There’s Something About Market Rates …

There’s something about PS market rates that makes it among the most searched and utilized topics in the TPSA community.  In fact, if you look at the all time traffic data from this DataViews blog, posts having to do with market rates have garnered the second most total views, behind only posts related to billable utilization.  There’s no mystery people in this industry are so interested in the topic.  Pricing is an obviously critical factor for every business.  But it’s a topic around which there are significant pain points as well as blind spots for PS executives in particular. 

Benchmarking PS Project Performance: Not All Customers are Created Equal

Three or four times a year, TPSA conducts multi-member studies that delve very deeply into topics that require intensive data collection and analysis.  TPSA member companies pay a little bit of money to be involved in these studies and in exchange, have the ability to help shape the study to suit their needs.  They also get exclusive access to the data set and other deliverables as soon as they are completed for a period of 4 months.  After 4 months, the rest of the Association’s membership can access the data.  The next multi-member study to come out of this “quarantine” period (on September 1st) is the TPSA 2009 PS Project Performance study.  This post offers a glimpse of a couple of the myriad of interesting data points that came out of that study.

Tracking Trends in Services Organization and Structure

A little over two years ago, TPSA executed a path-breaking survey on Services Organization and Structure.  The results were aggregated, analyzed and written up into a TPSA DataView in October 2007.  Last month, we created and fielded an updated version of the survey.  The survey is actually still in the field and still open for TPSA, SSPA and AFSMI member company participation through Friday, August 7th.  If your company is a member of one of these industry associations and you want to participate, just follow this link.   As a teaser, I’ll flash some of the prelminary findings from this survey here in this post.

Sneak Preview: Q209 TPSA Service 50

At the end of each calendar quarter, we at TPSA immediately begin compiling the data set that forms the basis of our quarterly Service 50 analysis.  The analysis for Q209 will be presented to anyone that wants to participate in it via a TPSA Service 50 webcast, scheduled for July 30th.  At this point, we have almost all of the data in and so naturally, we want to give a sneak preview of the analysis.  We do this for a couple of reasons.  First, we want to pique your interest in taking part in the webcast.  But quite honestly, the main reason is that we just can’t wait until July 30th to begin telling folks what we’re finding.  In that spirit, herewith a couple of tid bits to try and satisfy your (and our) curiosity, at least for now.

Update: Benchmarking Technology Education Services and Beyond

Since we completed the TPSA member survey on Education Services a few months ago, some very interesting and exciting things have happened.  For those of you interested in Technology Education Services, hopefully these developments will pique your interest.  In this post, I’ll briefly shed some light on these developments, providing links/pointers where appropriate.

Product Portfolio Complexity and PS Benchmarks

I recently had a very interesting conversation with a TPSA member, in this case a very large global technology delivery organization, regarding key PS operational benchmarks for his business.  During the course of this conversation — which ranged from questions about the business model, to operations, engineering, sales and more — the member thought out loud about whether companies with different levels of product portfolio complexity would benchmark differently.  I had to admit that I had never thought about that question, but that we had the ability in the benchmark survey to assign a product portfolio complexity rating to each respondent.  This post is a first run up the hill at defining this new way of benchmarking and peer grouping TPS organizations.

Speaking of the PS Charter: Or Trends in Compensating on C-Sat

Loyal TPSA industry blog readers will have noticed by now that Thomas and I are on a bit of a PS charter kick.  Two of my last 3 posts (including this one) and both of Thomas’ most recent posts have to do with this topic.  And my TPSA DataView on this topic will be coming out in a just a few days.  I think what you’re seeing is a real excitement about the potential for both explanatory and prescriptive value in this concept.  Put simply, the PS charter matters.  It is clearly something that helps predict … and therefore accurately benchmark … and therefore provide a meaningful set of prescriptions for … a wide variety of PS practices and results.  In this post, I’d like to further test, extend and discuss the general PS charter framework by focusing on the use of customer satisfaction as an incentive compensation lever.

Benchmarking Market Rates for TPS: Or How the Devil is in the Details

When I was an analyst at one of the major technology research firms, I frequently fielded inquiries from consulting firms and TPS organizations regarding trends in billing rates.  Unfortunately, all I had to offer them was very vague and shaky information that came largely from our own system of self-reflecting mirrors and to a much lesser extent from anecdotal feedback coming in from vendors and buyers.  Based on this thin analytical ice, I would formulate a baseline for hourly rates for business consulting and another for technology consulting that I would update periodically.  For better or worse, this is what I would use as a basis for the guidance I gave. 

Well, the approach we take at TPSA is, shall we say, a bit different.  Instead of sticking a whetted finger in the air to collect information on billing rates, we do extensive benchmarking and collect actual industry data.  Beginning in 2007, we’ve done our Market Rates Study annually and the 2009 study is currently underway.  We’re recruiting participants right now for that study, so I find myself in many conversations with prospective participants regarding the approach, purpose and value of the study.  In this post, I’ll review a bit of this logic to see if I can whet your appetites on this topic     

Billable Utilization and the PS Charter

I often like to take a slice of something that I’m working on and write a blog post about it.  This gives readers an exclusive look at the latest TPSA research and it also gives me an opportunity to test the waters with some of my newest ideas.  My current preoccupation is understanding what makes PS businesses tick from the standpoint of the PS charter.  This post provides a flavor of this work and provides an example, using the much requested topic of consultant billable utilization.

Trend Analysis with the TPSA Benchmark Study, Part 2: Peering (Again) Inside the Services Black Box

In my last post, I enthusiastically introduced a “capability,” new to TPSA research analysis:  the ability to analyze trends in the benchmark survey data.  With this capability, I further documented a pattern we’ve been detecting for some time and in a wide variety of contexts.  This pattern amounts to no less than a fundamental shift in the very business model of technology companies, one that has them moving to a more services intensive overall revenue mix.  As stated, this is a fact that has been established almost ad nauseum by TPSA.  What we have not really been able to do in the absence of the ability to analyze trends over time, is discern exactly how this overall shift towards services is playing out inside the services black box, especially with a view towards TPS in the revenue mix.  In this post, I will take an initial crack at investigating this question.