Our company typically expires services 12 months from the purchase date.  The language in the contract clearly states that we will do this.
However, if there are large chunks of services left we will typically alert the Account Executive to offer an extension if the extension request meets certain criteria (Services are currently being used, active project is scheduled in the next couple months).

Question to the group:  How do you handle expiring services?  Do you alert customers or just have a hard fast rule on expiring them?

Thanks.

We’re converting data from two mainframes (7 million records) to a new mainframe database. In my research it seems there are no automated
test tools for data conversion purposes. One QA consultancy has suggested they can manipulate QuickTest Pro to do some useful testing, and they also recommend looking into utilities at CodeBeach, and perhaps even doing CLI scripting.

Has anyone had experience with any of these tools in a similar conversion scenario?

Dear Colleagues,

A friend is looking to venture out and do some consulting on his own. Can anyone share a contract template for a retainer type arrangement?

Thanks in advance.

Elena

I had a contract for 4 months of consulting. The client lost the support of his mgmt and had to put the project on hold. So, after 2 months, my services are no longer required. What is a normal or usual cancellation fee? The contract has no cancellation clause built in, so technically they are liable for the whole amount.

Thanks for your help.

Fellow PSVillagers ....

I run a PS team focused on product integration and custom services at my gaming company. Priority is on acquiring the right projects that have an innovative edge and serve as a good showcase for our products.

I am evaluating models for consultant rate - I have a full team on each project. Presently, I use a T&M, flat-rate model which has worked well so far. We are getting into longer term multiple projects with certain customers and they are requesting better means of forecasting and controlling their budget with daily rates. As with any consulting project, there are days leading into and during product launch that adds long hours to meet the timelines and I’d like to make sure we are covered.

I’d like to hear thoughts and best practices that worked for you in practice.

Appreciate your time.

-Sachin

For the last 4 years I have run a small consulting firm specializing in business development for IT firms selling to the federal
government. I have helped my clients book tens of millions in revenue, and not that I am complaining I have made a better than
average living.

Recently however many of my partners (CSC, LMC, ETC) have approached me about “why don’t you set up an IT firm and work with us rather then
representing new people all of the time?” I have been thinking about this quite a lot lately especially with the prospect that I am sure
that I could get work very quickly.

The issue is as I look at what needs to be done the biggest issue that I am facing is an issue of payroll. When I win one of these
government contracts it is not unusual to have to wait 3 to 4 months after you start work before you start getting paid on the contract.
Although the contracts are long term and great once you get started having the cash on hand to pay those salaries and benefits for the
start up is an issue for me.

Loans are a bit out of the question atm due to a bankruptcy a few years back as a result of Katrina, so here is my question.

I have done a bit of research online looking for potential “investors"but all of the sites that claim to match you up with investors want a
fee, and I realize that although I am quite good at my job, this is a bit out of my area of expertise and knowledge base.

Does anyone have any suggestions of where I should be looking or some things I might want to look into. I appreciate the help in advance.

Hi there,

I am looking to get any feedback about using Tenrox for project management. Any tips, issues or red flags will be appreciated.

Thanks,

We’re a pure services firm (no products). I’m looking at getting some sales training for my senior consultants. Has anyone had any
experience with Sandler (http://www.sandler.com/)? Any thoughts on how it compares with alternatives like Dale Carnegie, Tom Hopkins, or
Ziglar. Any comments, especially in the context of services sales, appreciated.

Thanks,

I’m with a software company that has a couple different things going on simultaneously: we’re rapidly moving the product from a customer-installed model to a SAAS model.  We’re also moving from an internally run data center to a hosted data center.  Prefer to find a hosting services provider that can support both needs in one place.  Different requiremen ts and SLAs for the two different needs, of course, but one vendor better than two.  Any suggestions on hosting providers?  Much appreciated.  I’ll summarize the responses and send back on request or to the group.

Hello,

I’m wondering if you have tried leveraging services resources across applications development (newly built or COTS implementations)
and sustain (post deployment ongoing support) functions, and if so, what were the outcomes, lessons learned etc?

Thanks,

We are rethinking our approach to the process and staffing of infrastructure functions like:

Methodology development
Centralized Project Repositories
Status / Risk Reporting
Service Offering Definition
Common Tools / Utilities
Solutions Buildout
etc, etc

We have been delivering these items from a centralized team, but in many ways I think a “rotating personnel” approach might be more
effective, in that the people who are actually delivering the Services will help drive the infrastructure and process. On the other hand, a
rotating staffing model for the development of these centralized deliverables might lead to lack of consistency in the deliverables.

