As a long-time practitioner managing large-scale, service development teams for product companies, I can safely predict that a well produced service offering will help sell and consistently deliver quality solutions to customers. Business leaders want predictable profitability and to avoid the pain of problem escalations.  The Sales team wants services nicely packaged for quick sales.  And service organizations want a well-developed service offering that provides consistency and builds confidence for Product Managers, Field Consulting Managers, Customers and Sales Reps.  But the inherent challenge for many services teams is that the demand for services development often exceeds available resources. 

Service Development Models

Given this challenge, what type of development resourcing is most appropriate for a given service?  That depends largely on the maturity
of the service and expected sales volume.  In this article, we’ll explore three different service development models, outlining the pros and
cons of each as well as the effectiveness given the maturity of the service:

1. Geographic Service Development
2. Centralized Corporate Service Development
3. Central Leadership with Distributed Manpower (including off-shoring)
   

Geographic Service Development Model

Chartering each geographic P&L to build its own services can be attractive because it keeps the decision making close to the market
and reduces corporate overhead.  But the downside to this model is that there is no economy of scale because different geographies
often develop redundant materials.  Additionally, the time-to-service maturity and consistency is long because of the difficulty of
blending the tempo of operational delivery with the focused thinking required for development. Field resources are busy billing and
don’t have consistent and focused chunks of time to complete the project.  In practice, the typical learning done in each geography
is passed along through on-the-job (OJT) training and little information is documented.  Not surprisingly, undocumented intellectual
property is very difficult to share.

Another disadvantage of using domestic field resources is the high demand for doing billable work.  Field resources are often unable
to dedicate a solid block of time to complete the development work.  It also results in consultants attempting to complete tasks after
having been at a customer site all day, trying to squeeze in a few hours at the hotel after dinner and catching up on emails.  This
after-hours work makes coordinating with technical writers a challenge.  And when it becomes necessary to use other field resources
for peer review, this coordination becomes even more difficult.  The resulting long cycle times can greatly diminish the value of the
information by the time it finally gets published.  If service documents for a new product take three months to develop, multiple
geographies will already have spent the time and effort figuring out how to make it work. The net result is that documents published
after this time may well go unread.

Like a shanty town made of salvaged materials, an ad hoc geographic service development program can create a chaotic environment
with non-repeatable processes. Planned development with a combination of local and specialized skills produces a more robust and
presentable result.

Centralized Corporate Service Development Model

Just like Field Managers want service delivery documents that can bring new consultants up-to-speed fast on high volume services,
Product Managers need to get delivery capability up-to-speed fast for high-growth products. With the launch of new products,
time-to-market for the service documents is critical.  In fact, time is so critical that service development and consultant training are
often attempted at the same time. The question is should corporate invest in the service development activities, or will the field do
it driven out of its own economic self-interests?

A low sales volume service is not going to provide an acceptable ROI when looked at purely from a services ROI perspective.  Thus,
if left to the geo. service leaders who have incentive goals on local service revenue and profitability, a new strategic product will
suffer from lack of development in advance of revenue.  This will in turn lead to lack of confidence among the risk-adverse
consultants and sales representatives who should be pushing the new product.  For a low sales volume product that is experiencing
growing pains, and doesn’t have the luxury of waiting for field-driven development, a dedicated central corporate development team
is an alternative worth considering.

This investment of service development ahead of revenue can be done with centralized corporate services development.  Not only can
the company insure the development happens, but the resource can be protected from operation distractions to shorten the time to
generate the materials.  Centralized development also best enables consistency of packaging and brand image. Alas, this model is not
right for all services, because there is still a sequential step required to transfer knowledge and train the field resources.  To further
shorten time-to-market, combining some of the development and field consultant training can save weeks.

Central Leadership with Distributed Manpower Model

Timely and 100% complete development requires at least some centralized project management.  Centralized management keeps
things moving, helps navigate the content through proper distribution channels, and enables the creation of professional looking and
consistent documentation.  If documents distributed to consultants are not consistent, output to customers will vary in both quality and
appearance - resulting in poor brand image.

In addition to a Project Manager, a corporate technical resource can debug a new product in a lab environment so field consultants can
rapidly get hands-on experience and contribute useful content to the development effort. There is no substitute for hands-on experience
to give a technical resource confidence in a new product’s strengths and weaknesses.  The field consultant will take that confidence back
to his geo. with him.  This condensed lab effort reduces the Field Manager’s development opportunity cost in billable hours, and gives him
a local resource to help him avoid engagements vulnerable to a product’s unspoken weaknesses.  That awareness decreases fear of the
unknown in the field, and accelerates new product sales.

To get the most benefit from this distributed development model, experts from different geographies should be brought into play with the
new product about the time of product General Availability (GA).  A technical corporate developer is assigned to set up a lab environment.
The corporate and geo. experts can then spend a week or two together in the lab and reach a critical mass of rapid product learning and
service development. It is also prudent to have one person at corporate who “owns” the technical aspects of the service for continuity and
possible escalations. The corporate developer is that steward for getting all the jointly developed lab learnings quickly integrated and sees
that they are professionally packaged and distributed globally.

One of the main benefits of this distributed model is the field buy-in to materials developed.  The discussion of development priorities and
quality then changes from “corporate supplier” versus “field consumer” to become a collaborative team effort.  Thus, this development
environment encourages the sharing of information and minimizes finger-pointing.

Service Maintenance

So that is all well and good for new service development, but what about service maintenance?

The advantages of using on-shore, internal field resources for service maintenance include quicker time-to-market and the safeguarding
of intellectual property because it stays in-house.  In addition, the content is more valuable because it is developed by people who
understand the context of your main market.  However, as previously mentioned, often the field resources are too busy to help. 

So how do you stretch your limited central resources, particularly if the field isn’t motivated to help with service maintenance?
One answer is outsourcing to a country where talent costs are significantly lower.

