The Fulcrum Effect

Rajesh Setty - President
Suggestica, Inc.

LinkedIn wants us increase our contact count. Twitter wants us to communicate with 140 characters. iPhone and Blackberry want us to be always connected. World IS moving fast for sure. In the Professional Services world, the world seems to move a bit more faster.

However, skills required for long-term success (such as building a personal brand, building lasting relationships etc.) are built slowly and over a long period of time. The dilemma we face is to continue to invest in skills that provide results only after a long period of time when the world just wants us to move FAST.

Rajesh will highlight a few of the long-term skills we all need in our life and an approach to blend practicing these kills in the fast paced world of Professional Services.

Turning the Corner from Software-Driven to Services Led

Liz Murphy - Vice President, Professional Services
Datatel, Inc.

Eight years ago Liz Murphy was challenged by the Datatel CEO to move from her position as Vice President of Marketing to Vice President of Professional Services. The goal for the transition was to drive revenue growth from what had traditionally been an implementation services based business. After a lengthy journey riddled with political challenges, employee adjustments, and lots of business intelligence, Datatel now enjoys strong performance from a comprehensive PSO that has increased margins, revenue and client satisfaction and leads the company in revenue planning. Liz will present a framework for migrating to services-led organization along with tools and techniques for success and prescriptions for common ailments.

“The Good, The Bad and the Ugly – Sizing Professional Services for early stage software product companies”

Charles Rattray - Director of Professional Services
Tideway

Complex software products fall within three extremes: being perfect; littered with coding bugs; and flawed by poorly implemented business logic. Developing a Services revenue model which remains effective, while the organization transitions towards producing near perfect software, and provides early customers value around their product purchase, can be a challenge. This presentation will outline the issues involved, discuss how this impact the organization’s success, and how to model and size the Services organization to maximize services revenue from a developing product.

Can Support Organizations Drive Corporate Growth?

Dr. Vince Nowinski - Principal Methodologist
Satmetrix

Businesses across the globe have begun to recognize the central contribution of customer loyalty to profitable growth. Given the central role that service and support organizations play in shaping customer experience, investments in support and service quality are an overlooked opportunity to drive customer loyalty and financial improvement. We will review two recent studies at Satmetrix which reveal that loyalty—including the loyalty of key decision makers who do not interact directly with support and service personnel—is sensitive to the quality of day-to-day customer support. What’s more, we’ll examine how organizations can go about measuring the economic impact that support has on the corporate bottom line, a useful defense against increasing pressures to cut costs. Using Net Promoter—the “Ultimate Question—“ and tying it to both revenue growth and support satisfaction, Dr. Nowinski will walk through an approach that you can apply within your own organization to build a business case for additional investment in support and services.

Measuring the Effectiveness of Professional Services

Scott Brown - Senior Director, Professional Services – North America
InQuira

Professional Services is a critical component to any software organization beyond the traditional system integration and strategic advisory capabilities. In this session, Scott Brown, VP of Services at InQuira, will discuss techniques for getting the most out of your Professional Services organization and share a point of view on how InQuira is using Professional Services to drive cross-division value beyond the traditional boundaries and conventions.

Attend this session to learn:

• What are the key criteria to measure how effective the Professional Services Organization is
• How does Professional Services support the sales organization in driving larger, strategic deals and help reduce the sales cycle
• How the Professional Services team can help you differentiate your company from the competition
• How the Professional Services team can help the Product Development team deliver a quality product and enable the Support organization to provide world-class support to clients

Getting the Fees You Deserve: Results of the Fees and Pricing Benchmark Report: 2008

Mike Schultz – Publisher, RainToday.com and President, Wellesley Hills Group
RainToday.com

In early 2008 RainToday.com surveyed 2,100 leaders of professional services firms regarding trends in their fees and pricing. During this session, learn how firms uncover competitors’ prices, what characterizes firms that receive the highest fees and how alternative pricing models are influencing overall pricing. You will hear specific recommendations on how to get the fees you want for the services you provide.

How to Develop Your Path to PS Performance Excellence

Jeanne Urich - Managing Director
Service Performance Insight

How do you drive Peak Performance for your Professional Service Organization? How does your PSO measure up? What are the most important Key Performance Measurements and where should you focus? Where do you begin? How do you measure the business value of improvements?

PS Executives need both a baseline understanding of their organization’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), as well as how they compare to industry benchmarks. In this session, industry expert Jeanne Urich will discuss the current market drivers affecting PSOs and provide analysis and recommendations for improving performance. She will provide key performance metrics from her recently published “The New Professional Service Maturity Model” 2008 Benchmark along with real-life Case Studies showing how PS organizations have used the PS Maturity Model to implement their own PS transformations.

You’ll Learn

• Common Service Challenges
• The five pillars of PS Performance
• Key Performance Indicators and where to focus
• Best practices to improve your professional service performance
• The business value of enhancing your PSO
• Real-life case studies of PS organizations who have used the PS Maturity Model to transform their organizations

Everybody Sells Services (at Least They Should!)

Jim Alexander - Founder
Alexander Consulting

Selling services is different from selling products—way different. Different knowledge, different skills, and a different mindset are required to successfully demonstrate the value of intangibles and sell the invisible. The presenter’s research backs this up—only 17% of senior executives surveyed felt that the right services were being sold to the right people in the right way!

The key to services selling success is getting everyone who touches the customer committed, comfortable, and confident in their selling role.

Productize Implementations for Speed and Quality

Scott Snow - Vice President, Implementation Services
JPMorgan

Do you implement SaaS or engage vendors that do? Despite the promise of SaaS do you feel implementation takes longer than expected, seems unnecessarily complex, has too many defects, costs more than budgeted, and proves difficult to service? To address these challenges Scott teamed with his sales, product, quality assurance and engineering groups to productize the implementation. As a result implementation duration, cost, and defects were reduced by over 50%. Scott will walk you through the process, share his experience, warn you about the pitfalls, and discuss where he thinks we go from here.