How are others staffing and running the groups that develop these infrastructural elements in your organizations?

Hello,

We’re currently working on defining our process for how we’re going to schedule consultants for remote service offerings that span multiple weeks but are not 40 hours per week. Our Consultants are largely tied up on multiple week/month engagements and we don’t have a bench available to work these remote offerings. We also have to ensure that our Consultants meet their billable utilization targets.

Have any of you successfully tackled this issue?

Thanks.

Hello! 

Has anyone taking an executive training course on professional services management that they would recommend? 

AND

If I could only read one book this summer and I wanted to read the best book on professional services what would your recommendation be?

Thanks,

Our custom software development shop is generally divided into three departments.

1. Business analysis

-Client management
-System functional design
-Project management

2. Programming

-Technical design
-Production programming
-Programmer testing

3. QA / DBA

-Test plan development
-Test execution
-Bug reporting and fix verification
-Data manipulation and population

Generally I define solution design as that creative process of leaping from the gathered requirements and pain points to a paradigm-changing
solution that really does introduce excellent software automation into manual processes. This can mean challenging fundamental work flows,
or designing work-reducing user interfaces, or recognizing useless steps in a process and streamlining it, or recognizing additional
human tasks in a process that weren’t mentioned in the requirements but that could be turned into automated software tasks, etc. etc.

It’s both an analytical and a creative skill.

As I’ve tried to expand my team I’ve encountered a lot of folks in the Business Analyst position who are good at process documentation and
meeting facilitation and specifying what’s asked of them; however, the real intuitive leaps that add substantial value to a process - the
true solution design - is hard to come by and often is really unrecognized as an essential skill.

I frequently probe for who was doing the true solution design when I’m doing interviews of many positions, and it seems that the true
solution design can come from a lot of disciplines.

Sometimes it’s a gifted technical resource.
Sometimes it’s the BA.
In product companies it’s often the “product manager”.
In consulting situations it can often be the client-side subject
matter expert.

Recently, I’ve begun nosing around the idea of adding a separate project management position. I’ve conceptualized this as an inward
facing position (or positions) responsible for:

Resource allocation

-Process discipline
-Budget monitoring
-Resource planning (when to get more)
-Project progress reporting

As I’ve conducted interviews for this position, I’ve found a fair number of “project managers” who aren’t pure play project management.
Instead they seem to be solution designers with top level project success responsibility. They do some managing of the project, but
also spend time delivering functional vision to the business analysts and programmers.

I would have expected that the rational place for solution design would be with the business analyst because they have the closest
relationship to the client and therefore the driving needs for the system. Instead the business analyst often seems like an execution
layer for requirements gathering and specification writing that operates at the direction of a solution designer - and that solution
designer could come from anywhere.

So my question to the group is - who does YOUR solution design and why is THAT particular job title the best place for those skills?

And what has your hit rate been with hiring more solution designers within that job title?

Thanks!

Hi All,

We are a company in delivering services for HCM solutions. I am hoping to hear from the folks in this group about land and expand strategies
that have worked for you. If there are any specific strategies that have worked for you in expanding the business within an organization.

What to do when you are stuck at one department and that department is not willing or helping you in expanding the footprint in other
departments within the Organization. Do you suggest anything specific for decentralized organizations where there is no clear ownership or
executive buy in?

Thanks and regards

Is it me or is finding skilled Java and .NET programmers getting tougher? I am a partner in a small IT Consulting firm. We have been in
business for almost 15 years and it seems that finding skilled developers is tougher now than during anytime in our history.

The quantity and quality of candidates is of great concern. Even the outside recruiters we are using are disappointing. We are getting very
few resumes and they seem padded with experience that the candidates don’t really have.

Is it me or is there a problem out there?

We are a professional services firm focusing in the Bio-Pharma space. We have been having some internal discussions recently relative to
what kind of money we should be investing towards our marketing efforts.

Can anyone provide me with an idea of what a typical marketing investment might be on an annual basis as a percentage of revenue? I’m sure this varies from company to company but I would love to hear what other companies are doing and if there is a Best Practice or some sort of formula that we should be considering.

Thank you in advance for your replies.

PSVillagers,

Does anyone have a simple definition for consulting services and support services which clearly shows the discrete differences between the two?

Thanks in advance.

Nancy C.