Off-Shoring Development Tasks for Mature Services

Off-shoring to low-cost countries is well established as a viable way to reduce costs for product development and customer support. 
Though often overlooked for this type of work, it is a cost-effective way to reduce a company’s service development backlog, too. 
This strategy is no for every company or even every service offering. 

A corporate service developer can typically handle multiple products. However, to most efficiently multitask, managers can help shield
key developers from the minutia of minor product upgrades.  For mature services some development outsourcing is an option.  If the
product has been in the market for a while, there is probably already a sizable pool of consultants who have experience with it.  This
opens the possibility of outsourcing some development activities to the geos. or external companies.  Let’s discuss the type of work that
makes a good candidate for overseas development outsourcing, and how to ensure its success. 

One of the common arguments for outsourcing product development is that for the same money you’d pay in the U.S.A., you can hire
two to three developers for months at a time in low-cost countries and work them in parallel.  While these product developers might not
be as productive individually, assigning parallel development tasks can help to reduce total development duration. Unfortunately, service development for common enterprise class IT products often is not suited to extended multi-threading.  Beyond a week or two burst of joint
lab development with some field experts, most of the work will be done by a single lead technical developer.  This single thread nature makes
it impractical to use low-cost offshore developers in parallel for very time sensitive, pioneering, new service development.  However there is
viable case for using offshore developers on periodic service updates.

Once a product is mature and the field has sufficient capacity to deliver, the associated service skills become more widely available.  Product
adoption may have moved from adoption leaders in first world countries to later adopters in low-cost developing countries.  At this point there
exists a low-cost pool of potential developers with core product knowledge.  All you have to do is get them up to date on the new product
features.  This can be done in one of two ways: send them the new version of software and let them figure it out or bring them to the home
country to field shadow or use lab resources.  The in-country research needed for doing best practices service updates can be done by a
foreign consultant holding a B1 visa, as long as a few guidelines are followed.

Visa Guidelines

Bringing in foreign consultants requires that you pay close attention to the visa laws.  A B1, or visitor visa, allows a company to bring in
foreign consultants for training and research.  B1s are much easier to obtain than an H1B visa.  Below are some distinctions between the
B1 and H1B visas*.

While in the US as a business visitor with a B1 Visa, an individual may:

• Attend Meetings, and participate in them fully. 
• Interview staff.
• Conduct research.

The following activities require an H1B working visa, and may not be carried out by business visitors:

• Gainful employment.
• Payment by an organization within the US.

In practice, legal council has recommended that the B1 consultant can go along with billable consultants and take notes, as long as the
customer is not billed for the B1 holder’s time, and the foreign consultant keeps his hands off of the customer’s keyboard.  This note
taking is considered research.  The B1 visa holder can watch your field consultant doing the work and redline old service documents
with areas for updates.  Thus the field consultant is not burdened with updating documents and the foreign consultant can conduct
research on best practices.  After being on-site doing research, the foreign consultant can return home and finalize draft documents
and engage with technical writers.  Dedicated time from this low-cost resource saves both development cycle time and labor costs.

How do you best support the foreign consultant with technical writing?  The follow-the-sun strategy with technical writers is not ideal
because of the amount of interaction often required between the technical writer and subject matter expert.  These questions often
can not be planned in advance and the back-and-forth via email can add enough delay and interruptions that task switching costs
become prohibitive.  Ideally, technical writers and the technical leads should be in the same general time zone.  For best results,
provide remote technical writers with established document format templates to make the requirements for the final documents clear.

Program Management should remain in the home country.  A lot of the effort of services development is organizing the resources and
pushing the final deliverable out to the end-users.  The knowledge of who to contact to get things done as processes and systems are
changed is best done by an internal Project Manager who knows unwritten rules and the critical path.  For quality assurance, the externally developed documents can be Beta tested by internal field resources or redlined by SMEs.

In Conclusion

What type of development staffing is most appropriate for a particular service?  The answer depends on the maturity of the service and
expected volume.  If working with a strategic new product that is still suffering growing pains and likely to be low volume, your best bet
is to do centralized development.  This avoids a new product suffering from lack of development in advance of significant service revenue.
For higher volume and more mature services, a service distributed development program that blends corporate program management and
corporate technical leadership can create a broad range of new and maintenance updates.  The distributed development model can leverage
experts in both domestic and low-cost countries. 

The good news is that both centralized and distributed development can easily co-exist in the same service development program.  This
serves a broad range of internal customers from Product Managers trying to get new products ramped up fast, to field consultants who
just need up-to-date mature service documents.  PS leaders need these options more now than ever as companies try to simultaneously
minimize costs and position new solutions to gain market share as the economy recovers. 

© 2008

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ...”

Those words by Charles Dickens open his classic novel, A Tale of Two Cities, about the French Revolution.  And just as sinister Madame Defarge sits knitting her ominous visions, we, too, are seeing visions of uncertain and troubling times ahead.

Will we experience revolutionary times?  In some ways we may.  Many believe that we need to experience a revolution in government - how it sets its goals, operates, polices itself, and is accountable to the public.  Do we need the same in the IT professional services business?  Certainly not, but we should use this wake up call to get back to the basics of good business practices.

As we prepare for some softening in our business, we are reminded that we do go through cycles.  No one can forget what we encountered just 8-9 years ago, as we prepare for this down cycle.  The good news is that historical patterns indicate that this time the impact will be less severe for IT services.  It could be that we learned from our mistakes and have a different perspective since 2000.  It could be that companies everywhere now value IT as an asset, thus cuts in technology investments will be smaller.  The reasons do not really matter as much as how we face our impending challenges.

There is more good news in that IT services firms have yet to experience much in the way of a slowdown, if any.  The bad news is we will have to work harder to get business.  So how do we prepare for 2009 and beyond?

We need to take a good hard look at our businesses today.  Then take action, which not only prepares us for the next year or so, but beyond.  In other words, we need to operationalize actions we take today and make them an ongoing part of the business.  Companies that already embrace this management style are better able to focus externally on customers, a distinct advantage over the businesses dealing with internal issues.

