Despite economy, strong spending planned for PSA

I just sent a research report to editing detailing the results of the TPSA 2009 Member Technology Survey, and thought I was share a couple of highlights here as a preview. I have written previously about the results of the SSPA survey, which showed several areas (especially Web collaboration) with strong planned spending.  The results from the TPSA survey are even more interesting: though 90% of survey respondents already have some sort of professional services automation (PSA) solution in place, a significant number have budget for additional PSA purchases in 2009 and 2010.

A whopping 16% of respondents said they had approved budget for a PSA purchase in 2009; an additional percentage have budget for a 2010 purchase.  If the economy hadn’t tanked, the numbers would be higher:  an additional 19% said they had planned to invest but their budget was now at risk.

As you can see in this chart, PSA is no longer just a ‘big company’ product, with companies of all sizes planning investments.  It is great to see more solutions targeting smaller firms, such as QuickArrow’s recently launched Small Business Edition.

Members with PSA Budget in 2009 by Company Size

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Announcing the Fall 2009 Recognized Innovator Award Categories

Fall 2009 AFSMI, SSPA, TPSA Recognized Innovator Awards

I am happy to announce the categories for the Fall 2009 Recognized Innovator Awards, which will be held in conjunction with our upcoming Technology Services World conference in Las Vegas, October 19-21 at the Mirage Hotel and Event Center. Awards are presented to association partners, and judged by a panel of association members and industry insiders.

In time for the conference, JB Wood, CEO of the AFSMI, SSPA and TPSA, will publish a new book detailing the immense challenges – and opportunities — facing the technology service and support industry. To support this theme, the Fall 2009 Recognized Innovator Awards will focus on categories that are key components of the book, illustrating how association partners enable member success by providing innovative technology and services to help companies survive the complexity onslaught– and even prosper. The fall categories are:

TSW Day 2 Recap: Technology Spending Trends

Today is the final day of Technology Services World (TSW) Santa Clara. I’m amazed at the huge amount and high quality of the content in breakout sessions, and the positive buzz has been terrific. This post will provide a brief recap of what I was up to yesterday.

I gave my keynote address yesterday morning, providing details from my 2009 Member Technology Survey about technology budgets, adoption and spending. It is no surprise that technology spending is down, and we saw a pretty big decrease in average budget to maintain and acquire technology in the last year. But there remain some bright spots, with members having budget for spending in several areas. Overall, comparing 2008 to 2009 technology budgets, the following trends can be identified:

SSPA Member Technology Spending by Product Category

Announcing the Spring 2009 Recognized Innovator Award Winners

This morning in my keynote address at our Technology Services World (TSW) event in Santa Clara, CA, I announced the winners of the Spring 2009 Recognized Innovator Awards. These awards are presented to partners of the AFSMI, SSPA, and TPSA for outstanding innovation; the categories for the awards change for each event. Winners are chosen by a panel of judges composed of association members, our industry alliance partners, and industry insiders.

Faced with an uncertain economy, AFSMI, SSPA and TPSA Research took a “back to basics” approach for the Spring 2009 Recognized Innovator Awards, identifying categories that enable operational and financial success for service and support operations. The Collaboration category looks for business value amid the Web 2.0 buzz; the Infrastructure category digs below functionality to identify how new and innovative technology platforms are contributing to success; the Revenue Generation category recognizes technology with a proven track record in boosting services revenue. Partners submitted applications, and for the first time, customer case studies showing real business value from the innovation was required. For more information on the categories, see this post.

TSW Registration Desk Opens: Workshops Underway

I am onsite at the Santa Clara Convention Center for our Spring Technology Services World (TSW) Conference, sequestered in a sunny room for member 1:1 meetings.  For all of you attending the event, I have several 1:1 slots still open so please sign up!  The official open of the event is 3pm today, but many members arrived early for professional development workshops and advisory board meetings.

Spring TSW 2009 Registration is OPEN!!!

I just spent a few minutes in Implementing Knowledge-Centered Support, a workshop led by longtime SSPA friend and partner, David Kay of DB Kay & Associates. Knowledge management is one of the perennial hot topics at TSW, and there are signs that this event is no exception.  In fact, the few member conversations I’ve already had today are about this topic.

David Kay's Knowledge Centered Support Workshop kicks off

One of the main KM themes this year, I predict, is the merging of service and support KM practices and higher level corporate KM practices.  I am seeing inquiries from members about the differences between corporate content management strategy and tech support knowledge strategy, and I know this can be a big political issue within companies that have a CIO who is closely engaged with KM/CM, or companies with titles like CKO: Corporate Knowledge Officer.

