We are a professional services organization within a software product
company.  Our products are all large scale applications in the electronic
payments field.  Every implementation is heavily customized to suit the
business needs of the client.  We are having internal discussions on
what activities should or should not be billed to the customer; mostly
surrounding project management but the discussion extends to all PS
staff as well. 

For example, our delivery methodology specifies that we have weekly
meetings with our senior management to review the status of projects. 
Project Managers prepare for and conduct a portion of the senior
review.  Should that PM time be logged against the customer project
and billed to the customer? 

Another example:  PMs spend time preparing invoices, addressing
billing questions, entering/checking/verifying/editing data in our
Oracle financial and project accounting systems.  Do other companies
bill the customer for this administrative time logged by PMs? 

Another example:  Since our applications are customized for every
implementation, there are inevitably software bugs.  Those software
bugs lead to internal review meetings, delays in delivery, and rework.
Although we would not bill for rework, should the time the PM spends
coordinating all the internal activities be charged to the customer? 

One last example:  our delivery methodology calls out specific
activities & deliverables such as Quality Gates, Quality Audits, Post
Mortem analysis, Executive Review sessions with customer execs,
weekly status reports and many more.  Where do other companies
draw the line between when an activity is billed to a customer because
it is part of the customer project, and when the activity is not billed
because it is an internal action that the company elects to perform that
is only tangentially part of the customer project?

This may seem like a simple question but it is really quite complicated. 
We are finding that making the transition from a pure software vendor
(our old model) to a services company (the new model) is not that
easy.  Maybe you have experienced the same thing. 

People are lining up on both sides of the aisle.  On one side are the
people who think we should bill every hour of time that we think about,
do something about, talk about or work on a project.  On the other side
are those who think that some of the things we do are driven by our
own internal desire for process, methodology and data, and, if an
activity is internally driven, we should not bill the customer as it is a
‘cost of doing business’. 

I’d be interested in any opinions or examples you have on the topic.

Thanks. 

Hello all,

I’m looking for recommendations on a SaaS solution which provides electronic testing capabilities. We provide product training to our customers and would like to follow the class with a testing/certification program. Our thought process is to issue a testing “voucher” to each student following the class which entitles them to log in and take the exam. The solution should support some of the standard testing capabilities (randomized question pools, grouping of questions by topic/module, etc...) Ideally, the tool would also allow us to collect customer sat metrics on the instructor, training facility, material, etc…

Anyone out there have strong feelings on this?

Best,

Israel

Hi,

This may seem like a simple issue, but in a matrixed organization, I’m finding it challenging to get a view of how our clients are experiencing the quality of what and how we deliver services to them.

I run a 500+ PS Engineering team in the System Integration space, primarily focused in the Networking and Software solution delivery areas. We have around 77 Project Manager’s which deliver around 30% of the projects, the balance being shorter term projects delivered by Field Services Managers.

I’d be interested in how the group measures Project Delivery ‘Quality’?

Regards,

In light of the upcoming seminar series, I’m curious to know, how many of you are seeing demand from your clients for cloud deployments & solutions?

There’s a lot of hype in the market place now, but is anyone actually implementing cloud solutions now, and are they turning to external PSOs to handle these engagements? And, if so, what sort of engagements are you seeing? We’ve had a fair amount of success in the Japanese market, but I’d love to hear more about what’s happening here in the US.

Hello

This is the other side to the recent conversations on Profit margins.

I am interested in getting some thoughts, ideas and examples of how you would go about building a compensation package for consultants (fixed + variable + Incentive or base + bonus + equity) ground-up. This should be explainable to management/board and the consultants during hiring process.

Assumptions :

1) Start a consulting practise in a totally new field (no consulting services are being currently provided hence no precedence)

2) A consultant team of 25 consultants.

3) To make it simple, let’s say customers are willing to pay $100/hr for consulting services

Thanks in Advance

Saini K.

We are a small consulting company with approximately 40 consultants.

Sometimes people need to work on weekends to support client production issues, or long hours during the week to meet a project deadline.

Some people don’t have a problem with it, as they know I won’t object if they need to take time off later when they need it to attend to their personal needs.

Other people complain about working long hours, and demand comp time to be added to their PTO balance.

A few consultants have accumulated so much PTO time, that they can’t realistically use all of it (there is a limit as to how much time they can accumulate), and one or two of them have asked me if the company will be willing to buy the excess of the PTO time from them, i.e. compensate them in cash for reducing the PTO balance.

I am curious how other companies handle this situation, in particular:

1) What are the rules for giving employees comp time - is it basically done on a one-to-one basis, when an employee is compensated by one hour of PTO time for each hour worked beyond the 40 hrs/week threshold, or are there any other rules?

2) Do companies buy excess PTO time from employees?
Thank you.

Alex

How are small to mid size PS firms handling knowledge development in terms of articles, white papers, intranet resources, conference proposals, internal staff training efforts, etc? Is there / are there full time positions buried in overhead, intermittent use of select staff’s beach time, a job that includes a utilization target lower than standard to allow time for these efforts, or full time job dedicated to these roles? Any sample job descriptions or bullets that are used to establish the expectations?

Developing intellectual capital on a formalized basis seems to require some degree of dedication. My interest is in what practices there are that work balancing utilization with resource dedication, a particular challenge with smaller firms that do not necessarily have the economies of scale to create dedicated roles.

Thanks for any insights.

Steve C.

I am interested in getting some examples of what is out there in terms of Gross Margin for a PS business as a whole (its own P&L)... when PS is specifically used to implement enterprise software sold by the same company (no interest in pure PS (services) example companies).

If there are examples of Gross Margin best of class , and average margins for such companies considering total company revenues of $25M, $50M, $100M, $300M, and $1B+.....

Thanks in Advance

SZ

Hello Villagers,

I am looking for sample customer satisfaction survey questions that represent a cloud offering.  I have some decent sample questions that represent on-premise software solutions but I’m looking for some good sample questions that reflect any and all aspects of a cloud offering.  This survey is about the company as a whole and not just services—and obviously these questions would be more generic in nature as I have to derive survey questions that reflect my particular solution.
I will post a compilation of sample questions and suggestions to the website in a few weeks.

And if it helps, my company has a cloud offering around software/application security assessment testing (veracode)

Thanks so much,

Paul

Hello Folks,

I recall seeing threads on providing support/maintenance for custom code developed by PS. I was wondering if anyone had a sample SOW they could share which documents the the parameters/T&C of support/maintenance of an application/tool developed by a PS organization.

Regards,

Israel

Does anyone have a standard statement of work template and consulting Ts & Cs they could share?

The project is a straight forward ERP implementation for a mid-size company: implement financials now with inventory, sales/procurement, and manufacturing later. Most of the terms and condition templates that I’ve seen run pages long and are way more than we need. I’m really looking for a simple 1-2 page boiler plate.

Many thanks!

Hi All,

I am looking for any guidance and feedback you can share regarding how you handle comp time for salaried PS traveling consultants. I lead the PS team in a small software company, our consultants are planned to travel 60-70% of the time including some Sunday departures.

Like many companies we do not have a stated comp time policy, but when folks travel weekends and/or get home very late on Fridays, we would like to at least be consistent with how peer companies deal with this for thier consultants.

Thank you in advance for your thoughts.

Jay L.

Hello folks,

We’re exploring the idea of spiffing our delivery team for additional HW/SW and services sales that come as a direct result of their work. For instance, if a consultant successfully pitches an additional X appliances to enhance a customer’s architecture, we’d like to reward them for that. The same would go for change orders which increase the scope of our services. I’m interested in some feedback from the community on some of the questions that have come up as we explore this idea:

1. How effective has this been for your organization?
2. How did you structure the Spiff (fixed amount, % of the deal, others)?
3. Did the cost of the reward come out of the field sales commissions or did it translate to a net increase in your cost of sale?
4. What are some of the pitfalls we should be aware of as we consider this?

Many thanks,

Israel

Hi,

I’m looking for information on what others are doing with regard to policies and practices for allowing or disallowing employees to work from home. Does your company allow it? For PS, Support, or only certain types of resources? If so, is it on a case by case basis or is there a policy? Do you find a productivity impact? In what way?

I have an opinion on this topic, but decided to cut it out of my post and will wait to post it until some replies come in, to eliminate any
potential bias in response (Meaning that there may be more replies in line with my goals rather than hearing examples of all scenarios....)

In any case, I’m interested in what other firms are doing, not doing, and how it affects productivity. I vaguely remember a previous thread
touching on this topic, but did a search and could not find it. If its there and someone has it, please reply with the link and I’ll take a look.

Thank you in advance.

- Debra

Dear Colleagues,

I was wondering if anyone can recommend an open source support system which has the following functionality:  case tracking, central customer db, support knowledge management, customer self-service portal, support dashboard and reporting.
I am also looking for an open source PS system (aka OpenAir).

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Best,

Elena

Hello,

I am with an early stage startup.

For our consulting projects, we bring on SMEs from time to time as specialist consultants for projects with our clients (clients could be small biotechs/bio fuels companies to large pharmas etc)

We are hence exposed to risk when using these outside contractors/consultants/service providers to provide services or when these outside service providers use our premises/facilities (sometimes project work could involve laboratory work or travel)

How are folks in similar situations managing this particular risk :

1) How and who maintains liability insurance?

2) What are the types of insurances that are required (Worker’s Comp, Commercial General Liability, Commercial Auto liability, E&O) necessary to reasonably protect the organisation’s financial interests. Are these various insurances an overkill?

3) What are the amounts deemed adequate?

4) Is there an umbrella liability insurance that one may consider?

5) Any insurance providers that you could recommend?
6) Any other considerations based on experience?

Thank you for your feedback and advice.

Saini Kannan

Does anyone have a software package they’d recommend for UI prototyping for their team? I’m hoping for something like:

Good: Rapid screen prototyping, integration with something to add functional specification points to the screen

Better: Construction of the prototype in a .NET environment in a way that makes the prototype a decent work-saving starting point for coding. Easy document collaboration with clients.

Best: Integration with work flow design tools on the front end and test cases on the back end.

I’m reviewing a bunch of tools, but I thought I’d throw a line out and see if anyone had personal recommendations.

I would like to get some input from the group. In your PS organizations do you have testing (and/or QA resources) dedicated to test the specific development required as part of projects? Or do you have those resources in a separate pool/organization in the company. E.g. should they be together with other testing resources such as the product testing and QA resources (of course assuming that they are different from the product ones). What would be the best practice and pros/cons to have in the PS organization or out?
I will appreciate your input

Thanks

Hello,

I work for a Mid Size On Demand Customer Experience based software company. I am trying to determine the best set up for part of my team next year.  I am going to have 2 Delivery Managers as well as a team of Project Managers (4) and Consultants (6).  The Delivery Manager is charged with managing those resources and ensuring project quality.
My question is do you place all the PMs under one Delivery Manager and Consultants under another?  Or split the PMs and Consultants up evenly under each Delivery Manager.  Each Delivery Manager will need to provide project goverance. 