A simple mathematical equation illustrates this point:

This is not to say that dealing with internal issues is not important, just that the more they are operationalized, the less distraction they become to focusing on customers.  For example, paring non-performing staff is difficult.  It is always viewed as a morale deflator, and it ignites rumors about the business not doing well.  In fact, it can have the opposite effect when it is a routine part of running a business.  Experience shows that your solid performers, the ones you want so badly to retain, are OK with eliminating non-performers.  This helps improve their skills when they work with other top performers.  Also, it reduces the challenges faced on projects with subpar performers.

A number of good articles have been written about how to prepare for the possible slowdown in business.  This one is geared to ongoing business operations with the idea that the items suggested are for present and future benefit.

Business Functions Focus

The following chart depicts business functions broken out into seven basic areas.  For each of these an abbreviated checklist of action steps to improve business effectiveness (BE) is presented.  The lists are designed for you to check off what you currently do - a quick self-assessment.  There are no silver bullets or specific focus on best practices; just an emphasis on using good business judgment and executing activities with common sense day after day.

• Avoid taking drastic action - be rational in making decisions otherwise it becomes too hard to recover or make adjustments later (e.g., make cuts where feasible, but do not cut a piece of the business without a plan to make it up in another area quickly)
• Keep your fingers on the pulse of the business to assess your business effectiveness - step back and do an assessment today.
• Communicate frequently internally and externally to minimize anxiety, rumors and misunderstanding - listen as much as, if not more than, you speak.
• Spend money like it’s yours, which it may very well be.
  

Offerings

• Analyze revenue and margin to identify and confirm opportunities for growth - segment by types of services, industries, types of customers, etc.
• Do what you do best - capitalize on your strongest offerings to differentiate the company.
• Identify if you are missing any complementary services your customers are buying elsewhere or performing internally - offering such services, if economically feasible, can keep competition away and position you for more work if your customers need to reduce staff.
  

• Do not underestimate the value of marketing - it’s all about proactively generating qualified leads, which gives you the option to choose what you sell; not all marketing needs to be expensive.
• Make sure the marketing materials you have are in sync (i.e., website, case studies, customer testimonials, etc.) - otherwise you can confuse prospects and customers, as well as make selling services more difficult.
• Emphasize channel partnerships to give yourself leverage in lead generation - remember you provide leverage for the partner, also.
  

• Stay close to existing customers –-work to extend existing contracts in as many cases as possible.
• Enhance sales and sales management processes to improve efficiency - focus on the best opportunities and improve revenue predictability.
• Upgrade the sales organization - focus on the right skills needed to sell your services and customers.
  

• Focus on quality delivery to help control services costs (e.g., no re-work) and enhance customer satisfaction/loyalty.
• Ensure consultants are reporting all of their billable hours on a timely basis.
• Provide incentives (e.g., finder’s fee) for consultants to identify qualified leads at existing customers.
  

• “Hug" your associates - their loyalty is as important as that of your customers.
• Upgrade the quality of the associate group - include both delivery and support personnel.
• Defer hiring unless there is an impact on revenue in the short-run - consider using third-party independent contractors to fill in on projects.
• Review and tighten processes to improve efficiency around infrastructure areas (e.g., internal IT, accounting, facilities, etc.)
  

• Spend or make investments based on a zero-sum budget - unbudgeted expenditures are made as the result of a reduction(s) elsewhere.
• Focus on revenue or gross profit-based variable costs, which benefit both the company and contributing associates.
• Eliminate as much unreimbursable expense as possible - big areas include travel, meals and entertainment.
  

In closing, the final words of A Tale Two Cities prove significant, also.

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.”

Hopefully, you can eliminate the business concerns that keep you up at night.

Are you considering connecting your systems to remove that double data entry overhead?  Where do you start?

The most logical starting place is what data does the receiving system need that the sending system can deliver.  Break down the low level details fields and perform a mapping exercise to determine what type of programming is required.  Other logic to consider is data totaling, field concatenation, field translation, and so forth.

Then there’s the discussion of real-time (or near real-time) vs. batch.  How time critical is the information?  What types of technology challenges do you have with the real-time vs. batch desire?

So let’s say you get beyond these technical discussions and have a good solid design in place.  At this point some teams would assume they are done and proceed with the implementation steps.

As they say in the infomercial ------- But Wait .... There’s More!

Too often I’ve seen companies ignore the human element of system integration.  When systems stand alone, users of those systems have the power to define their own system usage.  This means workarounds are in place, subjective definition of information entry, and overall influence on what is good data and what is data to be ignored.  What happens when you connect systems?  Those human factors begin to influence each other.  What is acceptable to one system is not acceptable to another.  What is easily ‘filtered’ in one system cannot be easily filtered in another and leads to misleading information.

A great example of this is connecting a Sales CRM with a PSA tool used to handle staffing needs.  Opportunity entry is subjective by nature and the enforcement of a sales methodology can go a long way to ensuring data accuracy.  Now say that system is connected to a PSA that inherits matured opportunities that require resource staffing decisions.  If a salesperson is overly optimistic, staffing and hiring needs could be misinterpreted by the business against opportunities that are not as mature as viewed by sales.

Integration analysis must go beyond the technical connect the dots.  The human factor must be considered including a change management approach to existing system usage and processes in place.  This will ensure a higher success rate of achieving the desired objective.

Managing Expectations - It’s an art .... not a science

In the 1982 Academy Award winning film Gandhi there is one scene that will tell you everything you ever need to know about managing expectations.  The year is 1917 and Gandhi is visiting remote villages in India where famine and poverty are the rule not the exception.  When villagers ask .... no beg .... Gandhi for help he responds “We shall do what we can do.” By using ‘We’ and not ‘I’, he clearly stated that he alone could not do anything, but that everyone working together would be the action to take for creating solutions.  He commits to do something, however sets expectations appropriately and allows for the realism of the situation to unfold.  The problem can’t be fixed overnight; there are no guarantees.  He was truthful and in turn they became his followers.

