How to build successful professional services unit for Products and Services? - A Point of View

Disclaimer: I am in no way a products specialist and am writing this article based on my know-how/experience of the products and services industry.

Technology sector is growing leaps and bounds on a daily basis. With the advent of SMAC (Social Media, Mobility, Analytics and Cloud), the Software Products and Services Markets are changing phenomenally. The changing landscape gives a lot of positive levers to the end customer/firms offering services in terms of Improved Product Quality, Faster Turnaround for Product Launches, Quick Feature enhancements and Quick Resolution of issues to name a few.

Don’t find customers for your products. Find products for your customers. — Seth Godin

Product companies are in the process of expanding horizon and moving into a suite based products and services delivery. Will this suit the end-clients? Would Best of Breed Product Splintering and Integration succeed in the long-run Vs. a Single Vendor based Product Suite based delivery? There could be different variations that would benefit different organizations, based on organizational complexity, ease of contracting, technology consistency, product suitability, organizational drivers etc.

Successful Product companies have a solid Vision, Mission Values. They have focused goals, have a clear strategy in terms of customer Focus, open to Crowd-sourcing of Ideas from within. These focus on higher customer value delivery to lead the rest as visionaries

Successful companies having plenty of products to offer as a suite to their customers have strategic “String of Pearls” or a “Strings of Jades” approach for Product Portfolio Selection and Rationalization for customer specific needs.

It is difficult for Software Products Company to run successfully (like a Marathon) with just a single product - due to risks associated with competition, revenue protection and acquisition etc. There have been in-numerous examples of successful product companies that had successful sprints or even middle-distance success due to the quality, niche value offered by the product. It is a case of fast and glorious surviving than the big and hungry. In the long run bigger firms take over the smaller ones to avoid them becoming a big competitor, or wait out for the smaller ones to build a good customer and revenue base to grow inorganically.

In terms of Gartner’s Hype Curve for Market Situation to move from Innovation Trigger to Plateau of Productivity critical success factors for a products or services company are

• Customer Relevance – How is it relevant to the customer?
• Are you able to talk about customers’ problems, provide solution for them instead of talking about their products and services
• Do you have an approach for Customer Vision Mapping, Customer Value Management, and Value Modeling? Value Delivery Roadmap using Products and Services
• Are you able to articulate about value journey, leveraging the benefits to the customer along the way?
• Product and Services Roadmap – Do you have a solid Roadmap for your Products and Services
• What is strategy for future Product growth?
• Do you have a strategy to address some of the challenges faced by the product companies (especially niche, new ventures) such as
• Typical Market Barriers as addressed by Porter’s 5 forces model
• Approach for Delivery Timing of the product
• This will determine if the product is a vapor-ware, bloat-ware or bleeding edge, ahead of the curve etc.
• Do you have solid understanding of the market demand (historic, current and future)
• Market Research and Business Plan
• Product Maturity and Suitability for the Market
• Product Performance and Enhancements needed to suit Market needs
• Market and Customer Centric Product Development Model
• Market centric Product Screening / Concept Testing (Conference Room Pilots, Proof of Concepts, etc.)
• Do you understand the Customer Appetite
• Need for product or service
• Willingness to Pay
• Niche
• Unique Selling Power (USP) / Niche of Product or Service
• Have you performed Market Analysis, Approach to Build the right team, Approach to Build the right Product, Right Marketing approach, Good mechanism for choosing the right markets and customers, Ability to Sell the right solution to right customers, Business value realization measure to Make the customers succeed and growing the business with success
• Do you have good Product Development and Professional Consultancy skills in-house to augment the growth – either in-house or via alliance partnership?
• You need to have solid product managers, product consultants
• Are expected to communicate like a diplomat to business stakeholders, a specialist in domain and product and have the heart of the product engineer to understand the technology behind it.
• Leadership, passion, Strong communication, Market Research, Domain Expertise – will play a major role
• Key drivers that determines effectiveness of a professional services arm are – Credentials of the team (members), Delivery track record, end-to-end product know-how, assets and tools for innovation

Thus, when it comes to professional services organization for a built great products, it eventuates to the following

• Building a demand forecast for services
• Building a right skills development framework
• Building right team building methodology
• Structuring the knowledge management and training
• Developing the right skills (consulting, communications, product, technology) to deliver
• Managing the domain, customer value management, product feature know-how
• Right placement of resources -> Right Skills at Right Customer in Right Projects at Right Locations
• Ability to Sell (Up-sell, Cross Sell) while delivering the solutions
• Gamification of knowledge sharing via well-built knowledge management systems
• Rewards and recognition for right behaviors
• Build solution accelerators, proof-of-concepts, and assets to reduce time to market. Implement low-hanging fruits for immediate value delivery and long-term strategy to deliver continuous value to the customer.

Another challenge faced by product companies is the long-tail of support demand post product implementation. This can be managed with alliance partners, in-housing skills and support via a shared services model. From a professional services organization, this can be addressed via High Quality Resource Management Process aided by a well-constructed product and services Strategy, supported by an effective Resource Management and Supply/Demand Funnel Management and having adequate Resources (People, Technology, and Resources)

One essential catalyst for success of a professional services is solid knowledge management infrastructure. Whilst Internet is a good source for established languages, frameworks and implementations, the product secrecy does not allow for top secret information to be made available readily. A good product firm have an excellent infrastructure in terms of knowledge availability and a support infrastructure. It is good to have a Valuable – Online, Connected Peer Network, have Direct SME Expertise readily available, high quality Support Material to ensure excellent Knowledge Management is put in place.

From an operational standpoint, a good professional services unit

• needs to have optimal capacity for services
• good utilization, good productivity in terms of tools and assets
• Innovation and thought leadership
• excellent delivery management rigor in terms of milestones, deliverable, and revenue and margin management
• It also comes down to ability to offer various Price Points that are enticing to the customer
• Such as Value Based Pricing, Transaction Based Pricing, Freemium, Pay-per-Use or percentage of benefit realization.
• Customer Support Models – Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze etc. and Resource mapping based on the skills, experience and Pricing band
• A good operational unit will have a focus on
• Customer Experience for Services
• Good Portfolio Management and Portfolio Vibrancy – to avoid conflicts across customers
• Mix of Portfolio – Team/Skills Mix for various clients / products

Many successful companies thrive based on customer relationship which is a win-win to both the parties. A transactional relationship will end once the transaction is over (i.e. contract term). Successful companies become so by becoming a trusted adviser to the client and providing value during good and bad times for the customers. To become a trusted adviser - one needs to become trust-worthy (by delivering what one promises and promising what one can deliver) and have impeccable credibility. Both these may take time in terms of services. However, it is a quick matter in terms of market leading innovations.

T R U S T E D A D V I S E R = TRUST  + CREDIBILITY

Once you have established a trusted adviser relationship, Key success to the Products/Services lies in

• How to convert customer from being Product/Service Aware to Net Promoters of the Product / Service?
• How do you get Services / SI Leaders to come over to you and move from being Product/Service Aware to Net Promoters of your Products/Services?
• How do you get Social Media, Tech Evangelists, and Influencers to become net promoters?

Again, getting this done the right way comes down to building the right team. Having the right people with right attitude and right skills, aided by right management rigor, right coaching, training, resources, support given will take your product or services unit a long way forward. This is proven multiple times by a lot of great companies, on a daily basis.

Hope it was useful. Thank you for reading this post. If you enjoyed reading it, please Like, Comment and Share!

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