I’ve been asked to work on a plan for a revised service lead program for our professional services team. The goal of the plan would be to
compensate members of the professional services team for leads resulting in incremental sales that may not have originate from the
services team.

I’d like to see the plan compensate product, maintenance, education as well as professional services sales.

I’d like to know how others plans out there are structured in terms of incentive payout rate (flat amount, percentage, etc) and qualifiers,
such as should certain change orders count, as well as how to ensure the program is bringing in new opportunities and not being abused.

Any input would be appreciated.

Hello all,

I have a question on how overtime is handled from a Project Profitability perspective.

In general, we don’t pay overtime to employees, however, as we know our employees often work many hours a day to get the job done. In my
company we have CA/Clarity for time tracking and Oracle Project Accounting.

Time tracking systems normally associate costs for a project on an hourly basis. However, if overtime is worked on project are we
artificially inflating the costs on a project?

I am interested in how other companies handle this. In a small shop, this can be handled manually, however, with a larger organization it
needs to be systematically implemented.

In addition, this also plays into other issues, especially in Europe where we have labor laws and works councils that need to be considered.

Thank you,

Dave J.

Hey Gang,

We’re overhauling our standard contract language for providing SAAS and/or hosted/managed services for our customers, and I’m struggling
to come up with the best language to address how the application will “perform” - that is, page render times for the end user. Our
application is very customizable (by the customer) and the page render times of reports/dashboards, etc. are highly dependent on what
the customer chooses to do with the application. However, many customers ask us to address the issue of application performance in
the contract.

Any suggestions?

I’ve already got good language that specifies that we measure availability and performance from a point within our own network (to
take the internet and the customer’s own network - two things completely out of our control) out of the picture.

Thanks in advance for any assistance you can offer.

Cheers,

Dean

Hello Colleagues:

We are a rapidly growing software product company and working to refine how our professional services team engages
with the sales team in software lead deals. The sales team follows a fairly structured seven stage methodology. I am looking for any
documentation or processes that articulate how PS engages with sales during that life cycle.

I’d also be interested to understand account ownership considerations. Since PS is currently the eyes and ears on the
ground, we have that ownership. We drive semi-annual account plans that focus on customer satisfaction, aligning our company with the
customer objectives, and ultimately the software and services we can provide. We now have many more customers in place compared to when
we set up that approach. I’d be interested in hearing the way others are handling the overall account management, and if you have
any PPTs or docs that you use to communicate that approach internally or with your customers.

I know this is a pretty broad request, so thanks in advance for any assistance!

Regards,

Scott V.

Hello All,

I have been put into a position to evaluate a current PS organization and recommend a growth strategy. I am looking for PS benchmarks to use
in evaulation and planning. An ideal benchmark report would address the various busines models out there, provide actual company
performance as examples of these models, and provide a description of what an organization would look like operating under these models.

If any one has used or run across some good industry reports, I would greatly appreciate it if you could share with me its title, author or
how to acquire.

Thank you

Sam H.

G’Day Villagers,

Have you… are you ... will you be bundling software products and Professional Services to customers as a single offering?

For example: anyone offering--as a line-item--a combination of (say) education, process definition and license?

Or, have you tried this in the past and abandoned this approach?

Maybe you’ve found it especially helpful?

How about ... contemplating it in the short-term?

What’s been your experience with customer response (e.g., they must know that part of the license fee is being carved out for Services)?
How about your Finance & Legal groups (those kindly folks that monitor VSOE and Revenue Recognition so carefully)?

Oh yes! And ... how’s the Sales Team embrace/avoid this notion?

Welcome your experienced-based comments, suggestions, lessons learned (both beneficial and painful) and general comments.

Warmest regards and Good Hunting Out There....

Rick H.

Hello All,
I am Head of Services at a small start up and we are looking to modify our current process for bug tracking, customer support defect tracking. 
We use Sales Force but not all of the functionality and we use BUGZILLA for our engineering and customer defect tracking.
Does anyone have suggestions of a better solution and combination of products?

My ultimate goal would be to allow our customers access to a knowledgebase to answer as many of their questions in an online self-service mode.

Thanks in advance for the help!

Cameran H.

I’m fairly new on this board, but have spent my career leading Services teams at product companies (Powersoft, Sybase, Allaire,
Macromedia, TIBCO, and now Endeca Technologies). I’m finding this group incredibly valuable, and thanks to all for your input.