In a business sense, how many times has an executive been in a seemingly dire situation with a customer?  If you promise too much, the disappointment when delivery does not meet those set expectations causes the customer to lose all faith in the company/executive/team.  Your trust is completely destroyed.  On the other hand, if you promise too little, there is no motivation to really fix the underlying issues.  Leaders must issue realistic objectives that engage all interested parties and not make promises which they cannot deliver, or set the bar so high it is unachievable.  It is a delicate balance between the two extremes - art not science.

Unrealistic Expectations - The number one ingredient in failure

When that seemingly dire situation arises during project delivery, it is imperative the vendor company leadership be committed to understanding all the issues swirling about and not the most critical of the day.  A conversation with a leading question to the customer of ‘what do you want’ can quickly become the unavoidable black hole of request after request to rectify every sin ever committed by anyone at the vendor company. Quickly sunk is the project team that has leadership trying to respond to the literal wish-list of the client. It sets up the team, client, product and both companies to fail miserably. 

Instead, executives must listen to all aspects of the current situation and discern the true interest of the client and the company.  Once the common needs are defined, a transcendent plan can be constructed to address those needs, eliminating the distractions of petty items and quickly focusing the team on the greater good.  Uniting the client team and the delivery team with the common dominator gives hope and revitalized commitment to the success of the project.

Setting Expectations - The primary key to success

Expectations go both ways.  Clients expect delivery of a defined scope of work, within a predetermined budget and within a specified time frame.  Vendors expect once that delivery is completed the client will become a promoter for the products and services.  So if both the client and the vendor have specific expectations of the process, then why are only the client’s expectations defined and refined up front?  The customer upfront should be made aware of what is expected of them after successful completion of the scope of work. In other words, set the expectation that the customer will be a PROMOTER of the services and products after successful completion of delivery.

During delivery, this becomes the temperature check per say for how well the customer’s expectations are being met and how well that customer is going to meet the vendor’s expectations.  It is a key indicator of progress vs. successful progress of the project and corrective action can begin the instant it is understood that expectations, on either side, are not being met.  Open, honest, clear and concise communication of expectations regularly during delivery will promote an atmosphere of commitment to success.

All in all, expectations are tricky to navigate.  If set too high, failure is assured.  If set too low, it all becomes a non-event with little or no commitment from those participating.  To plot a course for success, set expectations appropriately relying on pragmatism as a guide.

I dreaded conference calls for years. Finally I decided to stop complaining and do something constructive. To my surprise, I discovered that with a few simple changes conference calls become highly effective meetings.

The hardest part was screwing up the courage to ask people to try something different. Turns out there was nothing to fear. People were ready for a positive change.

Here are the steps I follow.

1. Introduce myself as the “host.” A host welcomes people and makes sure their needs are met. That’s a lot different from “being in charge.”

2. Start with a check-in process. I kick off with a formal roll in which I ask each participant:

• What would you like to have happen in this meeting?
• Is anything keeping you from being fully present during the meeting?

3. Create a virtual seating chart. We all need to know who’s on the line, so I draw a virtual seating chart. In WebEx meetings I display it as a mindmap or slide so everyone can visualize who’s at the virtual table.
When I want feedback on a topic, I go around the virtual table and call on people in order. People can anticipate their turn, so they feel better prepared when I call on them.

4. Have people identify themselves. If I don’t know who’s talking, I don’t know how to respond. To prevent this problem, I ask people to identify themselves each time they speak, as in “This is Stuart. I agree with Frank’s assessment of the problem, but I’d like to add an additional perspective.”

5. Periodically poll each person for feedback. Talkative extroverts tend to dominate conference calls. That’s why I periodically poll each participant for any feedback they care to share, as in “Pat, what are your thoughts on this?” Then I wait until Pat has time to put her thoughts into words.

It takes time to poll each person and get all this feedback, and it’s worth every minute. The group benefits by hearing feedback from each person. And everyone becomes more actively engaged.

6. End with a check-out process. I’ve found that people often walk away from conference calls feeling frustrated that the most important issues never even came up. I don’t want that to happen, so at the end of each call I ask each person if there’s anything important that hasn’t been said.

I leave five to ten minutes for check-out. It’s not enough time to resolve tough issues, but it’s enough time to bring them to light. I’ve seen big breakthroughs happen in these few minutes, when people get up the courage to say what really needs to be said.

If you decide to try these techniques, let us all know how they work for you.

It is fair to say that the most unflappable, were phased recently, as we patiently watched what seemed to be an unraveling of our financial system. I think I must have over heard the question “What are we going to do now?” a million times if I heard it once. I was one of the cynics that politely stated “this is what happens when we lose sight of what is real”, insisting that our behavior lead to the issues at hand, and that this correction was merely the means to stop the insanity. Despite my immense cynicism, there are great lessons to be learned. Better yet, these lessons are best learned and quickly put to use in reshaping your services messaging.  Let me clarify what I mean.

If you dissect the issues we have witnessed, there are several common threads that ran through the demise of many of these organizations. It stands to reason that many of our clients will be indelibly marred with these issues, realizing that while it happened to someone else, it could happen to them. Since those issues are top of mind with our clients now, and will be for some time to come, survival in these turbulent times must include revising your solutions and messaging to address issues. They are:

• What is old is new again. By that I mean, when you lose sight of the basics, you are bound to be brought back to them at some point in time, and will be forced to recast all decisions within the framework of good ole’ sound practices and principles. A key example of this is the current mortgage industry. What happened to the expectations that you had to save for a 20% down payment in order to achieve the American dream of buying a home? Better yet, how did we get to no down payment, or even still better yet, 150% mortgages? Further, are you old enough to remember 28/36? Do you know what this means?  These USED to be the standards of ole’. And not surprisingly, they were good standards that ensured home ownership was taken seriously, and was within your means based on sound principles like a percentage of your earnings. Those regulations may have seemed harsh, old, restrictive, or call it what you will, but they worked. My point is that we are now back to what is old is new again to re-vector our financial system. I think we need to revert back to what is old is new again within PSO. The best of the ole’ in my book was expert process design. When was the last time that you performed ABC? Do you recall what it is? It is Activity Based Costing, and honestly, there are few organizations that I work with today that can answer the question of what any commonly used process costs their organization. Considering that an organization is merely an interwoven set of processes that provide goods and services to their clients, the absence of accurate knowledge about the cost of these processes, can be very problematic. In the spirit of knowing why a company cannot get back in the black, I would submit to anyone in a PSO that you revert back to the old approach of identifying major cost takeout within a client’s processes, and immediately make an impact by making these processes significantly more efficient and effective. Do you think there is a client that does not need this today?

