Announcing TSIA TechBEST Finalists: Citrix, DB Kay & Associates, MARKETii

According to the TSIA Benchmark, customer satisfaction with enterprise software averages 4.2 on a five-point scale (with 1 representing very unsatisfied and 5 representing very satisfied). It is troubling, then, that the satisfaction scores for the 24 categories covered in the TSIA Member Technology Survey range from a low of 3.29 to a high of 3.96—all are under the industry average of 4.2. However, if you look at individual satisfaction scores by vendor, multiple bright spots emerge. In fact, multiple partners received scores above 4.0, with one partner scoring an average of 4.44, well above the industry average of 4.2. The three partners with the highest satisfaction scores are named finalists in the TechBEST Best in Satisfaction Award.

Today at the Technology Services World Conference, I interviewed the TechBEST Best in Satisfaction finalists in the Santa Clara Convention Center theatre to kickoff Technology Services World:

• Citrix. Citrix is transforming how people, businesses, and IT work and collaborate in the cloud era. The Citrix GoTo cloud services portfolio powers mobile workstyles, allowing companies to work with anyone from anywhere. Its GoToTraining product is an easy-to-use online training service that allows you to move your live instructor-led training programs online. Reach more learners, collect real-time feedback, record and store your training sessions and more—all while slashing travel costs. With GoToAssist, companies are able to deliver amazing support experiences and maintain maximum uptime of people, their devices, and apps. GoToAssist seamlessly integrates web collaboration with technical support and remote monitoring tools to remove support complexities, drive efficiencies, and reduce costs. Using all three capabilities together makes it simple for support professionals to identify, ticket, and quickly resolve issues. Citrix also offers other services purpose-built for collaboration and remote access that include GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, GoToMyPC, Podio, and ShareFile. Learn more at http://www.citrixonline.com.
• DB Kay & Associates. DB Kay & Associates, Inc., helps support organizations create sustainable knowledge programs. The firm consults and trains to drive best practices and sway internal stakeholders, reducing risk and accelerating success. DB Kay provides measurement frameworks that help organizations develop their team members and show value to their executives. They tailor their services to their customers’ specific needs, offering everything from short strategy sessions to hands-on program management. Whatever the engagement, they know they’ve been successful when they’ve transferred knowledge effectively enough that their customers no longer need them! DB Kay customers include Sage, IBM, Carestream, Riverbed, Microsoft, and NetApp. For more information, go to http://www.dbkay.com.
• MARKETii. MARKETii specializes in end-to-end customer satisfaction and service quality assessment and reporting solutions covering event-based and business relationship surveys via telephone and web surveys, along with mystery calling. MARKETii operates in over 25 native languages to over 85 countries. Reporting is via multilayer, real-time web portal and proactive summaries, action items, and recommendations. Advanced reporting comes with the aid of call recording, culture indices, NPS, Strategic Priority Analysis, Service Correlations, and tech support call-reduction analysis. MARKETii works with companies such as Hitachi Data Systems, Ricoh, HP, Extreme Networks, Agilent, and many more. The company has never lost a client since its inception! For more information, go to http://www.MARKETii.com.

Congratulations to each of our finalists, each of whom is clearly doing a great job in meeting and exceeding customer expectations, and creating excellent customer experiences. I will announce the winner of TechBEST Best in Satisfaction during the awards ceremony at Service Revolutions on Wednesday. Stay tuned for details. Thanks for reading!

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What’s Hot at TSW: Top Attended Sessions

Today is the closing day of Technology Services World in Santa Clara, and I always find it enlightening to look at the top attended sessions of the event to see what topics are most interesting to members. No surprise, services technology, metrics, social media, and knowledge management proved to be popular topics. This is a list of the 10 sessions from Day 1 and Day 2 with the highest attendance:

• Social Support: Battle-Hardened Lessons from Top Practitioners: A Panel Discussion with Leading Social Media Strategists in Tech Services. The was the top attended session at TSW, exploring the inner-workings of social media–best practices and lessons learned–and uncovering which strategies, tools, and processes are being used most successfully by leading services organizations. The session leader was TSIA’s own Shawn Santos, with a very impressive panel of experts: Lois Marie Townsend from Hewlett-Packard, Radha Penekelapati from salesforce.com, and Toby Richards from Microsoft.
• Driving Recurring Service Revenue: How SAP, EMC, and BMC are Transforming Their Service Business into a Growth Engine. This Services Technology Advantage Case Study session was the 2nd highest attended session at the event. The audience heard from SAP, EMC and BMC service leaders on how they have taken their service business to the next level. Panelists discussed how increased focus, visibility, and control has helped them transform their service business into a revenue growth engine. The session host was Keith Leimbach from ServiceSource, with panelists Christophe Bodin from BMC Software, Sara Hepner from EMC, and Roger McConville from SAP.
• Positioning the Support Organization as the Leader in Innovation. The third most attended session from Day 1 and Day 2 was also a Services Technology Advantage Case Study session. Presenters Tarik Mahmoud from Cisco and Diego Ventura from noHold explained that intelligence collected during a support interaction provides valuable insight for marketing, product development, engineering, and more. The challenge is that information is siloed and not transformed into measurable ROI. noHold’s customer, the leader in networking devices, has found a way to break the mold and create a paradigm shift by syndicating opportunities across all business units.
• The Artful Manager: How to Leverage Business Metrics to Greatest Effect. Number 4 on the top attended list was this panel discussion, led by TSIA’s Stephen Smith, with panelists Syd Garrett from Cisco Systems, and Frank Coleman from EMC, presented an interactive discussion about how to optimize your metrics and business intelligence program.
• Demystifying Service Revenue Growth. This session, presented by Julia Stegman, TSIA’s VP of research for service revenue generation, revealed the results from the Service Revenue Generation benchmark, which is the first and only industry benchmark for recurring services. Participants learned what actual performance is, which is an aggregate of impressive industry leaders from our Service Revenue Generation Founding Members.
• Blending Knowledge Management and Social Media for Service and Support. Number 6 on our list was presented by Lynn Llewellyn and Kevin Mitts from VMware, who shared social media and knowledge-management strategies from VMware® Global Support Services. The company has developed an innovative, award-winning program that provides invaluable assistance to its customers and helps deflect support cases–the Social Media Guidebook for Service and Support Responds to Customers Faster and Increases Satisfaction.
• Our Journey through Knowledge Management: Business Challenges, Best Practices, and Lessons Learned. Number 7 on the top attended list was also a Services Technology Advantage Case Study,  presented by Joni Ortbring from Audatex, a Solera Company, and Tom Kolano from Consona. The session focused on how Knowledge-Centered Support (KCS) principles, along with a feature-rich KM system, allowed Audatex  to focus on knowledge as a community asset providing accurate information to their clientele and associates in near real-time.
• Channel Optimization and Why This Matters to Your Business. This session was originally going to be presented by my research pal, Sally Foster, but due to an injury, our fearless leader, JB Wood, stepped in and drove the session. Customers are becoming more and more interested in engaging with service providers via multiple channels of communication. It used to be that calling a support center or sending an e-mail was what you did. The cost of these channels is almost becoming prohibitive depending on the volume of incidents a provider handles. Customers want solution providers to engage with them in the way that they want to be served. This session looked at evolving channel strategies and how successful companies are approaching customer channel preferences.
• Transform Your Services Business To Create A Strategic And Sustainable Footprint With Your Customer.Number 9 on our list is another customer case study, part of the Services Technology Advantage track. Presented by Ruth Fornell from NCR, the session described how NCR Corporation continues its evolution into a services led, software driven, hardware enabled solutions company. Attendees learned how NCR uses Compuware Changepoint Professonal Services Automation (PSA) to differentiate themselves while creating a broader, more strategic and sustainable footprint with their customers. This case study presentation was targeting services executives looking to transform their services business through global knowledge sharing, centers of excellence and organizational transformation.
• Award-Winning Best Practices in Complex Applications Support. Rounding out our Top 10 session was a panel discussion with Charlotte Baker of Digital Hands, Michael Montoya from EMC, and Buffy Ransom from Oracle. Providing sophisticated technical support for complex applications in mixed or otherwise complex environments requires a unique set of service delivery capabilities. Attendees came to learn what works from a panel of 2009-2011 STAR Award winners in the Complex Applications Support category, who shared their successful strategies and tactics in an interactive panel discussion

Thanks to everyone for attending our event, and a special thanks to all these presenters for creating such dynamic topics and content!

