Category: Service Performance Pillars

The 2012 Professional Services Maturity Benchmark

By Dave Hofferberth on Feb 01, 2012 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

We will release our fifth annual Professional Services Maturity Model™ benchmark this month. Over the past five years, we have surveyed 850 firms and reported results on an annual basis. The past five years were hopefully not normal as the global economy experienced one of the greatest financial meltdowns and recessions in history. Professional service organizations (PSOs) went from torrid growth in 2007, to near chaos in 2009, and now begin to revert to double-digit year over year growth.

Social Media Professional Services Marketing

By Jeanne Urich on Jan 12, 2012 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

Social media — the seemingly infinite universe of web-based and mobile technologies through which users interact — is a pressing topic. It’s so pervasive with hype so ubiquitous that it’s easy to be overwhelmed when considering how to best incorporate this channel into your marketing strategy. In fact, some may question social media’s business value or even its permanence. However, the explosive and unprecedented growth of this global communication channel, supported by staggering statistics, isn’t debatable.

2012 PS Maturity™ Benchmark

By Dave Hofferberth on Dec 12, 2011 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

In 2007, we developed the PS Maturity Model™ as a strategic planning and management framework. With over 5,000 service and project-oriented organizations using it to chart their course to service excellence, it’s now the industry-leading professional services (PS) performance improvement tool.

Money Ball

By Dave Hofferberth on Nov 07, 2011 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

In 2002, the Oakland A’s, the nation’s lowest paid major league baseball team, cracked an 11-game losing streak coming back to win 20 games in a row. The team set a new American League record and won the American League West Division championship.

Get Ready for the 2012 Professional Services Maturity™ Benchmark

By Jeanne Urich on Sep 27, 2011 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

As we begin the initial research into our fifth-annual Professional Services (PS) Maturity™ benchmark, the world is at a critical juncture. Many of the political leaders who were in place in 2007 when we first began the PS Maturity™ survey are no longer around.

Bridge the Sales to Service Gap through the Cloud

By Teri Doty on Sep 01, 2011 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

Professional services executives understand that accurate, current information about all aspects of your business is critical for decision-making that affects key metrics like utilization, backlog, cash flow and win rate. But if you’re like many professional services organizations, that information lives in four or five — or 10! — different systems (or spreadsheets). Every operational question requires a time-consuming scavenger hunt for answers.

Innovation Generation

By Dave Hofferberth on Aug 27, 2011 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

The pressure is on to perform in professional services. The industry overflows with highly competitive, “alpha males,” who continue to plan, sell, execute and collect as efficiently as possible. The problem is competition always lurks right around the corner. Leading firms dedicate departments to look for the “next big services thing”. As such, services innovation becomes a critical driver of future performance.

Let’s Talk About Bill Rates

By Dave Hofferberth on Aug 02, 2011 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

If professional services bill rates are rising, the economy must be improving, right? Service Performance Insight (SPI) has drawn this conclusion in the first two weeks of surveying over 50 global professional service organizations for our third-annual consulting bill rate study.

Setting the Right Tone

By Jeanne Urich on Jun 22, 2011 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

Great service leaders must wear five hats simultaneously. They manage and inspire the human side of the business — developing a vision, walking the talk and building a great team. They’re constantly on the lookout to find ways to improve execution by streamlining the business while searching for new avenues for growth. They have an innate sense of what tomorrow’s business should be, and steer their organization into a position to prosper even more in the future.

Your Workforce Is Changing

By Dave Hofferberth on Jun 05, 2011 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

The professional service industry is in transition. Service Performance Insight’s analysis of over 600 professional services organizations (PSOs) over the past four years has shown significant changes in the market. A handful of Goliath service organizations are no longer the only ones to offer everything from strategy to implementation to business process outsourcing. Now, in addition to the Goliaths, thousands of boutique PS organizations provide a comprehensive portfolio of high-quality services at extremely competitive prices.

SaaS Professional Services Come of Age

By Jeanne Urich on May 03, 2011 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

The year 2010 will go down in history as the one that software as a service (SaaS) professional service organizations (PSOs) trumped enterprise software PSOs. One of the most significant changes in 2010 has been the dramatic shift of embedded SaaS PSOs from cost centers to profit centers.

At Their Service

By Jeanne Urich on Apr 01, 2011 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

Despite the downturn, the professional services market continues to hold its own. Service buyers are looking for greater consistency, predictability and accountability from professional services organizations (PSOs). Rather than open-ended, time and expense-priced projects, the market has moved toward deliverables-based and fixed-price engagements, shifting more of the risk and responsibility for success to the service provider.