Today we have had great success with all the PMs under one DM (we don’t currently have consultants reporting to a DM).  There is good team chemistry and collaboration with the PMs.  However, the amount of work on that DM is too much so and additional one is needed.  I would lean towards breaking up the PMs if the teams were larger, but with just 4 PMs and 6 Consultants is that worth it?

What are the strengths of each?  Has anyone had more success with one approach over the other?

Thanks.

Jeff M.

Hello all,

I received an RFP requesting that we develop end-user documentation as part of a global migration. The end-user documentation runs 20-30 pages. They’ve requested that we translate that document into German, Spanish, Czech, and possibly Portuguese. At this point, I need to provide a ball-park cost estimate for the RFP response. Never having done this, I’m not sure I could guesstimate a cost. I’m assuming we’d pay per word per language, but that’s just a guess. Does anyone have any experience with this? If so, can share how it’s typically been priced and roughly what the costs would be?

Regard,

Hello All,

Billable utilization is easy to track of you bill your resources by the hour/day. In that case - if your billed, it is counted as billable utilization.

I wanted to get other people prespective on how they calculate billable utilization on fixed-price projects, i.e. - fixed price, committed eliverable, no mention of days/hours commitment.

Although you might internally have estimate how long it will take you (worse/best case scenarios), the final result might be different. The question is do you end up counting all the hours spent on the project as billable, or just a sub-set, and if so, what is it.

Thank you,

Amit L.

Agile vs Waterfall

The discussions included use of Agile and Waterfall in several situations.These included Product Development and Customer Service and in delivery of Professional Services. 

Conclusions include the following:

• Product development and customer service situations require frequentchanges.Issues and problems are often narrowly defined. Agile may lend itself to these situations. 
  
  
• Delivery of professional services often has a broader scope and issues and problems are often defined on a broad - enterprise - basis. Structure, process, deliverables are important.Waterfall may lend itself to these situations.  Frequent changes in a PS project can have a cost impact that may not be recoverable and need to be closely watched.

• The overall conclusion was that a hybrid approach is used by lots of companies. Getting them to change for a PS. project may not be acceptable.  Accordingly it is critical to reach agreement up front.  Points to consider include:

• A framework is required for Project Definition, Milestones, End to End Testing and customer acceptance. This is more Waterfall oriented. Alternatively, it may be advantageous to have some level of incremental process to validate customer requirements.This may be achieved with Agile concepts.

• There was general skepticism as to the effectiveness of the Agile method in offshore development situations.  A Waterfall approach provide better control of deliverables and change management.

• In situations where there have been customizations made to core software packages the thinking was that a Waterfall approach to service requests and upgrades. Given established SLA’s there is a need is to provide for comprehensive testing and user acceptance before moving the new release into production.
  

These need to consider the implications of ongoing support and maintenance.  Management conceptually wants the benefits of Agile with the clarity of Waterfall.

SaaS Trends and Best Practices

Discussion began with a participant talking about the advantages of SaaS models, in particular the frequency with which new features and functions can be deployed to customers.

The discussion then moved to the challenges associated with the frequent deployment of new natures/functions.  These inlcude:

• Greater demand for customer training & support
• Spikes in support post release
• Need for self-help/self-training to mitigate load on services/support organization

A new, related topic was put forth: how to maintain customer touch in a SaaS model

• Group agreed that this was dependent more upon the nature of the product/solution, rather than if was SaaS or on-premise
• Some SaaS solutions are essentially enterprise-class business systems, so our customer engagement model is much more traditional.
• Other SaaS offerings are truly plug-n-play, so customer touch is much less
• It was suggested that Customer Advocacy and Premium Support types or programs offered a way to force greater customer touch, as well as to provide up-sell opportunities along with proactive management of retention/renewals

One of the conclusions to the discussion was that Premium Support programs were a great way to help educate customers on new features/functions when they are released and potentially earn premium dollars for the same.

The challenges that SAAS companies face when getting requests to customize code that is outside the configurable architecture of the product offering was also discussed.  The key points included:

• Many SAAS Solutions have the ability to use exit points and branch to local developed code, however there may be limited upgrade compatibility for that.
• SAAS applications need to be built on a well architected platform that is configurable through user set up and configured by workflow.
• It is important to learn to say “no” to the short term sales requests of customizations so as not to sacrifice by winning the short term battle but loosing the race
• When there is a need to make architectural or structural changes, in an SAAS Environment, you can add, but you can’t subtract. Over time this can be complicated regardless of which development methodology you use.

People acknowledged that this is a very hot topic and has achieved a sense of significant inertia.  Key topics included:

Connected Clouds:

Trend: Companies are engaging with multiple cloud service providers and beginning to establish many more integrations amongst them

Trend: Customers are having trouble identifying “which cloud” provider is responsible for integration/support issues when they arise

Trend: Support/Service teams are being dragged into this broader ecosystem and traditional “not our problem” answers are somehow seem to be even “more
dissatisfying” than in the non-cloud world.

Best Practice: Offer enhanced support offerings at a fee to facilitate proactive issue definition/resolution even when these issues cross boundaries of multiple
clouds or cross over into infrastructure issues that reside outside your particular cloud…

Change in Cloud Consumer:

Trend:
Cloud offerings are increasingly penetrating into the traditional enterprise IT spaces as opposed to being focused on “bypassing IT” by selling straight to the business.

Trend: So cloud offerings are be being “sold into IT” as opposed to “selling around IT”...

Best Practice: None identified from service/support perspective --- the group didn’t have time to speculate on how this impacts services

Change to the Complexion of Implementations:

Trend:
Customers automatically assume cloud offerings have very light-weight implementation requirements ...

Problem: In some cases— implementation is not materially different between cloud vs. premise-based offerings

Best Practice: Basic implementation disciplines are still important ...

Unified Code Base:

Trend:
Unified code base across all customers fundamentally alters support and services

Beneficial Impact: Unified code base often makes enhancements and upgrades much easier --- customer-specific variables are frequently diminished

Negative Impact: Upgrades can have massive negative impact on the call center if issues are unknowingly introduced to the complete customer base all at once.

Comments regarding Current Business Conditions

• Outlook:  Business seems to be growing for many attendees. Most of the people said business was growing fast.  Others said business was OK.

• Consulting Rates: one person had to reduce rates to create VSOE. Others have had no push-back on rates.  One increased rates.

• Offshore vs. Onshore: Rates were compared for offshore staff. Some companies charge the same rate when the offshore person comes to the US. Others charge US rates for offshore staff in the US, or just one rate in all situations.

• Knowledge Management is a common area needing attention. Companies are using Sharepoint, Intranets or nothing. Appirio referred to a solution called Knowledge from SalesForce.com

• Staff retention: starting to be a problem as the economy improves. Many people are under-paid. That won’t hold in 2010. Discussion around strategies for retention including retention bonuses and commissions. Some made the PS team part of the deal. Helped raise their awareness of their own contribution. Other bonus plans are built around hours-billed; customer satisfaction; margins on fixed price projects. Some people prefer to keep bonuses away from ‘core deliverables’ (such as these) to avoid conflicts of interest
  

PS Village:

I am new to the Village and have a request for opinions. I am with a small startup company and would like to know what you recommend for time entry and expense reporting. I have used SAP in a past life and understand what it means to have a robust all encompassing toolset. I am currently using an online product called Lighthouse for time entry and doing all expense tracking and utilization reporting manually. As a company we use Microsoft Great Plains for our accounting. I would ultimately like a solution to tie all of this together.

Thanks for your feedback. Looking forward to the great coaching.

Tom

PS Colleagues,

Our company’s product is a highly flexible and configurable product that often requires a significant amount of custom integration and extensions for a customer to realize the full value of the product.

As a young company, we have done “whatever it takes” to keep the customer happy and have not had a formal program for maintenance and support of the custom code. As we reach adolescence, we are trying to find the right business model to cover our costs and keep our customers satisfied.

I’m interested to know how other software companies are solving this dilemma. 20% of fees seems to be an industry benchmark for support and maintenance, but this set of services has different economics because the costs are not shared by any other customer. Straight T&M work is also an approach, but the customer is often looking for us to support their custom work with the same SLA as our core product, requiring dedicated resources.

All suggestions are welcome. Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Best regards,

Joe F.

Hello,

PTC currently uses CA’s Clarity product as our PSA Solution. I’d be interested in speaking to some other companies who are using Clarity to manage your PS business.

We have had specific successes with Clarity but would like to “take it to the next level” and I’m interested in sharing ideas with other Clarity users about what has worked, and what hasn’t in your PS firm.

Thanks,

Dave C.

I’m looking for input regarding variable compensation plans for professional services organizations. I run a PS organization that is considered a sales enabler, not a profit center. However, we do maintain 75%+ utilization and health gross margins. I’ve considered a model that pays consultants a percentage of utilization in excess of a target or gross margins.

Comments regarding variable comp plans in PS would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Jeff

Business Survey Results:
-- This quarter’s PS revenue compared to the same quarter 1 year ago:

o Up >20%: 42%
o Flat:  42%
o Down >20%:  16%

-- This quarter’s bookings compared to the same quarter 1 year ago:

o Up >20%:  52%
o Flat:  39%
o Down >20%:  9%

-- Hiring:

o Up >20%:  60%
o Flat:  35%
o Down >20%:  5%

-- This fiscal year’s total revenue compared to last year’s fiscal year total revenue:

o Up >20%: 50%
o Flat:  45%
o Down >20%:  5%
SaaS:  Trends and Best Practices

We discussed macro-trends in the SaaS space, examining key differences between PS for SaaS and PS for license-based solutions.  Next we identified a few key ways that SaaS players can make their offerings ‘stickier’ to reduce the risk of clients switching vendors.  Lastly, we examined the Support-to-PS spectrum, and noted a key trend in organization structure that some firms are finding helpful.  Details below:

1.  Though SaaS businesses continue to grow, we’ve continued to hover around the “tipping point” adoption rate of about 15% for the last 2 years.

2.  Enterprise adoption of SaaS is still soft, based on two key barriers

-- a.  Business want to maintain their infrastructure
-- b.  Data Security is still a key concern

3.  SMB and the Mid-Market continue to drive SaaS growth/adoption

-- a.  For the SaaS PS team - this means a high volume of low dollar engagements
-- b.  It also means that the client has an “all inclusive” mindset - they’ve paid for the application and they want it to do everything without incremental services costs.