We are challenged right now with improving our forecasted revenue and utilization reporting. When I joined this organization, we used an
Excel spreadsheet for scheduling - this was pretty basic in function, but made it very easy to include pipeline in the schedule - we would
“softbook” an engagement that hadn’t closed yet. This allowed us to see the true nature of our forecasted revenue and utilization, and if
we need to “push” out these softbookings, it was easy to do.

About a year ago we moved to QuickArrow for our PS system. The tool has a lot of strong features, but ease of use in terms of adjusting
scheduled resources is NOT one of them. I’m pushing HARD on our ops group to initiate “softbooking”, to improve our ability to demonstrate
forecasting ability, but they are complaining that the process of softbooking and then moving these softbookings when needed is too much
trouble in the tool.

I’d be interested to hear how others marry their “hardbook” and “softbook” opportunities into a single unified forecast for both
revenue and utilization - thanks for any input you can provide.

Villagers,
I’m not sure if this topic has been covered before, but we’re growing more quickly and I’m looking for advice on crafting PS Management compensation plans.

The current plan is based 100% on a margin target, with a target quarterly bonus pegged directly to the % of the target met in the period ( Target Bonus * Percentage of Target Met).

Since we are a software company, I’m looking to create a plan that incents the PS manager to assist in the sale of higher margin items such as software and service subscriptions.  I’m guessing somebody in PSVillage already has the main elements of such a plan worked out and might be willing to share.  What I’ve been thinking so far, is the ideal plan would provide a bonus that provides:

* Component tied to meeting or exceeding margin target
* Incentive payments for each:
- New software subscription sale, pegged to size of the deal revenue
- Software subscription renewal
- Service contract renewal
- Document subscription renewal
* Anything I might have missed?

Any thoughts, suggestions or outright plan examples would be *greatly* appreciated.

Regards,

Bruce I.

Dear Group,

I run PS for a software company, and we are getting asked more and more to develop extensions to the commercial product, whether that be
external adapters / modules or customized functionality. These would be considered outside the standard product set, and thus subject to a
different set of terms and conditions than the commercial product.

I’d like to get feedback and confirmation on what these T&C differences are. Below are the key areas that come to mind, some
of which our current contract language covers, and others which it does not. I’d be interested if there are other areas to consider, and
if you have any good language for them.

1. Ownership (IP) - We have pretty good coverage here as I’m sure most of you do as well. Our position is that the deliverables are
deliverables of the product itself, and thus subject to the same ownership terms (default: we own it.)

2. Warranty - Depending on the length of the Software warranty period, the PS developed software might have a shorter length,
especially if our customer has negotiated a much longer warranty period for the software than our default period. We have separate
warranty language for PS deliverables.

3. Support - Our standard PS agreement does not have any language for Technical Support of the PS developed product other than the Warranty
language. But our customers typically want some form of support beyond the warranty period. We could sell them some additional PS
days to cover this. We are also small enough where our Support group (which I also lead) might help as well. Does anybody have any
creative options here?

4. Compatibility with Future Software Releases / Upgrades - We have no language here currently, and I feel exposed. I do NOT want to
guarantee that any custom development is compatible with future product releases, and that if an upgrade is required, they will have
to pay. Is this in line with others? Anybody have good language?

Am I missing any other significant areas?

Thanks for your assistance!

Tom

I’m working through redesigning an account management program. Focus of the AMs will be customer retention and satisfaction. Our product suite has a fairly large footprint, so there’s at least 3 key touchpoints within our customer organizations.

I’m interested in the ratio of AMs to customers that you’ve found to be effective.

Any insight you have is appreciated.

Jon H.

In service organizations where part of the model is extremely high levels of expertise, I’ve found a tension arising where in order to
brand the firm, we need, to some extent, to brand the individuals within the firm. (Think Tom Peters and McKinsey.) While traditional
methods of firm/personal marketing, such as conference papers, books, articles, have managed to handle that tension, the new channel of
employee blogging doesn’t seem to have had time to do that yet.

I’d be interested in any experiences around the area of employee blogging, especially concerning ownership issues such as copyright on
content, and ownership of the channel and any associated branding equity[1]. Examples can be found here:

http://www.thoughtworks.com/what-we-say/blogs/all.html or here:
http://blogs.sun.com/

One particularly difficult question concerns new employees with pre-existing blogs, usually hosted someplace other than the firm’s own
servers. For example, among the Thoughtworks blogs above, you’ll find:

http://martinfowler.com/bliki/

And one of the Sun blogs is just a link to this:

http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/

Both Fowler and Bray have technical reputations that exist independently of their employers, which is to be expected (and is
entirely reasonable). So on the one hand, it seems sensible to allow them to continue to maintain their blog presence along with their
personal reputations once they join. On the other, if the blogging is being done on firm time and, regardless of when, on top of the firm’s
work, then if there’s any brand equity coming out of the blogging it should accrue at least in part, if not entirely, to the firm.