2011 Best-of-the-best Professional Services Firms

By Jeanne Urich on Feb 24, 2011 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

In the last issue, we highlighted and analyzed several key performance indicators from our 2011 Professional Services Maturity Benchmark report. We also focused on leadership, one of the five service performance pillars. The top firms excel not only in leadership but in the other four service performance pillars of finance and operations, human capital alignment, service execution and client relationships.

2011 Best-of-the-best Service Firms

By Dave Hofferberth on Feb 04, 2011 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

According to our 2011 Professional Services Maturity Model Benchmark report, out of 214 participating organizations, 12 firms (5 percent) significantly outperformed the benchmark average by excelling in all five service performance dimensions of leadership, finance and operations, human capital alignment, service execution and client relationships.

A Look Ahead for Professional Services

By Dave Hofferberth on Dec 21, 2010 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

Things are looking up.

SPI Research is in the final weeks of collecting data for its fourth-annual professional services (PS) maturity benchmark report. Each year, we analyze the professional services market and look at market trends while assessing overall market health.

Bill Rates Are Increasing!

By Jeanne Urich on Nov 18, 2010 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

The technology professional service industry is recovering from the worst recession of a lifetime. The good news: with recovery, bill rates are returning to previous levels and aggressive discounting has begun to subside

How to Create a ‘Billable Consulting Culture’

By Jeanne Urich on Oct 20, 2010 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

One of the hardest, but most rewarding change efforts is building a “billable consulting culture.” Sure, every professional service (PS) firm wants to increase the number of billable consultants, the number of billable hours and the consultant’s hourly rate. But how do PS firms build a culture so these behaviors are intrinsic?

Stop the Bleeding!

By Jeanne Urich on Sep 21, 2010 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

The past few years have been tough on professional service (PS) providers. A changing economic climate, lost clients, project changes and cancellations have taken their toll on the professional service sector and its clients.

Professional Services Business Applications

By Jeanne Urich on Aug 24, 2010 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

Business application adoption by all sizes and types of billable service organizations has steadily gained momentum since professional services (PS) industry-specific business applications came to market over a decade ago. While every billable service organization uses some type of system (albeit manual spreadsheets) to capture costs, bill for time and account for revenue, many do not take advantage of the available business solutions that could help them improve operational performance.

Backlog: The Fuel for Growth

By Jeanne Urich on Aug 02, 2010 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

Sell, bid, win, deliver and collect. It sounds easy, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, things can go awry quickly with professional service sales, execution and delivery. Before work can begin, there must be a sale. While no one takes this for granted, professional services organizations (PSOs) must optimize sales processes and pipelines so they can sell profitable work that leads to successful projects and happy, referenceable, bill-paying clients.

Navigating the Choppy Waters between Sales and Service Delivery

By admin on Jun 22, 2010 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

Over the past several months, SPI Research has explored the subject of improving sales and service delivery collaboration. With the advent of new integrated business applications and enthusiasm for software as a service, we initially thought classic breakdowns between sales and service delivery were relics. It turns out age-old schisms between sales and service delivery remains rampant, along with disconnects in business processes that cross functional boundaries.

The Importance of Service Execution

By admin on Jun 03, 2010 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

From the beginning of the economic downturn, much has been made of the need to improve client relationships and better manage cash flow. But what about improving service execution? This question is on the minds of many professional services (PS) executives, as the economy improves, albeit erratically, and many organizations must focus on service performance enhancements.

Sales and Service: Separated by More than Just Culture

By admin on May 09, 2010 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

In many professional services organization (PSOs), the sales force appears to operate on an island, with a go-go-go attitude and minimal communication as to what each salesperson is selling, to whom and at what price.

Secrets of the Best-of-the-Best

By Jeanne Urich on Apr 06, 2010 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

The 2010 Professional Services Maturity Model Benchmark reports that out of 225 participating organizations, 12 firms (5 percent) significantly outperformed the benchmark average by excelling in all five service performance dimensions.

Five Dimensions of Leadership

By Jeanne Urich on Mar 10, 2010 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

What are the five dimensions of professional services leadership? How can you apply them to create and lead a great services organization? How does the importance of each dimension change based on organization size and company lifecycle stage?

Strategic Resource Management for PSOs

By admin on Jan 21, 2010 in Featured, Service Performance Pillars

As global economic conditions have deteriorated over the past two years, our research shows downward pressure on the billable professional services (PS) market. Annual revenues are still growing slightly, but they are not increasing at the double-digit rates of 2007.