• Agility. It is clear to me, and it may be to you, that while unsound practices have lead to the recent demise of some of these financial organizations, another key factor has been their inability to “flex” as needed when consumer spending has gone through ebbs and flows. Take the big box concept for example. How much do you think a big box retailer can ebb and flow when it takes $2MM to stock one of their 65,000 square foot stores? As consumer confidence has waned, and foot traffic count has decreased, how agile is a single store to reduce the overhead that goes along with this hefty inventory? It is hard to do. That concept does not have much agility built into its foundation. As another means to adopt your PSO messaging to a topic that is on the minds of many companies, you need to design and define solutions around how you are able to help an organization become more agile. This means being able to address over capacity when times are difficult, such as the climate we live in today, but also defining how an organization can meet the increasing demands that we know will be upon us at some point in the future. There are plenty of historical indicators to show that the times we live in now are merely another economic “cycle”, therefore the best PSO, and one that will resonate well with their clients, will be able to show a company how it will be able to weather any economic cycle through the agility they obtain via the solution your services organization has presented. That messaging will help you sell for years to come.

• Predictability. There is much to be learned from the recent issues of the past weeks in this area. How many CEO’s said their companies were sound and that the “worst was behind them”, only to falter some weeks or months later? Too many. There is no greater service that a professional services organization can provide to a client today, than to ensure their solutions make a company much more predictable. This can come from a number of forms, but a key place to start is with decision support. If a company does not have the ability to accurately depict the two main indicators of success, revenues and cost, they will not likely survive in the volatile economy such as the one that we are navigating presently.  I would challenge that if your solutions do not move the needle for a company in the area of predictability, they will be hard to sell today. I would venture a guess that many initiatives that are not making organizations more predictable are being scraped as I write this. It is a must. The tolerance for providing continued guidance to Wall Street, seeming lack of foresight into how volatile an organization really is, and the final outcome being a lack of sustainability, is not going to be an acceptable process going forward. This process creates significant asset devaluation, before anyone can administer triage, all because an organization cannot accurately predict where it is hemorrhaging. If you want your services to sell today, they must be focused around how they can help to make a difference in the area of predictability. This messaging will sell.

Is it all bad news today? Not if you are in Professional Services. In all fairness, there is no better place to be right now in my estimation.  If your solutions can bring a company back to good ole’ sound business practices using expert process design, make a company more agile and predictable, you will be a key business partner for many years to come.

Over the course of my career I have observed that both consulting companies and IT organizations generally do a horrible job of marketing, selling and communicating. I’ve discussed this with many of my colleagues over the years and found that not only do they usually agree with me, but many actually take pride in doing a bad job!!!! Technically-oriented professionals seem to have something resident in their DNA stack that produces a genuine disdain for anything related to “communications” or “selling.” They view these activities as beneath their dignity and position in life, especially once they arrive at the magical executive level.

Of course, that all changes pretty dramatically when these same people start to carry a P&L or when they start a consulting firm and the bank balance begins to approach single digit levels. Right about then they also run out of friends to call for new leads, the panic sets in and all of sudden selling isn’t such a bad thing! It’s at this point that they (and I include myself here) TRULY understand why marketing is so important to the success of the organization.

It doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, there are some pretty simple principles and examples that we can learn from another similarly technical field.... the restaurant and fine dining industry.

Cooks & Consultants, More Alike than Different

At this point you’re probably thinking “Tom, how the heck can you compare what Wolfgang Puck does to what I do?” or you’re wondering if I had too much of the fine wine that Wolfgang serves in his restaurants. Well, when you look at what they do and what we do it’s actually pretty similar.

A cook takes a recipe (methodology), adds in ingredients (consultants) and creates a dish (completed project) by using his specialized knowledge and experience. The other very interesting similarity is that the cook’s customers (you and I) have all the tools necessary to create the dish themselves, just as our customers can certainly install the software or do the analysis that our consultants do for them. We pay Wolfgang Puck a big premium for a steak and potatoes meal for the same reason our clients pay us a premium to perform the project: Everyone is looking for a much better end result, a better experience, superior quality, or we simply don’t have the time or ingredients to do the job.

Marketing Lessons from Wolfgang Puck

We also share the same challenge as the chef: How to convince our prospects to trust us with an expensive and very important project and at the same time convince them that our firm will do a better job than the many competitors vying for the same project. Not much different than the chef who opens a new restaurant in San Francisco or New York.

Wolfgang and Emeril do a few things that are really interesting to those of us who like good food. One of the most interesting things they do is give away, or sell for less than the cost of a single entree, their intellectual property - their methodology so to speak. They call them “recipes.” They put these recipes in books, and when you and I buy the books we look through them and the food looks so good we end up going to Spago for that special graduation dinner. Or we try to make gumbo and discover that it doesn’t quite taste like it did at Emeril’s in New Orleans.

These guys, and their less famous colleagues, also do cooking demonstrations where for the investment of an hour or so they show you how to cook great food. You get to taste it and then buy their cooking equipment or go to their restaurants.

And we all know it works because we go to restaurants and spend a couple of hours and a couple of hundred dollars for meals that we can prepare at home, just like our customers do with projects.

How Can We Apply This to Our World?

Pretty easily I believe, and in ways that will take marketing and selling and make them enjoyable, successful and more natural for us and our consulting teams.

The principle behind this marketing is pretty simple and is based on the fundamental premise that you are an expert in an intellectually based field. A cook has an oven and a consultant has a computer, but it is the combination of....