4.  Many providers are maintaining a blended business model, offering both SaaS and licensed-based solutions

-- a.  Many firms have found that a ‘blended PS’ approach does not work for a blended business model
-- b.  There are separate drivers for PS between SaaS and license-based solutions

i.  PS is a driver of client satisfaction and retention for the SaaS model (like it or not)
ii.  With a license-based offering, PS is a revenue driver

5.  Due to the ‘ease-of-switching’ associated with SaaS, clients have more leverage to make greater demands from your PS team

-- a.  This equates to significantly lower billable utilization for a PS team supporting SaaS - between 40-50% for some vendors, or about a 30% degradation from traditional benchmarks

6.  There are a few key things that can be done to make the SaaS app stickier, and reduce this risk of client attrition

-- a.  Detailed, Billable Assessments - when performed up front, can help to establish expectations and client accountability - and provide referenceable artifacts which can be useful when issues arise
-- b.  Integrations - the more integrated the SaaS app, the more dependencies on the client side, and the greater the pain associated with switching vendors
-- c.  Billable Quarterly Reviews - provide an ongoing communication channel, reinforce expectations and results, and reinforce the “investment” mindset for the client

7.  With multiple points-of-contact available to the client, including an account manager, customer service, technical support, and known PS resources, defining an organizational structure that optimizes issue resolution and feedback is essential to PS success

-- a.  Most everyone acknowledges that there is a continuous spectrum that exists, spanning from customer support to PS - often with a very blurry transition from ‘support’ to ‘billable work’.

i.  Many organizations are addressing this by clearly defining the types of issues which fall into each category, and offering a tiered support model so that clients can determine up front, what kind of support they will require on an ongoing basis, and which work they will pay for on an as-needed basis.
ii.  To further drive alignment between these groups, most SaaS organizations are rolling up Support and PS together through a single department/business leader
iii.  To further enhance the feedback loop, some organizations are now rolling both of these functions up through Engineering as well, to provide deeper visibility into real-world bug fixes and other issues that drive down client sat (and PS revenue by correlation)

1.  This approach is particularly well suited to SaaS firms who have adopted an Agile development methodology

Agile vs. waterfall comments:

No one supported staying waterfall 100% or going Agile 100%.  Clearly everyone was experimenting with a blended model.

1.  Pitfalls of going agile:

-- a.  Customer expectations.  Need to train the customer how to work this way.
-- b.  Project management, Technologists and especially QA need Agile experience.
-- c.  Reporting progress is tricky.  Must have a database framework to do this right.
-- d.  Estimation of project cost, completion, scope, is very difficult and does not lend itself to fixed price bids.
2.  Agile is easier to implement in a company that does it the same way for services and products.

3.  Agile requires a larger PMO since the activities are more chaotic and not linear.

4.  Agile requires smaller teams of higher quality people.

5.  Business model surrounding Agile is immature.  It is hard to bid as fixed price and hard to get the customer to fund an open pool of money for T&M if they don’t have committed schedule and deliverables.

6.  Offer customers either predictability (waterfall) or speed in completing the project (agile) but not both at the same time.

7.  Agile estimates need to be done by the most experienced people.

8.  Main benefit to agile is that you find the customer’s pain points sooner and develop a deeper relationship with the customer.

9.  Customers are initially leery of the agile process but then really like it because it builds early wins that everyone can see.

10.  A member recommended thoughtworks.com as a place to get agile tools.

Hello,

Does anyone have any experience of using the SalesForce.com bolt ons provided by Saaspoint and/or Accorto. We are looking at Saaspoint Timetrack PSA and Accorto Cloud T and E as possibles candidates.

We currently use SalesForce but do not have a time tracking system in place and see this as a priority now our business is expanding.

Regards,

I’m sure everyone has experienced the consultant, usually a very senior one, who thinks they know more than most others about how to perform a project. This is the person who refuses to write status reports, share best practices with the team, or document much of anything. I have tried both the carrot approach and the stick approach. The carrot approach includes cajoling, persuading, playing to their ego, and explaining the benefits to all parties (the customer, the company and the individual). I have tried the stick approach - withholding quarterly bonuses unless all project admin/management requirements are met. In the end, some people just don’t come around.

Does anyone have any creative methods for dealing with these types of consultants and getting the desired result, which is the necessary project artifacts and sharing of knowledge while not creating a bitter consultant?

Thanks.

Ginger

We are undertaking a strategy review of our Products / Process / Structure within the Professional Services organization at my company. We have a total PS team of approx. 90, with 85% of that staff in the US.

We currently focus on geographic structure (office location based teams of delivery resources) and Sales Verticals (Group VP’s through Practice Managers focused on working with Sales Vertical leadership and Reps).

We are playing with moving to a heavily matrixed organization structure, with the Sales vertical focus on the vertical and common delivery expertise (UX, Technical, Project / Program Mgmt / Strategic Sales) on horizontals which cross the verticals. While this org structure makes some sense to me, it feels needlessly complex for an organization of our size, and I’m concerned about creating a heavily segmented team which gains focus in their specific “box” (horizontal and vertical) and loses perspective on the overall goals of the organization.

Would anyone like to share a unique or innovative structure that would be applicable to a PS team of this size that departs from a Geographic or Matrix model? I’m stuck in one of those places where I don’t like any of our current ideas, but can’t come up with the “better” answer.

Thanks in advance for any input you can provide…

Looking for some data points regarding Professional Services and
support rolling up into the same organizational structure. I’ve heard
that some firms do this and others keep them completely separate. We
are considering a change to combine the two organizations under one
umbrella, but would keep the P/Ls separate. Both groups would report
up to the same SVP. The goal is to gain some operational efficiencies,
but it is unclear whether that can actually be realized or not.

Any insights, benefits, and pitfalls that the community could share
would be most welcome. Also any reference points on mgr/staff ratio,
company size (# of employees), and org structure itself would be
helpful.

Thank you in advance.

- Debra

Dear Colleagues,

A friend has asked for help in putting together a budget for building
a consulting group for commissioning business

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_commissioning

and I was wondering if any of you have any insights or pointers for me ...

- Specifically, do you know what would be considered good/average margins in that business as compared to software consulting? 

- What about utilization/billability? 

Also any data on PS margins in other industries would be helpful.

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

Best,

Elena

Team:

Do any of you have any account management policies and procedures documents that you would be willing to share?  We are in the process of developing the policies which provide guidelines to all of our folks which interact with our clients and establish ownership of the account with responsibilities. 

Anything would help and be of interest.  Thank you in advance.

Discussion about SaaS and Agile/Waterfall:

Uriah at Kapow: they offer a web based data collection service; their implementations are often small, packaged services with fixed scope.  Customers want certainty about the price so they often fix bid.  This creates difficulty when it’s a custom implementation.  Oddly, they experience more price pressure from their SaaS customers than their on-premise customer. 

They use Agile in on-premise projects for content migration between systems.  These projects require Agile because they have short iterations, they move the content incrementally.  On site work also allows them to work more closely with business users and keeps the users engaged with validating the data as it comes across.  This also limits scope creep and allows the team to fix problems as they occur - before they grow.  It’s probably cheaper in the long run but the customer commitment is much higher.  Project Management is less structured than waterfall but still important.  To sell it they pick a number of cycles, generally equal to half the project then during the first cycle they estimate all the future cycles more tightly. 

Jeff at Spring: they do content management, document management and workflow.  They used Agile when projects were small but now they are doing more process automation which lends itself to waterfall combined with Agile in 10 day build cycles.  Customers are more comfortable with this system and have better adoption.  Their Project Managers run 3 - 5 projects at once.

They spend a few days on the front end doing traditional requirements gathering and scoping before jumping to Agile, this requires a different type of developer - a person with consulting skills.  They call the phases Discover, Configure and Deliver.  They spend a lot of time in discovery before the sale.

Larry at OpenAir on Saas:

- Minimal IT involvement

- Has MS Office but rarely uses it

- Implementation can be Waterfall or Agile; iterative is common approach

Jeff at Spring on SaaS:

- Smaller up front spend

- Earn customers business over time - creates a better support model

- Spring bought a non-SaaS company and learned that some engineers and sales people could not make the transition

Team continued brainstorming on how to transform an On-Premise organization to a SaaS world

Q: Limitations on a SaaS model?

—These days, there should be no application limitations.  Yes, there may be performance concerns in terms of bandwidth, and some applications aren’t as mature.  But, they are catching up quickly.

—Certain government regulations and security policies still limit acceptance of some SaaS applications.

—Some desktop applications can’t convert - discussion around Outlook/Exchange servers

Q: How do you handle the tradeoff between customizations to a common code base with a SaaS application and keeping your customers happy?

—One approach is to offer two levels of pricing.  Customers who request unique changes pay up to 50% more than those whose changes can co-exist with other customers.

—Some customers don’t want their changes shared as it’s their competitive advantage, so they are OK with paying the extra fees.

Q: Are Cloud computing and SaaS the same thing?  For example, if GE is renting out extra server space and I’m buying it on an exchange somewhere, is that SaaS or cloud? This caused some debate.

—This may be talking more about storage as a service - selling extra capacity in a utility model rather than an actual application.

—SFDC, customer owns data. 
—Do customers check where data sits?  Yes, many of the SaaS vendors have their customers visiting their data centers.

—It comes down to branding - we generally think they are the same thing.  The term is used interchangeably depending on the circumstances.  Two years ago “cloud” didn’t exist but it was the same thing.

Q: Why do customers go to SaaS?

—IT advantages - speed/lower cost that can’t be accomplished with in-house resources.

Q: How to combine a PS and engineering team that works in both agile and waterfall methodologies?  The configuration done by PS is waterfall, the customizations done by engineering are agile.

—Suggest to keep separate teams but share QA resources

—Force a hard decision on one group to conform with the other

—Integrate both levels into the project plan - can iterate within waterfall methodology and accommodate both parties

Q: Why is agile adoption in some enterprises tough?

—Many people are set in their ways - hard to change behavior

—It’s a big time commitment, especially from business users.  You need to get their buy-in and have them take ownership of the project for it to be successful.

PSVillage Members,

The Cloud presents many opportunities for all of us.  One enabler is that PS resources can now do work both remotely and onsite.  Here is my question…

What policies have you seen for PS organizations with respect to home office reimbursement?

1.  Actual monthly expense reimbursement for internet, phone, printer, supplies? 
2.  Monthly Stipend? 
3.  Nothing?

Is the reimbursement policy influenced by parameters similar to the ones below?

