tax report generation, including new forms for 1099-NEC and 1099-MISC, updated to meet the latest regulation requirements.

These improvements aim to boost the productivity of accounting teams and ensure accurate financial statements, reducing errors and the time required to close financial periods.