TechBEST and STAR Awards Recap: TSW Closing Award Ceremony

Last week’s Technology Services World Conference closed on Wednesday with the awards luncheon, and I wanted to recap the winners of the TechBest Best in Adoption and Best in Show Awards, as well as the TSIA members who won STAR Awards.

The TechBEST Awards recognize outstanding performance by TSIA partners, and are awarded at our Spring and Fall conferences. For Fall 2013, there were 2 awards: TechBEST Best in Adoption, and TechBEST Best in Show. There were three finalists for Best in Adoption, based on which partners had the largest increase in adoption year-over-year in my annual TSIA Member Technology Survey. The three finalists were Citrix, Compuware and Coveo. The TechBEST Best in Adoption winner was Compuware for their Changepoint Professional Services Automation (PSA) platform, which has seen rapidly rising adoption as spending on PSA has increased. The Wall Street Journal even carried the press release here.

The TechBEST Best in Show award is voted on by conference attendees, representing the partner who provided the best experience in the TSW Expo, i.e., the most compelling demo, the best booth experience, the best value proposition, etc. The winner of the Fall 2013 TechBEST Best in Show was LivePerson, whose software and services create meaningful, real time customer connections that help businesses increase conversions and improve consumer experience. Congratulations to LivePerson who had great booth traffic, lots of buzz about their demos, as well as a standing-room only in their Expo Theatre session!

Next up were the TSIA STAR Awards, recognizing companies that display exceptional leadership, innovation, and commitment in both service excellence and in developing and implementing industry-leading practices. Since its inception in 1990, the STAR Awards have become one of the highest honors in the service and support industry, acknowledging the contribution of companies of all sizes to the continual improvement of service and support delivery industry-wide. To win a STAR Award, TSIA member companies must submit an official application, which are judged by an executive committee consisting of TSIA Advisory Board members and TSIA Research staff. The following STAR Awards were presented for Fall 2013:

• Innovation in the Delivery of Support Services: Oracle
• Innovation in the Delivery of Managed Services: Digital Hands
• Innovation in the Delivery of Field Service: Hewlett Packard Managed Print Services
• Innovation in Service Offer Development: McAfee Consumer Support
• Innovation in Leveraging Technology for Service Excellence: EMC Corporation
• Innovation in Enabling Customer Success/Support Services: Cisco Systems
• Innovation in Enabling Customer Success/Service Revenue Generation: Salesforce
• Innovation in Enabling Customer Success/Professional Services: Nice Systems
• Innovation in Enabling Customer Success/Education Services: Cisco
• Innovation in Customer Commitment: EMC

For all you TSIA members, stay tuned for my writeup of “why they won,” providing information behind each of these STAR Awards. That report should be published within a few weeks after review and approval by each winner.

I was a bit sorry to see TSW come to a close. It was our largest event ever with more than 1100 attendees, and the new conference location, at the Aria Resort and Convention Center, was a real class act. I’d like to congratulate all the TechBEST and STAR Award winners, and I’d like to thank everyone at TSIA and among our membership who made the conference a big success. And thanks to you, as always, for reading my blog! See you at TSW Spring in Santa Clara on May 5, 2014!

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2013 Services Technology Survey NOW OPEN!

I am very happy to announce that my annual services technology survey is now open. This is the 8th annual survey, which tracks adoption, satisfaction and planned spending across 24 categories of tools and services. The survey is open March 1 to March 31. The data from this survey drives the bulk of my research for the year. Never have so few created so many research reports from a single survey. In time for our Spring Technology Services World Conference in Santa Clara, I will publish:

• 2013 TSIA Heatmap. This report provides a high level view of adoption trends across all service discipline, noting major technology trends impacting support services, field service, education services, professional services, service revenue generation, as well as our new discipline, managed services.
• 2013 Spending Reports. I also write detailed reports documenting adoption, satisfaction and planned spending for each service discipline, 7 reports in all (in addition to the above disciplines, I also create a version for TSIA partners)
• 2013 Top Installed Report. Last year was the first time I created this report, which shows top installed products in all 24 categories of the survey. This turned out to be one of the top downloaded reports from TSIA.com last year, as everyone starts a new purchase by asking, “What products are my peers using?”
• 2013 Spending: Europe. Last year we had such a great response from European companies that I was able to publish a separate report showing how adoption and planned spending trends differed in Europe compared to North America. Providing I receive a good response database, I will create this report again for 2013.

In addition to published research, the satisfaction scores received in the survey determine the winner of the TechBEST Best in Satisfaction Award, presented at TSW Santa Clara.

If you work in a services role, I urge you to take the survey. It will take less than 15 minutes to complete (hopefully a lot less). Everyone is eligible to participate, not just TSIA members. In fact, everyone who takes the survey will receive a copy of the 2013 Heatmap as my thank you for participating. If you are a vendor of services technology, please consider asking your customers to take the survey.

Here is the link to the survey:  https://survey.vovici.com/se.ashx?s=7E212C5912872EA3

Thanks for your help, and let me know if you have any questions. And as always, thanks for reading!