Methodology (Recipe)
Consultants (Ingredients)
and
Experience (technique)


that creates the satisfying end result, superior quality and job well done.

So let’s look at some specific ways where we can emulate Emeril & Wolfgang:

1. Give your prospect a copy of your methodology or a sample of a completed project notebook with ALL the deliverables.
   
   
   Sounds a bit crazy, doesn’t it, but it’s no different than Emeril giving away recipes. What it does is demonstrate to your prospect that you’ve done your homework, that you’ve done this work many times and that the work that you put into one of these projects is much more complex than they imagined. It also serves to explain to the prospect what all those “resources” will be doing when it comes time to negotiate the final statement of work. It also further reinforces the need for those specialized ingredients, your consultants.
   
   
   
2. Do some actual consulting during the sales process.
   
   
   We need to scope projects in order to provide good proposals, so why not treat the scoping effort like a consulting engagement and provide the prospect with guidance, advice and useful deliverables? This is the time when your prospect is evaluating your work and your people (taste testing how you use the ingredients, technique and experience) and you need to show off your stuff. All too often we are focused on uncovering potential risks when we should also be demonstrating our expertise by providing some direction and value. Do both.
   
   
   
3. Build a relationship before you get paid.
   
   
   Everybody knows Emeril because he’s on TV every night showing you how to cook all kinds of great food. When you go to New Orleans (or Las Vegas) his restaurant is one of your first choices. Do the same with you prospects. Do your best to get yourself and your consultants in front of prospects as much as possible before they’re ready to buy. Attend the corporate briefing during the early stages of the buying cycle, even though you or your consultant will probably do nothing more than sit and smile for the two days. Build the familiarity, provide opinions and perform like the expert that you claim to be. When the time comes to make a decision on the project, you’ll be at the top of their mind. Without the relationship, you’ll simply be a name on a list.

Yes, this all makes perfect sense. And yes, it takes a lot of commitment, discipline and patience to work, but it does work. In a past life at a large software company - my team used these techniques and was selected for an eight-figure, global consulting project by a Fortune 50 company with no competitive bids. The year before we won a similar seven-figure engagement from another Fortune 100 company, again facing no competition.

So remember that you’re just like a celebrity chef. You can weave your work into your marketing with profitable results.

1. Share your recipes with your prospects by giving away your methodology, plans and deliverables.

2. Let them taste your cooking by doing some real consulting during the selling and scoping process.

3. Build a relationship with your prospects before they’re ready to buy so that when it’s time for that special meal they’ll think of you first.

Bon appetit and happy selling!

Background

Although growing trends illustrate that enterprise corporations are moving towards on-demand Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions, traditionally this platform has been most popular with small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs).  Online, hosted offerings present a cost effective option to more expensive, slower to deploy client server options.  Regardless of the size of the customer, the deployment methodologies involved vary greatly from company to company.  Smaller organizations tend to work with tighter budgets and often demand more services than they are willing or able to pay for.  Developing a straightforward project plan and setting expectations from the beginning are essential practices of any deployment.  However, these practices are exponentially important when dealing with the narrow margins of an SMB deployment.

How Can You Deliver Effective SMB Deployments?

Although every deployment contains its own custom aspects, the following best practices provide a general roadmap to success:

1) Don’t make certain assumptions - We all know what happens when you assume ... The same applies for software deployments.  Enter pre-planning with a clean slate and probe for the information necessary to develop an effective approach rather than bring in trends from previous deployments.

• Just because the organization is small doesn’t mean their requirements are simple.  Business processes vary greatly from company to company and their complexities are not directly proportional to organization size.
• Be careful to not put too much stock in what the client “learned” during the sales process.  Sales demonstrations are more often than not floods of material.  Information gathered during a long sales cycle can easily be forgotten or misinterpreted.

2) Plan, plan, plan - A concise, definitive project plan is the simplest and most effective way to set client expectations.  Not only will it help your consultants perform within both fiscal and time budgets but it also will allow clients to monitor the progression of the deployment.

• Start with an end goal and work backwards.  Knowing where you are going is half the battle to getting there. 
• SaaS software has created the notion of a remote deployment.  Remote deployments often work well for clients with tight budgets, but be sure to convey to your clients the known risks of such an approach.  Collaboration is always easier when in person, so be sure to schedule frequent check-ins via web conference and phone. As needed, and depending on the complexity of the engagement, an on-site deployment may be the best route.
• The greatest challenge to successful deployments is when the consultant and client are not on the same page.  Before beginning, confirm the scope and estimate of the project to avoid delays.  This conversation will be much smoother if had from the start and not a week into the deployment.
• Create a “parking lot” to ensure that mission critical tasks are executed on time.  It’s easy to be distracted by secondary priorities. Focus on the ‘must have’ objectives and park all other requests until you have fulfilled the top priorities. Time for deployments is always limited so it’s essential to choose which features/functionality is ‘nice to have’ versus ‘must have.’
• The best way to boost employee adoption of a new system is to have an internal resource that has been with the project from the start.  Push the “train the trainer” approach with the expectation that the “trainer” will actively participate in the company-wide rollout.

3) Know who you are working with - Active involvement with a select group of internal resources provides the best avenue for success.  However, too many voices will impede the process. Less is more when it comes to deployments and having a centralized decision making body will pay dividends.

• Identify who are the key decision makers.  Confirm their availability and hold them to it especially if deploying remotely.
• Attain “C- Level” involvement whenever possible.  Executive sponsorship will guarantee the maximum value and return on investment for the client.
• Ensure that middle managers are involved during testing and training since they will most fully utilize the system.

4) COMMUNICATE - Constantly keep clients informed with focused, concise emails.

• Provide daily updates on progress, percent complete, and key issues.
• Highlight any new requirements or changes in scope.

5) Execute - Now that your plan is developed, follow it!  Stick to your established milestones and stay focused on your end goal.  Closely abiding by a mutually agreed upon plan will increase employee satisfaction and reduce miscommunications.  Product deployment is the first client interaction with your team and a smooth process will improve customer retention and business opportunities.

