Roughly eight years ago, a group of employees at Agency.com were hunting for a professional service automation (PSA) platform to support the digital marketing firm. Agency.com was unable to find the proper PSA solution to meet the company’s needs — so they built their own application.

The application laid the groundwork for Projector PSA – which launched in 2002 and delivered its first product in mid-2004. “The founders of Projector figured that if we weren’t able to find a PSA for Agency.com, then perhaps there was a market need for a new offering,” reasoned Steve Chong, Projector PSA’s COO and marketing manager.

Chong made clear that Project PSA has a different client niche than ConnectWise, Autotask and Tigerpaw Software — three of the better-known players in the managed services market. “We are a professional services automation provider, but we think about the PSA market as being slightly different from the PSA market that you guys [MSPmentor] focus on,” he said.

Generally speaking, Projector PSA competes with companies like OpenAir and QuickArrow – “PSA firms that are in the consulting, digital market and software development space,” according to Chong. “Clients that really concentrate on delivering labor as a core part of their business.” More specifically, Projector PSA has three main focuses:

“Our key problem at Agency.com was resource management,” Projector PSA President Larry Krakauer recalled. “So resource management has been a focus for us from the beginning and it’s turned out to be a key differentiator. We help track time and expenses and do all sort of reporting. It’s a service that’s nearer and dearer to our hearts.”

Today, 165 companies and roughly 14,000 end-users in 55 to 60 different countries are use Projector PSA’s SaaS-based PSA tools. The company released a mobile interface in June 2011 to let clients track time and expenses on smart phones. Two more releases are scheduled during the second half of 2011 around enhancing the current PSA platform and redesigning the user interface (UI). As for pricing? Projector PSA offers Team, Professional and Enterprise pricing tiers on a monthly basis.

“Projector doesn’t lock you in to minimum term commitments or minimum users,” Krakauer said. “It’s a true SaaS pricing model. You pay for what you want.”