Need to Optimize AND Transform Your PS Business? Better Resource Management Is a Great Place to Start

For the last two years or so, TSIA has been screaming from the rooftops regarding big changes gathering steam in the technology and technology services industries.  We unveiled our book, Consumption Economics, last October at TSW Las Vegas 2012 in which many new industry concepts were put on the table for the first time.  In that book, we described how big data and the cloud are disrupting technology and technology services buying patterns and business models and suggested that companies needed to begin to be masters of consumption, rather than masters of complexity.  

In Which You Can Find Out What (You’ll Hopefully NOT) Be Missing at TSW

It’ll be August in a few days and much of the summer is still left for us to enjoy.  But at TSIA we’re totally in conference prep mode already.  In fact, the agenda is more or less set already.  It can be viewed HERE.

For my part, I’ll be presenting some of the very cool data that we just finished collecting from the TSIA 2012 PS Project Performance Study.  The session description can be found HERE. 

As interesting and as useful as I hope and expect my own session will be, there are literally dozens of other sessions that will give mine a run for its money and then some.  Just a few I’d like to highlight from the rich PS track:

• Kurt Kuelz from PTC will be telling us how to transform client engagements into strategic partnerships
• Ricardo Leitao from Software AG will help us understand how to forge better relationships between PS and product sales
• Rich Hogan from VMware will be educating us all on how to do services engineering better
• Rob Buergisser of Brocade will be presenting on his company’s learnings from many years of effectively managing the channel

And this is just to name a few.  So I fervently encourage you all to go to the TSW website and check out the agenda.  Hopefully you’ll be convinced, if you haven’t already been, that it’s not something you should miss!

 

Got (Tech Services) Blogs?

Among the wonderful side effects of this year’s TSW Las Vegas conference is that it provided a catalyst for the emergence of THREE (count ’em) THREE new technology services blogs by our three newest research area leads at TSIA.  I know, you’re a PS person and that’s why you read my blog and Thomas Lah’s Service Visions blog, and also why you check out John Ragsdale’s Eye on Services blog now and again. 

But the fact is that many of you also have your hands (and feet and heads) in other services disciplines.  And — unless you’ve been in a cave for the last few years — you’re probably also very interested in how to generate new revenues for any services business that you’re involved in.  Well, have we got some new blogs for you! 

Defend and Protect Tactic: The (Repeatable Solutions) Holy Grail

Here at TSW Las Vegas, there was quite a bit of buzz generated yesterday by the keynotes. I have to say, after JB Wood and Todd Hewlin got done laying out the basic principles of Consumption Economic in the opening keynote (already available for on demand viewing at http://www.tsia.com) there appeared to widespread looks of consternation in the audience.

So you can imagine the looks of relief that emerged when Thomas Lah followed up with lots of specific guidance on how services executives can “Defend and Protect” their current businesses even as they transform them to adapt to the new rules of tech.

One of the tactics he highlighted for PS businesses has become a virtual holy grail: the use of repeatable solutions or packages.  And on that topic Mark Kayserman from Alcatel-Lucent and I conducted a “workout session” yesterday at TSW.  These are interactive sessions that begin with content that the facilitators put on the table, but then focus largely on the issues the audience wants to explore, both with the facilitators and with each other. 

In this session, Mark talked about his experience building repeatable solutions or “PS Assets” at Alcatel-Lucent.  It was clear from the session that PS managers understand the value of PS Assets and that many of them are running this “Defend and Protect” play already.  However, adoption is still low.  So based on this experience and data that we have from our various sources, I’d say that most PS businesses need to step up their move to repeatable, packaged solutions.  Luckily, we have lots of content on this topic and others related to services engineering available right now for TSIA members.  Go here for a compendium.

And see you today for the last day of this great conference!!!

TSW Las Vegas Day 1: Consumption Economics and PS Update

I really hope that you’re here with us in Las Vegas for TSW Fall 2o11.  I’ve never seen such attendance and such buzz around any conference that we’ve ever had before.  And if you were here, perhaps you attended my “Power Hour” session today in which I unveiled the results of TSIA’s first survey on the impact of Cloud on Professional Services.  What were some of the highlights from this session?

Surpassing 11,000 Blog Hits and What Have We Learned?

I logged into my wordpress account this morning to discover that my blog had surpassed the 11,000 hit mark (at the time of writing, 11,014 to be exact).  Now, I know that Thomas Lah and John Ragsdale get 11,000 hits on their blogs approximately monthly.  So I recognize that this is not a big deal by comparison.  But a milestone it is and it is also an occasion to reflect on what the hits mean … that is … what the readers are reading and not reading.  Herewith, a summary analysis of pageview data for “Di Muccio’s DataViews.”

Some New Wrinkles on the Revenue per Consultant KPI

At TSIA, we are asked pretty often about “KPIs” or key performance indicators.  Everyone wants to know what metrics they should be tracking and once they know what metrics to track, they obviously want to know how they’re doing relative to industry and peer benchmarks.  Well, TSIA has been pretty clear on its opinion that Revenue per Consultant is a key metric.  Because revenue per consultant is a product of so many other metrics (revenue, staff distribution, utilization and more), it’s a good overall, dashboard sort of indicator that all PS organizations should be looking at regularly.  The really good news is that our PS benchmark survey 2.0 gives us the ability to look at this metric in quite a bit more detail than did our orginal benchmark survey.  I’d like to share some tidbits from the new treasure trove of benchmark data in this post.

How Today’s Top PSO’s are Driving Unparalleled Utilization with Centralized Resource Management

What a great title for this blog, eh?  In fact, it’s stolen entirely from the title of a webcast that Mark Sloan, from RTM Consulting, and I are doing this Thursday.  If your company is a TSIA PS member and you want to view the webcast on demand, just use this link. The webcast will offer a combination of industry benchmarks from TSIA and a whole host of nuggets that come from RTM Consulting’s extensive experience  and qualifications in helping PS organizations implement proven resource management practices. 

Services Engineering: Exciting New Benchmarks from TSIA

One of the things we most pride ourselves on at TSIA is our desire, willingness and ability to respond to the needs and interests of the members.  This, after all, is an association first and foremost.  Yes, we do massive amounts of original, quantitative research using both public financial data and benchmark data.  Yes, we offer an advisory service, including a variety of fee-based consulting offerings.  But none of these would be possible without our member-driven, association model.  And perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of that model is the role the member companies play in helping us figure out what the hot topics are and where we need to apply our resources.  A good example of this dynamic is found in the whole topic of services engineering.

Cloudy With a Chance of Extreme Disruption: The View from TSW Santa Clara 2010

Every so often in the tech industry, a buzz phrase catches virtually everyone’s imagination and becomes the subject of virtually everyone’s discussion.  That’s certainly the case here at our TSW 2010 event in Santa Clara and that buzz phrase is “cloud computing.”  It’s the nominal “theme” of the conference.  There are keynotes and panels and breakouts focused on the topic, all with the goal of helping technology services professionals begin to understand the implications of “the cloud.”  At the time of this writing, I’m listening to our CEO, JB Wood, interview Geoffrey Moore (of “Crossing the Chasm” fame”) precisely on this topic.  You get the idea.