1.  An employee has a desk at a local office, lives <30 miles or <1 hour commute and is in the office at least 4 days a week.
2.  An employee has a desk at a local office, lives <30 miles or <1 hour commute and is in the office 2 to 3 days a week.
3.  An employee has a desk at a local office, lives >30 miles or >1 hour commute and is in the office 2 to 3 days a month.
4.  Etc…

The challenge that I face is to keep things simple and to consistently apply the policy across the organization.  Thx for any insights that might help me accomplish this goal.

Regards,

Mike

Does anyone have experience with or has evaluated Project Insight from Metafuse?

I would appreciate any feedback you can provide on this PSA application, especially in the context of a 300-400 person company.

Thanks,

Michel

Hi All,

One of the brief topics of discussion at my table during the Boston Executive Breakfast last month was how to handle custom engineering requests for customers in a SaaS model. We didn’t get very far in our discussion, and I am actively planning to expand out custom engineering capabilities in 2010. To that end, I am curious about how other SaaS organizations handle things like:

1. Standardization and frameworks - do you align with the internal standards set by Product Management and engineering?

2. Maintenance and Support - after an application, report, api, etc, is built, how is it supported? Is there a hand off between PS and the service desk? Is there a separate support team under the PS umbrella?

3. Systems - how do you work with IT/Ops to ensure that the custom engineering work meets performance and security standards?

4. Product Management integration - do you align services with the product roadmap, filling in gaps between customer needs and product capabilities? Does custom engineering become, to any degree, paid R&D - feeding the custom code./functionality back into the product to benefit all customers?

Thanks,

A

Good Morning,

I’d be interested in hearing from fellow members regarding use of product marketing support for a PS organization that operates within a software company. Do you find that the marketing resources, branding efforts, etc. are primarily focused on the software side of the business, or are you receiving significant support for positioning services offerings effectively in your target markets?

Also, I would be interested in job descriptions you have used for dedicated services marketing manager positions.

Thanks all!

Walt W.

I run a PS organization for a SaaS-based ECM company. A typical engagement includes the automation of a document-centric business process (e.g. invoice approval, employee on-boarding) and averages
250 hours of PS for the entire engagement. We are transitioning from waterfall to an agile implementation methodology .

QA has traditionally written and executed test cases based on functional specs. QA does front end, back end, integration and performance testing. Their QA process has been rooted in a waterfall mentality, which has created a lot of tension between PS and QA. PS feels that QA restricts our ability to be agile and QA feels as though they can’t provide the appropriate level of QA coverage.

I’m interested in comments about how other PS organizations have worked with QA to make this transition. How have methodologies or processes changed. What has worked? What has not worked?

Thanks,

Jeff

Hi All,

Below are the notes from the recent Boston breakfast. 

1.  SaaS

(a).  Model

- i.  Architecture is key - is your application/solution setup for SaaS, i.e. able to support multi-tenant model?  Consider that some client/server or even web apps are not initially architected for SaaS, and may require a re-architecture to support it.

- ii.  For Choicestream, SaaS enabled the most efficient way for closed loop processing.  Rather than relying on customer to provide data or statistics back, having a SaaS model enabled business to obtain and use this information quickly to enhance the application or adapt information presented, to ultimately improve the customer experience and value of the solution.

- iii.  Consider customer data and its criticality and security, as you consider the usage of that data in SaaS.

- iv.  Security - 3-5 years ago hosted solutions caused some concern over data security.  Cloud computing is more mature and ubiquitous now, therefore is more easily accepted in the market with less concern.

1. one customer did an internal analysis from IT on the difference of hosting the app internally vs. externally, and found the security concerns and risks the same.

- v.  Integration - are there special considerations needed for integration with other apps when using SaaS?

1.  No, integration is not the issue it may be perceived to be.  If your software has existing APIs, those can be used in the same way under SaaS as under a traditional on-premise application.

- vi.  Structure of offering?  Can be tiers of features.  For each tier there is a setup fee and a monthly or annualized renewal to pay for the features available in that tier.

(b.) Services Impact

- i.  Fixed vs. T&M:  SaaS projects are almost always fixed price.  Customers make a fixed investment up front for setup.  Customers do not go for T&M pricing under SaaS for setup.  Expectations are that it is a known and well defined services project to setup or on-board a new customer.

- ii.  For businesses that offer both on-premise applications and SaaS offerings, still should form a dedicated managed services team for SaaS.

1. Managed services teams typically are blend of Professional Services and Support, though different resources within team perform these roles.  For example the PS resource that on-boarded a customer does not become their AM or support contact once up and running.

- iii.  Simplified SOW for SaaS projects, because:

1. infrastructure is know.  No variance in customer environments or IT capability or skill to deal with.

2. perception from customers is (strong), that when purchasing SaaS, means you get a package of features, with no customizations nor variability.  Even if that isn’t the case, if the app could support some level of customizations, the expectation is not there from the customers like it is with traditional on-premise apps.

3. Must be prepared to have Services people ‘fly’ - Quick implementations, with projects, tasks, and orientation in WEEKS rather than in MONTHS.

(a.) may require re-training in order to develop this mindset.

- iv.  Need to be much more tight with “out of scope discussions”.  Be prepared to point back to services as defined in SOW, and not more.  If services agreement is too grey, or even if black and white, some customers will try to ‘push the envelope’, and get more services than they contracted for.  Often the line can be blurred between services and support.

1. Also be prepared to go back to SOW to point out the features or tier of features that was purchased.

- v.  Revenue recognition can cause your services business a challenge. Need to work with your CFO on deferring costs to align with the revenue recognition issues with SaaS.

(c.) Retention and Revenue

- i.  Customer retention is key, now more than ever,

1. monthly or annualized renewals are much shorter than before, and

2. customers can easily make a decision to discontinue services.

- ii.  With the larger investments made for on-premise solutions, customers are less apt to change their decision, especially in multi-year contracts.

- iii.  Need to consider customer retention as an investment, because he recurring maintenance revenue is at risk each month or on annual cycle.

- iv.  One metric given on Dev/Cost of sales, for:

1. enterprise: dev is 20% of cost of sales

2. SaaS:  10%

- v.  BUT, MUST shift of some cost savings to investment in customer retention activities.

- vi.  Some vendors are calculating the retention requirements and have not yet found the break even on SaaS, but it is new and they have just made initial investments in both architecture and also customer retention strategies/models within their organization.

- vii.  Who owns customer retention? 

1. General answer was “Services”, however under SaaS divisions, the “Services” org is composed of Professional Services, AM, and Support

(d.) Pricing and Compensation Models

- i.  Pricing:  contract pricing, on monthly payment or renewal. (Not much discussion here).

- ii.  Compensation - not much dialogue as was deferred to be a whole hour+ topic in itself.

1. one comment was that the compensation models can be “brutal” in companies that offer both Enterprise and SaaS solutions.  Growing pains.

2.  Agile

(a.) For those that use Agile methodologies, is it being employed for development AND for Services?

- i.  Generally - development/engineering only, with some aspects of Agile methodology being adopted in Services practice.

1. i.e. Stand-up meetings are often used in Services and work well.

(b.) Agile techniques being used in Services, under SaaS implementations?

- i.  discussion around ease or difficulty in branching SW for specific customers. 

1. Some companies DO NOT branch.  One solution for all.  Only way it is successful.

2.  Others, depending on the type of solution they offer, do branch for customers, but have clear rules of maintaining the core and the branch. More overhead to manage.

(c.) Agile implementations in services, can be done.  Helps engage customers more frequently and earlier in cycle, thus reducing change or repeat of requirements review during UAT stage.

- i.  iterative techniques for configuration, implementation, delivery are being done, but more in on-premise solutions rather than SaaS; SaaS projects have shorter implementation cycles anyway.

(d.) Using Agile where customers are looking for an overall fixed price job can be a challenge as you need to detail out the scope and deliver in order to provide a price. One suggestion was to give a ball park price on contract and try to fix price the Agile sprints.

(e.) Some companies experience that customers are experienced with Agile methods and actually demand it and force the Services team of software vendor to employ agile methodology, even if it does not fit their product and implementation methodology

(f.) MUST have strong PMO with Agile - directly increases the need to have strong PMO.

Dear PSVillagers,

I would like to solicit some ideas regarding budgeting of PS resources and to some extent validate my own process.
Presumably we are all constrained by our resources and cost of those resources when doing budgets for a new year.
Traditionally our consultants have an 80% billable target(hours billed not worked).
Target however is not the same as Budget and this is where I have a question.

What % of your target hours(=2080-vacations and stats*80%) do you usually use for bench time, quality issues and retention?
Or do you use different calculations for budgeting purposes?

Your help again is appreciated.

We are in the process of launching our professional services worldwide and there are two major issues we have to address:  competing with partner and educating the company and the sales team on the value of selling professional services.  There are obvious areas like the opportunity cost of giving away services for product sales (i.e. incremental revenue potential for company), but we do see sales teams wanting to use give away services to get the product sale. 

I would be interested in hearing if any of you have good ideas on training the traditional product sales team on “how to sell professional services” especially for an organization that is just making the transition. 

Thanks, Dave

I’m interested in learning about people’s experiences implementing balanced scorecards for their professional services organization.  Ideally, you could share what metrics you’re tracking as well.

I work for an internal consulting group for a technology company.  I’ve been asked to pull together a balanced scorecard for our group, and believe many have traveled this road before me - your advice is greatly appreciated.  We’re a small group, so we don’t charge for our services.  Therefore… revenue, profit and utilization are not important metrics for us - in fact, we don’t even have these statistics.

The four major categories we’re considering are:

• Business Partner Satisfaction;
• Project execution (primarily quality of services);
• Building the practice (building new capabilities);
• Organizational Health (primarily people-related)

Thanks,

Charlie

Here are the breakfast notes from the Boston breakfast.

Notes on SaaS trends and best practices

• We discussed how to support “custom” work in a SaaS world.  Some of the companies represented had a core SaaS offering but also did custom work for clients, such as building portals or integrations to other systems, which were difficult to support using the core support teams.  Often, the work required is not that hard and is quick to do, so creating and approving a SOW seems overkill. To address this issue, one PSV member suggested selling maintenance agreements with extremely tight scopes.  The scope is mutually confirmed by the client and the company providing the service. Any work outside of this scope requires a separate SOW

• It is difficult to support both SaaS and on-premise in the same company. Support for each requires a different skill set.

• SaaS: all issues are triage by support and then involve development, as needed, to change the core product/service

• On-Premise: a lot of the work is custom and therefore requires a PS skill set to triage and address subsequent issues

• Revenue recognition is a key issue for SaaS providers. Typically cannot recognize revenue until the PS work has been completed.  Many of us were concerned with this issue and how it would affect financial reporting and department profitability.

• We also discussed how to compensate sales on services.  Should a sales person receive as much commissions for selling services, especially if the “PS” is required to use the “product”?  Some companies provided a 1% commission to sales to sell services while other companies represented compensated for services as much as they do for selling product.