• Monitor your hours diligently to arrive as close to estimates as possible. 
• Changes to the plan will occur.  As soon as you need to deviate, tell the client in writing.
• Expect to say, “Let’s put that in the parking lot” often.  Keep the client focused on mission critical processes and save fringe functionality for later.
• Do not let the client sit on the sidelines.  Demand attention and involvement to ensure that they play an active role in the decision making process.

6) Integrations - SMBs are always looking for ways to further streamline and automate their workflows and integrations provide an avenue to combine your SaaS offerings with already invested applications.

• In order to save the client and you both time and money, have detailed conversations regarding the level of need for integrations.  Establish what integrations are required as well as a proposed timeline for when they need to be in place.

7) Handoff - A clean transition to your organization’s support and client management infrastructure is a critical step to get your client off the ground running.  When deployment is complete, provide your client with an updated plan that clearly illustrates project completion.  Openly communicate the client’s go-live status to your support group and be sure that the client is aware of support’s availability.  Be sure to detail any unique nuances of the client’s configuration to ensure optimal internal knowledge.

Conclusion

No two deployments are the same.  Much like the services they provide, small businesses have very unique processes and workflows with which they run their organizations.  By following the above best practices, you will be able to navigate through these idiosyncrasies and complete a successful deployment that both meets client expectations and delivers your product on time and within budget. 

As of the writing of this article, the top headline on Yahoo! news is Oil soars on dollar, Energy Dep’t report on falling supplies. The top video is Floods threaten economic disaster in Midwest. Dow down 1.4%. Nasdaq down 1.9%.

Regardless of whether or not we are actually in a recession, the economic news and outlook hasn’t been good for about a year. As I speak with leaders of professional service business, most of them haven’t reported ill effects on their firms from the economy. Still, they’re nervous. And a case of the yips across a senior management suite can lead to all sorts of different behaviors, some good, some not so good.

For those of you who are feeling the crunch to “do something,” here are some thoughts to help you avoid common mistakes and to take advantages of opportunities.

Don’t Overreact

When things are good, they’re not necessarily as good as you think. When things are bad, they’re not necessarily as bad as you think.
Just because it’s been slow for a few months, or you think it might slow down soon, don’t start making wild decisions or cuts. Keep a steady head about what’s really going on. Look past the wild swings in revenue (and enthusiasm and attitudes of team members) that might be caused by short-term factors.

Redouble Your Marketing Efforts

As a marketing consultant and advocate, this might seem self-serving. I don’t mean it that way. I’m merely suggesting that during any economy, firms can grow faster and win more clients if they step up their marketing energy.

Something about an economic slowdown seems to cause leaders at firms to focus inwardly. They self-analyze, having meeting after meeting about strategic direction, salaries and cost structure.

When it comes to business development they say, “It’s tough out there. I’m getting less action in the market than ever.” So both marketing staffs and professionals who should be bringing in clients at firms slow down and do less.

This time and energy would have been better spent focusing outwardly, working to improve brand, fill the pipeline, and bring in more clients.

Take Advantage of Opportunity for Change

Service firms “embrace change” about as enthusiastically as the sports community of Mexico embraces curling. However, service firms often shed their reluctance to change and propensity for slow decision making when faced with a business slowdown.

The halls at most service firms are abuzz with “what needs to happen to make this place better” during all economic conditions. When things are good, unproductive staff are often left to keep working. Sluggish marketing is allowed to plod along like the Old Gray Mare. Subpar business units and initiatives keep on keeping on. And bold, innovative initiatives die in committee because they’re “too risky.”

As you approach making changes big and small, keep the following one question in mind, “If I make these changes and the economy and business stabilizes, will we be in better shape or worse when things turn around?”

If the answer is “better,” make the changes and make them decisively. A slow time at the company is often the best time to reshape the firm and make it stronger for the present and future.

Recessionary times can be tough on the consulting community, but you may find that there are more opportunities now than ever - if you are willing to consider another path to delivering your skills.  Employers often cannot locate the expertise they require, hiring cycles are protracted as employers search for the perfect candidate, experienced employees retire, and companies often try to cut down on the overhead of full time employees.  Yet it is not the classic “consultant” these companies seek. This economical climate has given to a rise in the temporary employment of the interim executive.

We’ve all seen the increase in the use of short-term, or contingent workers in all parts of business and industry. In fact, the contingent workforce is growing at a rate three-to-four times the rate of the traditional workforce, and is expected to be 25 percent of the entire workforce by 2012.(1) And the growth in the use of interim executives is even greater.(2) Businesses in Europe and the UK have long relied on interim executives in leadership positions; in North America the concept has emerged as an effective way to fill critical business roles and provide quick introduction of new ideas and techniques.

One obvious use of an interim leadership is to fill the seat of an executive who suddenly or unexpectedly leaves the company.  Around 25% of all interim executives are hired to fill shoes suddenly left vacant.(3) And, despite the lip-service currently paid it, succession planning for key executive roles is lacking in the majority of businesses—especially in small and middle market companies.  Whether the executive is suddenly dismissed, quits, or is otherwise unavailable, the effect of the loss of an incumbent executive can be catastrophic.  Traditional routes to replacement are slow: on average it takes 18 months to replace a senior level manager or executive.
But why not hire a management consultant? Let’s look at how companies view the difference between hiring a consultant and an interim manager or executive.

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(1) Quoted from Linda Stewart. CEO of EPOCH in “Part-Time Workers: A New Leadership Paradigm” by Kellye Whitney in Talent Management Perspectives. Published January 2008

(2) Executives and professionals constituted 11% of the entire temp workforce in 2004, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

(3) Ibid.

Re-evaluating your skills sets and those of your professional services team may well reveal experience and expertise that allows you to approach today’s companies with a different business proposition than the tradition “consultant” role you have provided in the past.  While solid business experience is required on the part of the interim professional, such experience and expertise is often found within the consulting ranks.