2012 TSIA Member Technology Spending Report: Results Live Today!

Today at TSIA’s Technolgy Services World (TSW) Conference at the Santa Clara Convention Center, I am presenting the findings of my 2012 Member Technology Survey at 4:15 in my Power Hour session, “The 2012 TSIA Technology Heatmap: Service Technology Spending and Adoption Trends.”

TSIA’s sixth annual member technology survey is complete, documenting member adoption, satisfaction, and planned spending across 24 areas of services and technology used by education services, professional services, field services, support services, and service revenue generation. According to the survey, TSIA members have an average annual budget of $2.99 million to purchase, implement, and maintain service technology. Several areas of technology saw increased adoption over the last year, particularly enterprise mobility and reporting/analytic platforms, which are now seeing adoption across all service divisions. Satisfaction scores for technology and services in place were unimpressive again this year: only one category averaged above a 4.0 on a five-point satisfaction scale (1 being very unsatisfied; 5 being very satisfied), and multiple categories saw averages below 3.5.

Planned spending is very high for 2012–2013, with double-digit percents of members planning additional purchases in every category covered by the survey. Top spending categories include online communities, knowledge and content management, and reporting platforms, with all TSIA disciplines planning investment.

The survey findings are also being released to the TSIA.com website today with mulitple research reports targeting different audiences. For the very first time, this year’s survey targeted Europe, and I authored a separate report comparing technology adoption and spending in North America to Europe. Two other reports appear this year for the first time, a spending report specific to our Service Revenue Generation (SRG) discipline, focusing on technology directly linked to revenue such as contract management and offer management. Also, I created a report listing the top installed products across all 24 categories covered by the survey, which is a question I receive again and again from members.  Here are all the reports live on TSIA.com today:

• 2012 Technology Services Heatmap: Adoption Trends across 24 Categories of Tools and Services
• 2012 TSIA Member Technology Spending Report: Education Services
• 2012 TSIA Member Technology Spending Report: Field Service
• 2012 TSIA Member Technology Spending Report: Professional Services
• 2012 TSIA Member Technology Spending Report: Support Services
• 2012 TSIA Member Technology Spending Report: Service Revenue Generation
• 2012 TSIA Member Technology Spending Report: Europe
• Top Installed Products by TSIA Members: 2012: Technology and Services Partners with the Highest Adoption by TSIA Members

Here is a look at this year’s Heatmap, which is a color-coded guide to technology adoption.

I’d like to thank everyone who responded to this year’s survey, and a special thanks to Suzanne LaBounty, our intrepid editor who made time for all these reports in the middle of the TSW crush! Thanks for reading, and hope to see you in my Power Hour session later today!

Announcing the 2010 Member Technology Survey: Please Join In!

Friday we launched the 4th annual Member Technology Survey, which tracks adoption, satisfaction and planned spending for enabling service and support technology across 20+ functional areas. This survey data is critical to my research efforts, providing data I will use all year long to:

• Create the 2010 Heatmap. The Heatmap is a graphical display of member technology adoption, showing “hot” product areas across technical support, professional services, and field service operations. The Heatmap is used throughout the year in published research and at our TSW events.
• Publish the 2010 Member Spending Report. This report will highlight top areas for member spending across all three service disciplines for 2010-2011, as well as showing adoption trends for emerging technology areas.
• Answer member inquiries. I receive approximately 200 inquiries a year from TSIA members on technology, and having access to which products are most commonly used, and member satisfaction with particular products, is extremely helpful in guiding members toward ‘best fit’ solutions.

What’s new in this year’s survey:

• I’m tracking use of some technology across all three service disciplines for the first time, so I can understand cross-service adoption of Enterprise CRM, Intelligent Search and Web collaboration.
• New categories: I added 3 new technology categories: Education/Learning Management, Reporting/Analytic Platform, Telephony Platform
• New services categories: For the first time I am surveying about Outsourcers/Service Providers and business consultants–which will be hugely helpful in answering inquiries.

This survey is open to all TSIA corporate and community members. Everyone who responds to the survey—including community members—will receive a copy of my 2010 Member Spending Report when it is published in May. And, the first 50 people who complete the survey will receive a Starbucks gift card!  Here’s the link.

Thanks to all of you for your ongoing help and support. I know you are very busy, and I appreciate you taking a few minutes to complete this survey. Please let me know if you have any questions.