Agile vs. Waterfall

• Most companies felt that we need to use both models.  Unfortunately, the conversation was cut short due to time constraints

• Agile can be hard to explain to customers but works well when customers need to see output before providing direction on next steps

• Ideally, use a waterfall approach but have periodic check-ins to show output to the client and make sure you are on track

Hi All,

I am sure I am not alone when I say that “give-away work” is becoming a problem. The biggest issue is that sales reps, managers, and executives make promises for give-away work without truly knowing the feasibility of the project, the level of effort to complete the work, or the availability of the individuals who have to do the work.

The PS team is rarely invited into these discussions but are always left holding the bag. Does anyone have any effective strategies for gaining control of what is given away by whom and the process for doing so. (It is particularly challenging when the ‘giver’ is an executive.)

Thanks,

Andrea

All,

I would like to understand how other PSO’s within a product company have arranged project management for their implementations.

We find that regularly sales and our customers query our project management estimates in relation to our implementation cost as the cost are duration driven and do not necessarily relate to the overall implementation effort .

We calculate our project management based on the duration of the project and expected effort for a project. On average we estimate 1.5 to 2 days per week per project for project management.
I would like to hear from the community how you are organizing the role of project management for your customers and what rate you typically charge for these services.

Are you typically not charging for project management and do you consider them the cost of doing business? It is an option that I am “playing” with as it allows us to at least ensure that we can do the work we have to do to make a project successful without having to worry about how much customers do or do not pay us.

Other ideas?

I welcome your thoughts.

Thanks Tirza

Hi All…

Has anyone implemented (or at least investigated) the Capability Maturity Model Integration for Services?  If so, I would love to hear your opinions on its effectiveness and applicability. 

Regards,

Thank you for participating in last Friday’s PSVillage event in the DC area on Friday, August 28, 2009.

We had a wonderful discussion topic - “How can you (or should you) take agile development techniques to the PS world?”

In summary, we all agreed that the techniques of agile software development are broadly applicable to the PS world and that they are useful.

(a quick word of definition:  agile software development is generally understood to be a process whereby frequent release cycles and tight collaboration between end-users and developers leads to a more rapid and flexible software product development experience.  It has been reported to result in faster development at lower cost with higher end-user satisfaction.)

The challenge for our table was to discuss how we could bring a more “agile mentality” to the PS world.  Could we get the same benefits - improved customer satisfaction and a better ROI?

First, we discussed how the agile model related to our current business model.  Most of us are used to the PMI style project model, where a waterfall set of tasks and a relatively tight SOW describes our project.  We all agreed that this was tightly tied to the way customers were used to seeing SOWs and also tied to the fact that many customers were very price sensitive.

Second, we talked about how PS can use its industry knowledge and expertise to create proposals that effectively are fixed fee with a fair amount of flexibility.  If the PS representative has deep enough industry knowledge, than the process can be interactive and free form, yet still come in “under budget.” This type of interactive approach leads to a great deal of client confidence, but few clients are willing to sign an open-ended PO.  To this end, we discussed that the more mature the product, the easier it was to undertake a more agile deployment approach.  If the team had a good sense of the options, than it became easier to work with the customer, since there would be fewer out of scope surprises.

Third, we discussed how this also related to the way services are sold and the relationship with the sales organization more generally.  As we have discussed in other forums, the earlier PS can be involved in the sales process the better.  It allows for deeper interaction and also an opportunity to articulate the benefits of a more organic and interactive deployment process.  For those who run both the SE and the PS organization, this seemed easier to do.  For others, it required a more consultative relationship between sales and PS.

Fourth, we discussed that the danger of not implementing this type of collaboration and attempting a more interactive process was that the customer’s expectations had not been properly set.  Sometimes that could lead to dramatic scope creep or a case where PS is left to clean up the mess of an unhappy customer.

Conclusion: We all agreed that interactive and dynamic deployment processes were better ways to get to higher customer satisfaction levels and better results, but that we needed to change both the way we interacted with customers and the way we interacted in our own organizations. 

Comments?

Morris Panner
CEO
OpenAir, a NetSuite Company
+1 617.351.0240 (office)
+1 301.273.5058 (mobile)

mpanner@openair.com
http://www.openair.com

OpenAir User Summit | October 26-28, 2009 | Boston | Register today: openair.com/home/summit.html

Notes from SaaS Discussion

The participants at the table had varying levels of expertise with SaaS models.  There were some companies in the infancy stage of their offering and others with more mature models.

Initial discussions were around selling an unproven solution and gaining buy-in both from internal staff and potential clients. 

One company indicated that when it first launched its SaaS product, it was difficult getting their sales organization to embrace the offering until they changed the commission structure.  They moved from an 8% sales commission on perpetual deals to a 20% commission of overall revenue tiered structure based on contract length.  This immediately changed the behavior of their sales organization and they began seeing revenues increase.

When targeting the first set of customers of an unproven product, the suggestion was made to offer proof of concepts free of charge and set the initial contract for a specific period of time as a means to set a check point for demonstrating the benefits and value of the solution to the customer.

One of the challenges brought to the table was selling the upfront costs to a customer considering the SaaS model.  In some cases, this amount can be $100K-200K on top of the monthly subscription fee.  One suggestion was to provide the customer with 2 proposals - one showing the costs of implementing the solution in-house which includes the cost of maintenance and the other showing the costs associated with the Saas model running both out for a period of 5 years to show the cost savings of the Saas model.  Also suggested was to conduct the services off-site as a means to keep the costs lower.

The underlying theme was to package the offering as much as possible to give the customer options on the plan they select to include an “out of the box” option with no customization.  Any consulting services the model requires upfront or during the contract should be defined as a separate package as well.  For example, have a package for upfront costs to avoid the perception of an open-ended engagement.  Additionally, offer packages for services after the customer has been implemented on the SaaS to help evolve the solution as another stream of revenue.  If the solution requires an initial needs analysis, define it as a package that you provide “free of charge”.

These packages should encompass well defined Service Level Agreements (SLA’s). 

SaaS models will require a well planned customer services program.  Investing in customer service will set you apart from other solutions.  This is another form of consulting that will need to be packaged in your costing model.  Typically an engineer could spend approximately 20% of their time supporting a new customer for the first 30-90 days.  This cost should be factored into your packaged costing and defined with SLA’s.

As your solution matures, it is reasonable to expect growing pains such as performance issues.  The key is to invest in hosting or collocation facilities that are close to the customer’s facility.  If necessary, have two hosted or collocation sites to accommodate.  There was some discussion on cloud computing for development and stress testing of the solution.  However, this may be perceived by the customer as unsecure.  Stay focused on building out your SaaS solution and don’t try to be a hosting/collocation facility.  There are companies like NightPoint and TerreMark who specialize in this. 

SaaS solutions also need to consider security and data sensitivity.  It is important to ensure the solution is SAS 70 compliant, ISO certified along with possessing the capability for penetration testing and audit reporting.  Customers will question the security of their data.  They will also want to understand how comingling of their data is handled.  This can be easily addressed through discussions about virtualization and SAN technology.

In summary, the key to a successful SaaS model is packaging both internally and externally.  Ensure these packages are well defined with SLA’s.  Investing in customer service will be key to long-term success.  This is very important since SaaS models have evolved from being a pure software play to a hybrid models with services.  Offer the solution both as a SaaS and in-house model for those customers where outsourcing doesn’t make sense.  By packaging your offering, you avoid any perception of add-on costs, etc.  The more options offered, the more the customer feels in control of the cost of the solution. 

Additional Notes from DC Breakfast on PS Operations topic - thanks to Eric Driscoll, Claraview, for taking these notes!

Our team focused on PS Operations, with participants from Datatel, Deltek, Dulles Consulting Group, Advanced Solutions Intl and OpenAir.

1.  Requirements for Operations support vary based upon the market(s) companies focus on, with non-profit, US Federal, US State/Local/Education, and International each facing distinct competitive and market pressures.

2.  In the US Federal space, Earned Value Management is a must for new procurements.  Adoption of value prop in the US Commercial and International markets for one company at our table is going slower due to economic slowdown and cultural issues.

3.  It was observed that PS Operations is still at relatively low maturity level—especially vs. what we recommend for our clients in terms of how they should measure their own businesses!

—with many PS firms the focus remains on utilization and financial metrics only

—PS internal systems are often stovepiped by department, product area etc.

4.  Some best practice ideas to improve PS Operations

a) pull in resources from the Field to study the current portfolio of engagements and services offerings, get their perspective to inform workforce planning and other strategic initiatives

b) establish consultant skillset inventories at a more granular level

c) establish Operations Portal where all consultants can see how they are doing against their own metrics and how they rank relative to the organization overall

d) identify compensation programs that incent and reward consultants who can upsell business within existing customers vs. simply focus on billability.  For example, Claraview uses a “Value of Labor” model to capture Practice Development activity above and beyond billable hours.

e) establish Balanced Scorecard approach to metrics - linked to professional development plans for each consultant.  Capture customer satisfaction via questionnaire - determine wich customers are promoters of PS vs. Detractors.  Alan from ASI offered to share what they use.

f) suggest quarterly review of performance across all metrics for each consultant.

Hello all,

Given the uncertainty of the economy, one of the directions to generate new business that has come up with our company is getting into the government contracting arena. I’ve done a fair amount of research on what that takes in terms of GSA, how to file to get paid, where to find projects that are available to bid on, and how to take advantage of set-asides that might apply to you.

The big thing that I’m wondering is how difficult it is to actually win business as a new player on the scene. I can nail down all of the registration issues and paper work to be positioned to respond to contracts, but in the end what I’m missing is the practical sense of how the final award decisions are made.

What we’re trying to decide is whether all of the setup work is going to be worth it or whether we will have invested time and energy in the setup only to find out that most contracts (despite the APPEARANCE of an open bid) are awarded to vendors that already have relationships with the buyers.

I could also see pursuing an approach of marketing to major contractors who might sub-contract out to us to help meet their small business set-aside goals. This may be a better pay off on the time invested.

Does anyone have any experience going through this process? Did it pay off well enough to be worth it?

Thanks for your responses,

Kevin

Hi All,

I lead a PS Practice in a small software company. We are considering moving from Excel to a post-sales project management and time reporting tool, and I am told that SalesForce.com has this capability. Since we as a S/F company, I am being asked to evaluate it for PS. Do any of you have experience using S/F as a PS deployment and time tracking tool?

Thanks in advance for your feedback,

Jay

Hello

I am new to the group and would like to contact someone who has experience or a sense of professional services in the eHealth, electronic health records segment. I am wondering if the administrations push for healthcare reform will result in a surge in projects to implement comprehensive systems and if so then how to become involved.