While there is definitely a lot of overlap and some best practices both sides can share, I would advise everyone to keep in mind that these two initiatives have different business goals, different tools, usually different processes, so support executives should not let corporate KM gurus intimidate you or force you to assimilate.  Stick to your guns. Shaving seconds off a phone call is not a goal of corporate CM/KM initiatives.  1-click content retrieval is not a use case requirement for corporate knowledge repositories. And most of all, corporate KM systems are not usually available to outside users, while support center KM tools are purchased and implemented with customer self-service in mind.

I’ll be trying to post frequently this week to highlight some of the great content from presentations and hallway conversations. If you are at TSW, please track me down and say hello, and please attend my keynote presentation tomorrow at 10:45am in which I will present findings from my 2009 Member Technology Survey, and present the winners for the Spring 2009 Recognized Innovator Awards.

Where the rubber meets the road: Putting innovative technology to work

Our Spring 2009 Technology Services World conference is just a week away, beginning Monday, May 4th at the Santa Clara Convention Center here in Silicon Valley. Recession be damned, we will have near 500 attendees at the event, and registrations are still coming in! Historically, many of our top attended sessions come from the “Innovative Service Technology” track, in which members present case studies of how they have leveraged innovative technology to achieve measurable business results. Members tell me they love these sessions because there is so much hype out there about ROI, and it great to hear real-world stories of how technology, wedded successfully with people and process, are driving improved service levels, lower costs and higher revenues.

To me, these sessions are so popular because they prove how taking a chance with leading-edge (and sometimes bleeding-edge) technology pays off. It is the ultimate example of where the rubber meets the road, and something positive happens.

YOU ARE HERE

Here are some of the sessions featured in this track for TSW:

Hot Topics: Top Attended Sessions at Services Leadership Conference

A great way to identify the hottest topics in the service and support industry is to look at the top attended breakout sessions from last week’s AFSMI, SSPA and TPSA Services Leadership Conference.  This was the first co-located event for the three associations, and the first time that attendees were given an option of attending any session, regardless of association.  With an audience of 850 members and partners across professional services, contact center, technical support and field service operations, the five top attended sessions were:

1. Tracking Effectiveness and Performance with Operating Metrics; Chris Palomino, Oracle
2. Segmenting to Innovate: Tapping into Customers’ Unspoken Needs to Build Differentiated Services; Barry McPherson, McAfee
3. Winning and Keeping Customers: It’s All About the Experiences- Eight Steps to Becoming a Customer Experience Superhero; Joe Baksha, Motorola, Andrew Hull, RightNow Technologies
4. The SSPA/AFSMI Benchmark Study: How Does Your Support Organization Measure Up?; Bill Rose, SSPA
5. Process Overview and Industry Data Points: Economic Impact Analysis; Thomas Lah, TPSA

There were multiple tracks of content at the event with a total of more than 80 sessions.  Here are the top attended sessions from each track:

Services Leadership Conference: Closing Day

Today was the final day of our Services Leadership Conference at the Mirage in Vegas. The day opened with an incredible keynote from Robert Reich, former US Labor Secretary, who decided at the last minute not to use his prepared presentation and instead discussed the current economic situation. Very powerful. I’ve always been a fan of Reich because he has the ability to explain very complex economic dynamics so it is consumable to the masses, and today was no exception. Considering he knows most of the players involved in our current mess, his insights were fascinating.

Robert Reich opens day 3 of the conference

Services Leadership Conference: Day 2

Welcome to my recap of the 2nd day of our Services Leadership Conference at the Mirage in Vegas.  My day started very early with a series of member 1:1 meetings before the conference opened at 8:30.  In an eerie coincidence, I had 2 more 1:1 meetings focused on the topic I wrote about yesterday: how to fulfill customer service/KM requirements when no single vendor offers all the necessary components.  Examples: Strong KM, weak incident management.  Strong incident workflow but weak entitlement.  Good customer portal but no enterprise search. Excellent enterprise search but no community platform.  It is very daunting to members who launched a project assuming they were going to select one vendor, only to find they may need 3, or even 4.

There is more to this problem than just picking a provider who meets 80% of your needs.  These companies look at KM and self-service as competitive differentiators, they already have “ok” systems, but want best of breed in each area in order to create a next generation customer experience.  Despite the enormous consolidation we have seen across CRM and eService in the last few years, a best of breed, end to end solution remains an unreachable nirvana.

Opening Day: 2008 Services Leadership Conference

Greetings from Las Vegas!  Our 2008 Services Leadership Conference officially kicked off at 3pm today with our first joint keynote across the AFSMI, SSPA and TPSA.  JB Wood, Stephen Smith and Thomas Lah talked about the past, present and future of the industry, with emphasis on service convergence and Value-Added Support. Next, Juergen Rottler, EVP of Customer Services for Oracle, gave one of the best keynotes in my recent memory about how Oracle challenged the industry status quo and pushed for innovative services.

Juergen Rottler presents at the Services Leadership Conference