Grateful for any thoughts/experiences, and particularly for any examples of policy that balances control with the flexibility needed
by high-grade creative types.

thanks,
Tommy

[1] Obviously I’m thinking specifically of blogging on topics that fall within the firm’s area of business, as opposed to posting baby
pictures or stories about where someone went on vacation.

--

What is the best combination of knowledge management software/solutions that can save a small company from “email hell”?

I would like to help a small company with their biggest problem - they are drowning in their internal email. They make money on Time &
Materials billable professional services contracts but the volume of email communication about internal issues, training, recruiting,
status reporting, etc is too distracting to manage all the required billable hours without working lots of overtime. This phenomenon was
labeled 2.5 years ago by Dr Glenn Wilson as “infomania” http://discovermagazine.com/2005/aug/email-make-you-dumber/

Most communication occurs via email where the content is pushed to the recipient, often at a time when they don’t need it. Some examples of
this communication are status reporting, policies, announcements, etc. I believe the company could benefit from having the information
available centrally but allowing the users to pull it when they need it, rather than bombarding their inboxes constantly.

Some initial ideas are to use forums or blogs for announcements, which also allows for reader comments to be visible to all. Use a wiki for
team collaboration and use a portal or intranet for policies, shared documents, etc. I believe the ideal solution would be to have a list
of RSS feeds (possibly in a tree-view or on a customized portal like Google homepage) that alerts the users to the latest content but keeps
their inboxes free to deal with client and project issues.

Do you have a recommendation for the best overall communication and information sharing architecture that allows for information to be
pulled on demand rather than pushed? Which of these software solutions should be considered? rightNow!, edumagination, googleDocs,
groupSwim, daptiv?

Thanks,

Sean M.

Hello!

I was hoping that people could share the different ways in which they come up with project management hours on a particular engagement as well as what these hours are intended to cover?

This is purposely left wide open since I am looking for ideas and different approaches. 

Thanks

Ron

Hi Villagers,

Does anyone have any thoughts on a “Named Resource” Support program?  This would be an upgraded support offering where individual clients would pay extra to always get to talk to the same person when they call in for support.  I was talking to someone last week who had just introduced the program.  He thought the sales team was picking it up pretty quickly and he hoped it would generate some good revenue this year.  I have a couple of questions.

How many clients can one dedicated rep handle?  I guess that would be a function of call length, but I’m curious what clients expect when they have paid for a named resource.  Are they willing to leave a message and have it returned later in the day?  Do they get upset when they can’t get their person on the line right away or are they just happy to know that when they do talk to someone, that person will be familiar with them and their process so they are willing to wait?

Thank you,

Darren

G’Day Villagers,

Does anyone have experience, ideas or suggestions regarding SaaS-based Knowledge Management solutions?

Recommended vendors? Do’s/Don’ts/Caution’s/Success stories?

Thanks,

Rick

All - I wonder if other PS firms are noticing a trend (or maybe I am late and the trend has already past leaving me behind the curve (sorry for the mixed metaphor).

My firm is a “stand-alone” consulting company - we build custom software solutions for our customers - sometime from scratch, sometimes by integrating solution platforms and adding custom components. We sell our services based on our “technical expertise” and our development process. These allow us to deliver a high quality product meeting the customer’s time and budget expectations.

We are having difficulty closing deals with new customers outside the circle of our “friends and family” (organizations that we network to, through customers where we have had past success).

We are considering adding business expertise to the mix to add value and clarify our marketing message. This could be in a specific industry (financial services, manufacturing, etc.) , it could be in a specific part of a business (accounting, supply chain, etc.), it could be in a specific market (consumers, Web 2.0, B2B, etc.), or somewhere else. 

We want to move our message from:

“Hire us because we are really strong technically but also intelligent enough to pick up on your business and its processes quickly.”

- to -

“Hire us because we not only understand technology but we already understand your business/vision/market/processes and can merge that business and technical knowledge to implement a solution for you that is exactly what you need.”

But that switch comes with a big shifts in company focus, direction, personnel, and probably more.

Has anyone out there faced this challenge?

Any words of wisdom and encouragement will be appreciated.

Regards