Thank you.

I am looking for some guidance on services sales for both Business Developers and Delivery.

We want to pay commission to delivery people that are tasked with say 50% delivery and 50% new business focus. Is anyone out there doing this type of approach and would they be willing to share, even directionally their structure?

Secondly - strictly sales. We are wanting to move to a margin based commission versus gross based. Again if anyone would be willing to share information this would be appreciated.

We are doing some research of the PS market and wanted to know how
medium to large PS firms are integrating the process of acquiring and
paying contingent workers with PSA software such as Open Air and
others.

Let me know your thoughts.

Thanks

Peter

Hi,

We are searching for a PSA tool for our company. We are a Professional Services and Software company focused on the construction market. We expect continued growth over the next few years and we are maturing past spreadsheets and individual documents for our project-based approach to services. We leverage SalesForce and Quickbooks and would like to deploy a PSA that fits well in between these applications.

I’ve reviewed Tenrox, OpenAir (including QuickArrow), and Projector. I would appreciate any insight that the group might provide on these three tools - and any others. Success and horror stories welcome.

Thanks for the help!

Bret

Does anyone have a suggestion for basic Project Management training? Something that covers the basics and is appropriate for managing smaller projects (less complex and time-consuming than the PMI program).

Thanks!

I am interested in opinions & feedback on time accounting systems for imbedded professional services organizations like ours. I’ve seen the recent posts from others regarding time accounting systems, interfaces with Quickbooks, and so forth.

Our situation is this: We are a software vendor in the financial/banking software space. Our growing PS org has 500 global employees. The corporation uses Oracle Financials for all of its financial needs. We also run Oracle Time Accounting, Oracle A/R, Oracle A/P and Oracle Project Accounting (as well as a half-dozen other Oracle products). There are over 1,000 employees in the R&D group (development, performance, architecture, etc.). Oracle Time Accounting seems to work well for the R&D side of the house but it is a huge burden for the PS side.

The project numbering and task coding structure that is laid out in Oracle Time Accounting to support the R&D groups is unworkable for the PS groups. I’m wondering if there is a product out there that would allow us to simplify the time code structure, enter time cards via the web, automatically map time codes to Oracle P/A codes, and then give us an automatic feed into Oracle Accounts Receivable for billing & invoicing purposes.

Feel free to contact me directly at ken.simpson@aciworldwide.com

Thanks.

Ken.

Hello,

I’m looking for information on Parature software (case tracking, knowledge-base, and customer self-service portal).

Has anybody implemented this software, or currently using it? We currently use SFDC Pro - but it has some limitations.

I’d love to hear your feedback (good and bad) about its strengths/short-comings.

Feel free to contact me directly at sluqman@mercedsystems.com

Thanks in advance,

I recently joined an enterprise mobile field service software company that provides a configurable out of the box core application suite with a framework that allows for the creation of custom .Net extensions. I run the PS organization, and my team, in addition to providing basic configuration services and training, will be responsible for developing many of these extensions.

I am interested in identifying some best practices for post-production support of these customizations. I have seen models whereby this type of support is provided T&M or as an annual maintenance fee (% of development) to cover usage questions and defect correction. Has anyone had experience with any particular model (not just limited to those listed above)that they found effective for ongoing support of software customizations?

Thanks for any assistance.

Kindest regards,

The company I work for reimburses consultants for their actual meal expenses incurred instead of using the government per diem rates. The company is not under any government regulation or contract to use either/or so this appears to be a pure business cost management decision.

Can anyone point to a case study or research that recommends which solution is the most cost effective?

My preference is to use per diem in order to reduce the administrative burden the consultants face by entering each meal as a line on their expense report combined with saving and submitting the receipts. It is my belief that the administrative costs of using meal actuals (saving receipts, individual meal entries on expense reports, submitting receipts, Finance reconciling receipts, invoicing, etc.) outweighs any intended savings than if per diem were used (I may be wrong). This seems hard to quantify.

Thank you!

Brandon W.

Hi All,

I am working on an article for the Voice of the Village. The goal of the article is to explore how a PSO that is part of a SaaS company should be measured and managed compared to a PSO that is apart of an Enterprise software company.

I have reviewed a number of posts in the forum, old and new, and I have seen some discussion on the topic. For instance, one wise sole indicated that when determining KPIs, a manager needs to consider if your org is a profit center or a cost center.

I’d like to take the discussion to the next level, and I’d like to conduct a series of short interviews - 15-20 minutes with interested parties - to get more clarity on what KPIs you use to measure the health and effectiveness of your practice. I’d also like to understand if you feel those KPIs are the right KPIs (do they drive the right behaviors and results? do they give you a clear indication if your business is heading in the right direction?)

If you would be interested in participating in this research, please let me know. I am looking for individuals managing PSO teams that are stand alone consultancies, part of traditional enterprise software companies, and part of SaaS companies.

Thanks,

Andrea M

Hi,

Firstly, I receive enormous value from this group as a ‘stalker’. The conversations are robust and have strongly influenced my thinking and decision making process in these challenging times of opportunity.

We’re struggling internally to define and get a solid knowledge management / IP retention system off the ground. Everyone in the business recognizes the need, but there is sometimes confusion over the best approach. These range from ‘Store stuff on Sharepoint’ to ‘we really need to workshop this’.

So my question for discussion is:

What PS Knowledge Management / IP Retention approach/system(s) have you had the most success with in your environment?

I look forward to the discussion.

Regards

Leslie B.

Hi all,
This is a great forum for PS-relevant discussion and I value the insight into different aspects of Professional Services.  I’d like to pose a question on a topic not discussed recently: Quality control.

We are a multi-office (some remote) services arm of a SaaS product company.  Our projects are relatively small (3 to 4 months) and include system configurations (vs. custom technology development) and detailed documentation/reporting which can be data heavy.  All the work is performed remotely and a typical project will include 3-4 resources at most, including the project manager and a specialist technical resource.

Recently, we’ve been seeing a trend towards more specialized and complex projects that can sometimes stretch our existing QA processes.  We are currently scoping some long term technology enhancements that will help to address this as well as some short term, tactical process enhancements.  However, we’re sensing that part of the issue is around mindset, i.e. the team members needing to have more of a quality orientation and taking accountability for the end result of their combined work, especially when multiple team members are involved in the delivery steps.

I would like to hear of others ideas for ensuring that the PS teams have a quality mindset at both the individual and team level.  Who do you hold accountable for quality deliverables when multiple PS team members are involved in delivery, including specialist SMEs or highly technical resources?  What metrics or other incentives/guidelines have you seen work?

I’d be happy to talk via phone if that is easier as I recognize that this could be an involved topic and feel free to reply directly or to the group.  Thanks in advance for your input.

Thanks,

Matt C.

Hello fellow PSers,

We at Troux have an embedded PS operation in a software company and are always looking to tune our rates for our primary geographies (US and EMEA).  Currently, my US rates are under the typical pressure, but nothing extreme or surprising.  EMEA is a different story.  I am feeling huge pressure now to lower my rate structure in EMEA.  We have historically charged a 1.2x uplift on rates in UK and EMEA.  This and the usual adjustment for exchange rates has been enough.  I also feel that despite being a SW company PS operation, we are getting compared to rates from large consultancies and outsourcers much more often in EMEA than the US.  These are new trends I am seeing.  I have the SPI report Maturity Model report and it talks about average rates, but not geographically. 

Are you feeling similar geographic pressures?  Are your EMEA rates uplifted from your US rates? If so, how much? 

I appreciate your input.

Hello Villagers,

We had some very good discussion at the Bay Area breakfast yesterday morning. Given the format and the timeframe, however, we were only able to scratch the surface on a number of topics. I’d like to pick one of the questions/points that came up and pose it to the larger group.

In one of our discussions, the concept of using the PSO as a “developer” of new product features came up - starting out as customizations, then getting “productized”.  This seems like a real opportunity to give the PSO some much-needed strategic value in a product organization as well as improve the economics for the company as a whole. 

It would be interesting to hear how some of you have done this in the past and what kinds of issues you’ve needed to navigate (such as profitabilaty, IP ownership, or internal tensions with engineering / product marketing). If you could provide any coarse info on the size of your company, Software vs. SaaS, etc. in your response, that would be helpful, as the issues/resolutions can be very different for different sizes/types of companies.

If any other attendees from the breakfast would like to expand on discussion topics, Terry suggests you also post a question to the larger group.  This email group seems to be a great general forum for the exchange of ideas.

Thanks in advance,

Hi,

I am doing some research and gathering some facts as what works and doesn’t for SaaS pricing. Looking at various Saas Pricing models, what kind of pricing can be expected for a product focused to be used by entire Organization?

I am familiar with many SaaS pricing models and offerings from companies like SalesForce, QuickArrow, OpenAir, Netsuite etc and as such. Most of these companies are focused on a key segment (limited number of end users) of the Organization hence the pricing they demand can be justified.

I am interested in knowing what kind of pricing model/strategies can be suggested/expected when the end user could be the entire Organization. What kind of numbers one would expect in the market? What is the greatest push back in this kind of modeling?

Appreciate your thoughts.

SR

I am looking for any thoughts & experience related to trying to get one of the large I/T Services Providers (HP/EDS, IBM, etc) to sell the professionall services of a smaller services company in the networking space. Any ideas of how this may work would be appreciated.

Ed S.

Hey gang,

Traditionally, my company has done all of the implementations of my company’s enterprise software product. We’ve been developing the market for this product, so other than generic “system integrators”, there were no partners with specific skills we could leverage.

However, mid last year we purchased a company (and their product) in the UK that we are bringing to market in the US. This product is in a much more established space. So, there are many small consulting firms that exist with really deep domain experience and a lot of implementation skills, too. Because these partners are in a position to recommend vendors to potential customers, we definitely want to work closely with them and give them implementation work on the deals we’re now winning....

So, leveraging implementation partners is a new experience for me. I have a lot of questions that range from very strategic (How much should I leverage partners? Are there specific customers we should retain for ourselves? How does leveraging partners change the sales model/process and commissions on Services?) to very tactical (Should we prime and sub-contract work or let partners prime? How do you support partners from a product perspective? What compensation should we expect from partners when we have them prime? Do we need a certification program?).

If there are any good resources or advice that some of you who are very experienced working with partners can share, I’d appreciate it. If you’re in the Bay Area and I can buy you lunch or dinner in exchange for some sage advice, let me know!!

Cheers,

Dean

Hi all,

I’m wondering if I can get some feedback on daily or hourly blended rates in the market (blended for Project Management/Engineering, Technical Implementation tasks) based on the economy and as a standard for Software implementation.  Please let me know what you’re seeing or doing out there.