This option only applies to experienced consultants. Rather than acting in an advisory or consultancy role, you or your team members must be accountable leaders who walk in ready to implement and manage a business or project to its successful conclusion, and be measured on delivering results, even when the tenure may be relatively short. 

There is a clear economic value to the employer of such short-term use of your skills. Providing interim management presents the hiring company with a lower cost of leadership talent; in fact, expense management is aided with interim employees at any level of the organization. Particularly in times of fiscal or economic uncertainly, the ability to readily add and subtract both staff and executive management represents a return on capital strategy that impacts the bottom line.  As assignment-based employees, interim executives provide a cost-effective, short-term solution to fill business-critical gaps or drive major initiatives. Research firm MORI found that companies regarded interim executives as both more suitable and cost-effective than management consultants. (4)

So if you have experienced talent “on the bench,” consider adding placement in interim positions to your recessionary bag of tricks.

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(4) MORI / BIE Captains of Industry Survey 2005 - Interim Executive Management ©MORI / BIE Interim Executive Ltd. 2005.

In working with many companies regarding process definition and efficient operational tool usage, I’ve come across a Catch-22 of sorts: 

• process driving tool selection and usage
• tool features and limitations driving process

You need to watch that the tool doesn’t start to dictate your processes. Compromise is good to a point but if the tool cannot handle your processes efficiently or introduces more manual work than you had before the tool, then you may need to revisit your tool selection.  Carefully documenting your requirements during the tool selection process and weighting the critical ones that will keep or improve your business efficiency will help you avoid this situation.

What about the example of a company with a robust tool and not using it to its fullest extent.  This is the biggest catch-22 area since the tool selection may not have included requirements for these other areas or perhaps included them but with lower priority and weighting.  Defining what your processes are should be done first.  This may include a complete ‘outside of the tool’ definition or a process that has limited information extracted from the tool.  This gives you a base of expectation.  Review the tool next to see how much of the process can be accommodated.  Details will be revealed about what can and cannot be accomplished or automated.  Now the decision is how much of the process will be handled by the tool and how much will continue outside of the tool.  Is the tool changing your process?  If so, is it in areas that can be compromised?  Be careful not to force tool usage and make your process more cumbersome. 

Best practices for most tools are available from the product vendor’s Professional Services organization or partners.  These are great resources to help you with process definition pertaining to the tool as they’ve worked with many clients that may be in your similar industry.

If your business doesn’t have a set process or is in the middle of redefining process, then you can use the tool to drive a process definition.  In this case, you start with the tool and what features it has in certain areas such as resource management, project management, etc.  Warning - many products have robust features so you can easily fall into a ‘use it all’ trap.  Look at the options and work out a business process that takes advantage of automation, if desired, and good reporting.  Whenever I work with companies my emphasis is getting information out of the tool - that typically drives what you need to put into the tool and the details about how to ‘characterize’ this information.

To established business processes from a tool perspective, best practices can be extremely helpful and save you lots of time in initial definition.  Business consulting organizations specializing in your particular tool can point out the do’s and don’ts as you define rollout plans and configuration needs.

The result of marrying business process with tool usage should be efficient business operations including data tracking and reporting.  Not a test of how many tool features you can use!  And definitely not a burden to your end-users!

Just two years ago, more than 75 percent of our implementation work was done on-site and face-to-face across the globe in places like New York, Sydney and London.  Higher gas prices, increased airline fees and travel hassles have made it far more challenging to fly or to commute long distances to deliver projects. With the cost of travel skyrocketing and with some 800 customers worldwide, our margins were getting squeezed to the point where we could no longer do business as usual.  We needed to re-think and revamp the processes for how we interacted with our customers, and communicate those changes in a way that made the customer feel more valued - not less.  As a result of this company-wide effort our on-site activity has significantly decreased to just 30 percent—at most.  So what changed?  We decided to implement the following programs and services:

1. Onsite versus online services

We started to communicate with our customers about the benefits of online instead of onsite services. Today we go onsite to meet our customers and the project teams --- to get to know one another, and to understand their needs and their business. During the initial one or two face-to-face meetings we work hard to establish trust and build the relationship so that much of the remaining work can be done remotely. Customers love it, more work gets done faster, and we are able to handle a larger number of implementations with less staff since less time is no longer wasted on travel. Our customers win by saving on travel costs and faster service delivery, and we win by having lower turnover rates on highly specialized consultants since less travel creates a more stable and happier career life for our service teams.

2.  More efficient project meetings

Disconnected systems and management spreadsheets lead to organizations that often require more face-to-face meetings to get things done. At Tenrox, we have agreed on and implemented role-based dashboards and key metrics per department. When I arrive at the office, I log into my portal and can see how every team is doing. The information I look at is not coming from the team leaders or their assistants. It is derived from data entered directly from the project contributors; managers simply have to approve or reject the data entries. Therefore the business unit performance, project costs, revenue, issues, and change requests I look at are based on actual data reported by our staff.

These reports and dashboards have virtually eliminated status report meetings. We meet to discuss strategy, to celebrate wins and review losses, and, yes, to review project progress; but at least in any such meetings people are not showing up with manipulated spreadsheets or to repeat verbatim what I could get from the dashboards and reports I already have access to.

Dashboards and project management reports based on live data, online approval workflows, and online collaboration technologies have reduced our G&A travel costs by at least 50% over the last two to three years. Not to mention the reduction of time and energy we wasted going over “design your own” spreadsheets in management and review meetings.

3. Combined events

Like many other companies today, we have a highly dispersed workforce. Our employees and outsourced teams work from various offices and homes across three continents. To make sure all of our teams are aware of the company’s mission and business plan we try and bring everyone together once or twice a year in Montreal, where the company was founded and where most of our R&D staff is located. In the last few years, we have combined all-hands meetings with performance evaluations, training, company parties and picnics into single events.  We do our best to try and make the trips as fun, worthwhile and productive as possible, while at the same time reducing the travel costs we would incur if we organized some of these events separately.

Higher Gas Prices; Greener Project Management