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!

Advertisement

TSW: Top Attended Sessions from Day 1

Yesterday was the opening day at TSIA’s Technology Services World Conference at the beautiful Aria in Las Vegas. This is our first year at Aria and boy, what an upgrade. This is the newest property on the strip, very high tech, and the first conference center I’ve ever been to that had internet everywhere. Hallelujah!

We had one round of breakout sessions yesterday, led by members of our research team. I always say when it comes to hot topics, people vote with their feet. So I like to look at which sessions had the highest attendance each day. The five top attended sessions yesterday were:

Transform and Control the Customer Experience. This session focused on the importance of transforming and taking control of the customer experience. While consumer firms have been very savvy about managing the customer experience across the entire customer lifecycle, B2B firms still mainly focus on siloed CSAT scores by department, with no one monitoring the entire customer experience across marketing, sales, professional services, education services, support services, field services, etc.

The Emerging Profiles of Technology Professional Services Organizations (and the Services Capabilities You Must Master in Order to Adapt and Transform). Professional services (PS) businesses are rapidly adapting to the new tech economy realities, defending and protecting even as they are transforming. We are witnessing two worlds of tech economics as they coexist, often within the same companies, and definitely within the same technology sectors. New PS profiles are emerging, new capabilities are arising, and new pressures are being exerted on well-known capabilities.  This session looked at two issues:  What are these emerging models? and What services capabilities will be required for success?

From “Compulsory Services” to Delivering Real Business Value to Customers: It’s a Journey, So Act Now! This session focused on new service capabilities that are needed for success in the future, particularly relating to service revenue generation. Topics included Understanding customers’ business priorities with respect to growing their revenue, optimizing their cost structures, and complying with their industry’s regulatory requirements; Identifying which services you can bring to bear in order to help customers accelerate on their business priorities; Pricing these new services to reflect the additional business value you will deliver to customers; and Making the training investments in your product sales reps, service sales specialists, and renewal teams to effectively position and sell these new services.

Transformation of the Global Support Services Organizational Structure. The global economy, consumption economics, new service offerings, and cloud services have had a major impact on how service organizations are structured. This session examined how these factors are transforming support services organizations to meet the demands of the customer, the challenges this is creating for our member companies, how the organizations are structured around the globe, and what new roles our organization is taking on.

Identifying High ROI Questions to Be Answered by Consumption Analytics. Consumption analytics identifies tactics and offerings that boost the value of your services to the end customer by answering the what, when, and why questions regarding the customer experience. But which questions will uncover the highest ROI for your services organization? This session introduced TSIA’s framework for building a service analytics capability, addressing the overall framework and the research agenda. Afterward, with a small panel of members and partners, there was a discussion about how service organizations can build a high-priority question inventory to lay the foundation for their own consumption analytics capability.

I’ll be back with more TSW updates soon! And as always, thanks for reading!