I have a situation where we will be sending a US based Consultant
to Europe for an extended period of time - could be 6-9 month
assignment.

The client is saying he can only come home to the US 1 week out of
every three months. This seems a little long.

What is your policy?

Does anyone have any good references on what are the basics of
setting up a Consulting Practice from scratch?

I have a several different consulting organizations in various parts
of the world and would like to have some sort of reference material
for what are the basic components of a Consulting Practice.

I searched PMI and did not find anything. There is a lot of information
on Project and Program Management but I can not find anything on
what it takes to manage a Practice.

Thanks,

Dave

I am curious if anyone has a policy to assess finance charges to their clients.  We use NetSuite and there is built in functionality to do this, however we have never done that as an organization before.  I know that we are missing out on both the revenue from the interest and on the incentive to our client to pay us in a more timely manner.

Any pros and cons to this would be welcome.  Also, what are standard rates for the industry?  And, have you run into any problems with this?

Thanks!

Dawn

Our services team has now grown to about a dozen folks, and it
is increasingly difficult to match consultant skills to project skill
requirements.

What can people recommend about assessing consultant skills,
creating and managing skills data and matching skills to project
requirements?

Specifically:

* Assessing consultant skills. Survey with self-definition/ranking
of skills? Outside auditor with testing? How often should these be
assessed?

* Managing skills data. Specific skills database - any
recommendations?

* Matching skills to project skill requirements. Any specific
processes or tool recommendations?

Regards,

Bruce

I’m curious as to whether any technology PS organizations provide a
defined compensation model for their professional services field
engineers (consultants) based upon pre-sales activities and impact
upon new PS bookings.

Do you provide a flat bonus for an engineer who assists a sales team
in closing a particular deal? Do you comp a percentage of the PS
bookings to that engineer in a way that is more closely aligned with
a typical sales compensation model? Do you offer any kind of bonus
if an engineer simply provides a contact, a referral, or when his/her
work with an existing customer yields an incremental PS order?

PSVillagers,

What are you doing to provide professional development for PS
Consultants in this era of no training and no non-billable travel
budgets combined with the requirement to hunt, track down and bag every
minute of billable utilization?

Ideas?

Thanks! Rick

PS: Our group is around 10-15......combination of advisory, business
analysis and technical ProServ.

Hello fellow villagers.

I have been hired by a company to put good PS processes in
place. I am looking for an electronic copy of an PS account plan.
If anyone is willing to share one with me, I would appreciate not
having to reinvent the wheel.

Please send to me at margo_sing@comcast.net .

Thank you very much.

Hi everyone,

I currently run the Professional Services division of a software
development firm. Our software is a best of breed application for a
very specific vertical market.

We have been struggling with a number of organizational challenges as
it relates to developing the most effective model to sell add-on
software, new functionality and services to existing customers and
continue to compete for new customers. We have very strong sales
people but I don’t think that we’ve provided the best environment to
fully maximize our sales performance.

We’ve tried the territory model with some success. The drawback
is that it is very difficult for the sales rep to sell all lines of
our products and services - we’ve seen a decrease in some areas
based on the sales rep’s understanding of the product.

We’ve also tried a model where there were two sales teams - one
selling back to base customers (more account management) and one
hunting the new deals.

We are now toying with a hybrid of these models and I’m not certain
that we are going to get the sales performance that we are looking
for.

I would love to hear your thoughts on what you would see as being an
effective model, how you implemented it and what incentives you
used to drive sales performance.

Thanks in advance for all of your ideas

Happy Holidays!

Normand D.

Does anyone bill their customers for travel time?

As a smaller company, we are trying to figure out how to absorb these costs (salaries still have to be paid).

Options Reviewed:

- Recover some by having resource be productive in transit

- Increase bill rate to recover time

- Charge a per day travel fee that is less than typical bill rate, but allows us to cover costs (explained as “we’re a small company and you’re far away")

- Any other ideas?

Darin A.

Hi All,

Just curious, how do your hourly/day rate prices for technical consulting
compare today Vs a year ago? For example, server and network
infrastructure SoWs, are they priced about the same as a year ago,
apples for apples?

What do you anticipate in 2009?

Happy Holidays,

Jay L.

Hi,

I am currently researching ways to improve our Employee Recognition
program. On a quarterly basis, we reward our employees above and
beyond their compensation plans.

Each year, we look for ways to improve the program and to gain better
employee participation.  In 2008, we changed our structure to make
most of our awards “peer nominated”.  While this has improved
participation, we are still seeing just about a 30% participation rate
from our employees. In our current structure we ask everyone to
place nominations for each award through an internal survey.  Then,
we send a final survey out with the nominated names attached to it
for final voting.  During the voting round, we typically see an
increase in response to close to 50%.

Our current award structure is as follows: (all peer nominated except
Project Team award)

Quarterly - Professional Services Passion Award

Quarterly - Professional Services Mentor Award

Quarterly - Friend of Professional Services

Quarterly - Project Team Award - Manager/Director Nominated

Annual - Professional Services MVP

Annual - Professional Services Rookie of the Year

We recently conducted an employee survey and the feedback
we received was mixed.  We actually got close to a 50% response
rate on this survey.  Most folks indicated an interest in department
specific awards tied to achievements but many also said they like
the program the way it is.

We are very interested to learn how other companies handle the
recognition program and what type of participation you’ve seen.

Would love to hear your suggestions.

Sincerely,

Michael B.

I am sending this out now because I believe it resonates with the
theme of recent messages in PSVillage about how we cope with the
jarring effects of the new economic reality. For example, in the
last two weeks the messages in PSVillage have included the following
statements, and have proposed good solutions to cope with:

• “rapidly adapt and innovate in every facet of service delivery”
• “connecting geographically distributed consultants”
• “cutting costs in today’s economy”
• “more deliverables with less resources” and
• “Increased productivity as a financial imperative”

• “Update your methodologies and processes to remain
  competitive and accommodate the demands of the sales cycles to
  reduce your price point and accelerate delivery;
• “ Introduce options with different price points; or
• “Streamline your processes to improve productivity and radically
  reduce cycle times and costs.

In addition to recommendations to look at enterprise applications
Quick Arrow and OpenAir, (both of which I have successfully used
before), I received information about purpose build project
management and document management systems offered as SaaS,
as well as licensed and shrink-wrap software options and WIKI based
services. All had a strong suite such as time and expense reporting
(which was not the major consideration for us) or focused on project
management or document management, (and we needed both).

As a start-up we had no processes in place but we had a good vision
of what we wanted to do. We also operated from the point of view
that you never have perfect information but you can always operate
from where you are, with the knowledge or materials available to
you.

Our situation was that all resources are geographically dispersed and
the system must manage simultaneous implementation cycles, each at
a different stage in their life cycle, each moving at a different
speed, that required capturing and organizing content from customers
before release to engineering for configuration. For time and cost
effectiveness, a project would not be sent to Engineering until all
content was available, at which time Engineering would have access to
everything it needs in a central repository.

With this as a backdrop, as the search evolved it became clear we
needed to think outside of the box to find something that would work
for my client’s particular business model within their practical
constraints in the current economy. During this process I re-
discovered WIKI and also discovered much had improved since my
experience with WIKI in mid size software companies 2-3 years ago.
The system we selected is a SaaS application provided by a company
called Itensil; you can check them out at

http://www.itensil.com/pso.html

We quickly engaged in what I refer to as rapid protocycling. By
applying our best thinking about how the business should operate,
and improving on it real time as we discovered more details about
the requirements, involved more people, and learned more about
the capabilities of the application we quickly built out the mission
critical processes. This combination of rapid protocycling and
discovery learning, using a tool with a short learning curve that
leverages existing skills and knowledge enabled us, in just four
weeks, to successfully develop, document, and deploy operational
processes to manage implementation cycles and custom configuration
activities. With this framework in place, the stage is set to
collaboratively improve and fine tune these processes and quickly
adapt to changing requirements as the business grows.

As we all know, we are always applying our ingenuity and seeking
innovative solutions to reduce cycle times, improve margins and cash
flow, and improve communication and collaboration between
geographically distributed teams. This is the name of the game for
Professional Services. For this use case, using this tool as the
system of record, we very quickly and cost effectively achieved:

• “Agreement on reusable, adaptable and scalable processes;
• “Agreement on roles and responsibility;
• “Improved collaboration and smoother hand-off resulting in reduced
  cycle times;
• “Ability to include spreadsheets into the workflow via their API,
  while also reducing dependence on spreadsheets as a standalone
  management tool; and
• “Consolidation of the processes, implementation practice-aides,
  best practices, customer content, intellectual property and sales
  materials.

Hi all,

Just wondering if anyone has experience using any of the PSA (
Professional Service Automation) software packages .... in particular
has anyone used Niku’s Clarity system?

Would also love to hear comments on other packages… pluses/minuses,
prices, etc....

Hi all,

As we’ve just initiated a dedicated marketing function within BMC
Global Services, I’m chartered with creating a marketing plan for next
year. Wondering if any of you friendlies might offer up an example of
one you’ve created?

I can reciprocate with any of the following that I’ve developed:

- a new service definition template and introduction process

- a technical account manager role definition & roll-out plan

- client satisfaction process, workplan, interview sheet

- client wants/needs study interview guide

- the professional services methodology development
presentation I did at TPSA

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,

Doug L.

Hello,
Anyone have suggestions on calculating gross margins when dealing with full time salaried employees?  Most systems compare hours to complete a project (labor costs) to revenue collected. Calculating the hourly cost of salaried employees based on a 2000 hour work year is obvious. The challenge is hourly rates for a salaried employee can quickly dilute when the employees work longer then 40 hour work weeks. For example the gross margin on a project that takes 60 hours to complete varies drastically if the labor was performed in one vs. two weeks for a salaried employee. Any insight or direction is greatly appreciated?

Kind regards,

Hello,

We seem to have got to a point where our valuable technical resources are doing too many roles. The same people are acting as:

- Sales Engineers (accompanying Sales to do demos, educating clients, etc.)
- Solution Consultants (acting as professional services to do Requirements Analysis)
- Trainers (delivering training services to maximize solution adoption)
- Technical Account Managers

Is this a common result or is there a logical way to seperate these functions so that they don’t all fall on the same bodies?
Regards,

I’d be very interested in perspectives regarding what the difference
is in the services that are offered in companies that sell a SAAS
model versus those of a traditional license software company.

Do you find that there is any significant difference in the kinds of
offerings, delivery methods, or financial performance (margin,
utilization...)? 

I would really appreciate your input on the typical percentages your firm charges the PS organization for corporate overhead, also known as burden.  In our benchmark the average reported “burden” for PS employees is 22%.
Can you comment on the loading your firm charges per employee for:

Healthcare and benefits
Facilities
IT
Portion of corporate SG&A
Other

Does your firm include “target bonus and variable compensation” in your burden rate?

Looking forward to your feedback.... this is always a hot topic when negotiating your annual budget.

Thanks,

Jodi asked recently about tools for weekly reporting. I thought a
brief summary of what we’ve tried in general may be of use. I’d be
interested in others’ experiences too.

I run a three-site firm (UK, Germany, Texas), but with consultants
spread across clients from the US West to East Coasts, to various
places in Europe, and with growing contacts in Asia, the Far East, and
South America. The challenge is helping my team to remember that they
are a team, that they are *my* team (i.e. that they are Verilab as
opposed to ), to let them benefit from
being that team, and to do that across space and time (zones).

We’ve tried (and still use):

a. Company-wide email lists. This is the oldest mechanism. We used to
have several of them - some technical, some business, some serious,
and some for Friday afternoon nonsense. But we realized that volume is
important for lists, and too many lists each with too little volume
would die. So we merged them into one until such time as the volume
gets too much. This works well, but needed a lot of care and nurturing
to begin with. Some shy individuals still hide in the shadows too
much.

b. Company wiki (we use Twiki). This has lots of potential but hasn’t
yet worked as well as I’d hoped. We have a ton of stuff on there, but
lots of “entropy food”. There is a core of material that is useful,
but a lot that is old and hairy. Overall, it’s worth having, but
probably needs more personal attention.

c. Internal blogs. Some success. This seems to be a very personal
thing. Some people love to tell other people what they’re up to - and
some don’t. This is a horse I’m still flogging, because I think it’s A
Good Thing.

d. External blogs. More success. My ideal would be that there would be
*only* external blogs, but then there’s almost no chance of getting
the quiet shy people to speak up. Also, see point below about Yammer
versus Twitter.

e. Yammer. A surprising recent success. We messed with Twitter, but
that’s externally visible. One of my guys found Yammer and we gave it
a go. All of a sudden, people are ... well, yammering back and forth
across the Atlantic. The odd one-liner of status, occasional yells for
help, and even the beginnings of technical discussions that then move
onto some of the more appropriate forums (like our mailing list). My
aim was that it provide the same sort of impromptu conversation that
co-located people get by standing up and yelling over their cubicle
wall. Seems to be achieving some of that. The fact that Twitter
(public) got very little uptake while Yammer (internal only) took off
was noteworthy. As with all of this stuff, the human issues are more
important than the technical ones, and obviously feeling safe that
your conversation was only among “family” was an important human
issue. Recommended if you want to try something out.

We’ve also dabbled with the usual meeting-enhancing suspects, including:

GotoMeeting - works fine, does what it says on the tin
Skype - ditto. We use this a lot for one-to-one, and occasional video
conferences. Multi-cast video would be cool.
Shared Google Apps presentations. Just tried this last week and it
worked great. Much Cheaper than GotoMeeting, and if all you were
using that for is PowerPointing, Google may be worth a look.

We’ve had at least one such meeting where the attendee list was:
Group A - Austin, TX office
Group B - Munich, Germany office
Attendee C - at home in Edinburgh, Scotland
Attendee D - in his car in Texas
Attendee E - in Bristol, UK airport waiting for his flight

Worked surprisingly well.

Overall, the degree of technical collaboration we’ve achieved is, I
think, superb. I see detailed technical inquiries flashing back and
forth and being answered with a speed that the official support
channels of the tools we use just can’t match. Some of my team have
never even met some of the others, but the developing “net presence”
seems to be obviating that. Still lots of room for improvement, but
the above mechanisms do seem to help. Your mileage may, of course,
vary.

t

P.S. And my bonus Collaborative Web App for the week is this, to let
you organize multi-person meetings and phone calls:

http://www.whenisgood.net/

(I’ve only just tried it, but it looks well cool.)

I’ve run across a few companies that require weekly trip reports from
their field consultants. This keeps everyone informed but it does cut
into a consultants work week depending on the amount of information
requested.

In many companies I’ve seen the classic word document used - are
there any tools that could be recommended for a quick data entry
(that also supports offline data writeups with a push to a central or
online system when connected to the internet).

Thanks

Good Day, PSVers,

Regardless of duration, “Engagement Oversight” is critical for the
dual requirements of customer satisfaction and margin realization.

What approaches, methods, practices, tips (or, outright lore) can you
offer regarding good/best ways to provide meaningful engagement
oversight for a PS practice whose tempo is a large number of small
projects (say, an engagement average of ~ $12.5K)?

For example, in an environment of many small engagements (frequently
staffed and executed by a single technical consultant), what do you
suggest regarding tackling such issues as: discovering and handling
scope creep; holding the line with clients regarding “done”
and “success”; early detection of client expectation to SOW mis-
alignment; as well as turning client “while you’re here, would you
mind just ...” into new sales & revenue opportunities; etc., etc.?

Welcome your thoughts and advice with appreciation.

Thanks!

Our firm provides workload management software to the healthcare
industry. Our implementation fees are fixed at the time of contracting for
a set # of included project days (used for proejct management,
consulting, training and the technical implementation). We do not bill
above and beyond until the included days are used up or additional
services are contracted for.

We are currently in the process of updating our license and services
agreement and are interested in how other professional services
organizations balance the weighting of licensure fees to implementation
fees. Do you split them 50/50, 60/40 or some other combination?

What logic did you use to come up with your methodology?

Thanks and we look forward to your thoughts.

We’re looking for recommendations on web software that anyone
has found successful in allowing clients (or potential clients) to join,
read and post content. In a manner similar to a discussion forum
and Blog. The capabilities we’re interested in are:

1. Requires registration and approval to join/post
2. We can post content in a Blog fashion that is searchable
3. Members can post comments, questions, etc. related to the content
4. Supports RSS and email
5. Allows embedding/uploading documentation
6. Supports polling

We would like to have something installable as part of our web site
rather than an external website. We have been using something
through websitetoolbox.com that is primarily just a message board
and does not serve our expanding needs.

Thanks for any insight.

I have been asked to create a process that will result in the “Gold
Standard” for implementations. We want our clients to be used as
references and need to create the process that will support that from
day one of the engagement.

Do any of you have process or guidelines you use that result in such
successful implementations that your customers are strong references
for you out of the gate.

Thank you

Claire H.

We are evaluating PSA systems, we’ve looked at Open Air and Quick
Arrow so far but also have Daptiv and @Task on our list. Wondered if
anyone in the Village has experience with either one?

Thanks!

Had a couple questions regarding rates and T&E.  I’m interested
to know if folks offer both options to customers or stick to one
approach only?

We are in a position where we’d like to offer a T&E inclusive
rate for our packaged, typically short-term implementation
services around our software products.  In addition, we’d like
to offer a rate with T&E excluded for services that are more
long-term, staff augmentation engagements (again, based
around our software products).

One of the challenges that our Finance team has raised is
having both options, particularly if they are included on one
contract.  For example, a sales rep may sell a customer a
deal that includes software, implementation services, as well
as long-term staffing services.  Again, I’d like the implementation
to be T&E included and the long-term staffing to be exclusive.

Does anyone have any experience with this?  My Finance group
is really pushing back, driving me towards one rate model only ...
yet I can’t help but feel that this just isn’t that unusual and want
to offer my customers (and sales) more flexibility.

Appreciate any insight.

One of my clients posed an interesting question recently and one which
I’d like to get some thoughts from the community.

His company provides IT infrastructure consulting with an emphasis
on messaging. Over the course of their 10 year history they have
developed a number of ‘partners’ and a growing list of partner
wannabes. These range from large technology companies like
Microsoft and Symantec to regional hardware VAR’s and resellers.

After a number of years of active partnering he’s asking himself how
many of these partners are really worth the time, energy and
investment necessary to maintain a meaningful and profitable relationship.

What are your thoughts relative to evaluating partners? How do
you evaluate new partners?

Do you have any quantitive metrics that you apply to partner
evaluations? Any best practices that you can share.

I imagine that many of you have faced the same question,
it would be interesting to hear your thoughts.

Thanks

Dear Colleagues,

Need your advice. We are planning to host web seminars for training our clients on monthly basis. We expect up to 30 attendees from mostly
Europe and some from US. We would like to RECORD the seminars.

1.  Would you recommend going with a single provider for both web conference and phone conference (i.e. Webex, GoToMeeting) or using
different ones for web portion (i.e. Webex) and for conf call (i.e. powwownow)?

2.  Which technology have you used and what was your experience from the standpoint of quality of service, reliability, and ease of use?
(Webex, GoToMeeting, what else is out there?)

3.  I have been alerted that WebEx has problems with repainting when used to show a product rather than simple slides and using both web
and voice conference from them is not recommended. Have you come across this?

Thanks in advance for your advice.

I’m attempting to find executive education offerings that focus on the professional services industry.  Besides Harvard Business School’s one week “Leading Professional Services Firms” course, is anyone aware of other comparable programs with a professional services focus?

Thanks,

Hi,

I would like to get feedback regarding the rates that other companies are offering in Eastern Europe.  More succinctly, I would be interested in Professional Services rates for software companies.  Obviously “body shop” rates would differ (probably lower). 

Any feedback is appreciated.

Hello to all you PS Execs who work in product companies,
When you are setting up your budgets how do you budget for the real-world work that sometimes arises when the product doesn’t work perfectly or at least as far as your project team understands it to work?

So three basic questions:

1. Technical support - assistance requested which doesn’t result in discovery of a product problem, so it’s really PS training assistance.

2. Defect support - product issue which you then have to spend time to work around or otherwise address with the customer.

3.  Onsite customer visits triggered by a customer request for onsite assistance beyond the project timeline but related to the project working correctly - which could be a problem in the product, the customer operation or the quality of the prior engagement. 
Your practices in these areas would be most appreciated. 

Thanks!

Beth M.

Hello Everyone,

I came across a question which made me think a lot and as a result I want to share it with you to get your thoughts and input on it - Most of you may have already been there and others may be in process. I sincerely appreciate your responses.

The question - Apart from the rest of the Organization (financials, revenue, sales, EBITDA etc etc) what maturity level the services
Organization should be for a company to go public. In other words, what kind of:

1. Tools and Process to be in place (is PMO a must?)
2. Margin ?
3. Automation
4. Any auditing or certification (SAS 70 etc) needed?
5. Anything else?

Is there a defined set of rules?
What are the major changes once an Organization turns public.
What can a Services lead do to prepare for such a change and what to watch for?

I look forward to your guidance and inputs, it would tremendously help me.

Once again thanks for your responses.

Best Regards