Top Attended Sessions from TSW Day 2

TSIA’s Technology Services World Conference kicked off on Monday with a series of keynotes and one round of breakouts. Yesterday was the first full day of the conference, and I wanted to give you a peek at the top attended sessions. With over 1,300 attendees, we had a lot of standing room only sessions (I’m happy to say they had to bring more chairs into my KM session on Monday). Clearly when you get 200 or more people attending a session, you know it is a topic that really resonates with service professionals.

Here’s a look at the five sessions from yesterday with the highest attendance:

1. Create Customers for Life with Customer Life Cycle Management. The pressure is on for technology companies as investors are expecting high growth year over year. And while a company can achieve some of this growth through customer acquisition, many companies overlook the fact that the secret to high growth is by maximizing customer lifetime value and increasing customer retention. So how do you grow recurring revenue and keep customers longer? Customer life cycle management is the strategy that will help your customers get more value from your products and solutions resulting in more profitable client relationships. Hear best practices from Cisco and Cisco WebEx on how, with a disciplined approach to customer life cycle management, you can drive greater revenue growth and keep customers for life. Tom Lay – Director of Service Sales, Cisco Software Annuities, Cisco Systems; Tony Brucha – Director, WebEx Customer Success, Cisco Systems; Eric Jeffries – Vice President of Customer Success, ServiceSource, Inc.
2. Driving Profitability through Customer Analytics. By gathering feedback at each step of the customer journey, organizations can create a thorough understanding of the client experience and optimally manage it. Learn how to create a holistic customer feedback program and about how a top 25 accounting and business consulting firm uses customer insight to drive its customer relationships, internal innovation, go-to-market strategy, and business development. Rike Harrison – Chief Marketing Officer, Wipfli; Koren Stucki – Marketing Director, Customer Analytics, Verint Systems.
3. Transform Your Company to Humanize the New Customer Journey. Customers have been spoiled. Thanks to companies such as Amazon and Apple, they now expect every organization to deliver products and services swiftly, with a seamless digital user experience. Many traditional organizations can’t meet the expectation of the new social contract, where the customer expectation is “you should always be there for me when I need you and you should understand the context of my problem–don’t contact me when I don’t want to be reached.” How will your organization adapt to this demand for intuitive interfaces, around-the-clock availability, real-time fulfillment, personalized treatment, global consistency, and zero errors—the world to which customers have become increasingly accustomed? We will define what this new customer looks like and expects across every step along their digital journey–from awareness, consideration, purchase, and service, to advocacy. Dean Shaw – Chat Program Manager, SAS Institute Inc.; Alon Waks – VP, Product Marketing, LivePerson.
4. Performance Support: Driving Your Customers’ Consumption and Success…and Your Revenue. Helping your customers achieve sustained consumption and adoption of your software is a key revenue enabler for you. However, the path to adoption is changing. Customers can no longer afford to rely on classroom training and binders of printed content. They look for agile, on-the-job solutions to go from novice to master and reduce help-desk calls. Customers need solutions integrated with their work to deliver “just enough, just-in-time, just right, just for me” support. Embedded Performance Support is an innovative approach to enabling user performance by providing on-demand access to integrated information, guidance, and learning. In this session, you’ll learn how ANCILE software can make it drop-dead simple for your customers to use and consume your software–and for you to introduce revenue opportunities. The results? Customer success and customer retention. Malcolm Poulin – Senior Director, Product Strategy, ANCILE Solutions
5. Challenging the Tiered Paradigm: Case Study in Moving an Organization from Handoff to Swarming. Tiered support is a keystone of standard support operations. It works predictably, but it’s inherently flawed. Service requests are owned and passed from one person to another like products on a conveyor belt. Once the conveyor gets to a person who can solve the issue, it gets solved. But until then, it has to follow its course and time on the belt, which slows down resolution. Customers lose patience being passed from person to person, and inherently, communication is inefficient, people lose context and we make the customer repeat steps and information. And, along the path, everyone can be doing “our job” but the customer doesn’t get what they need. Imagine a support organization without boundaries – where owners drive solutions by taking accountability for the customer experience and bringing resources to collaborate – to swarm on the issue. Then move that model to real-time with live first-engagement models like chat. The customer has continuity, accountability and accesses the best resource for the problem as quickly as possible. Tear down the tiers. In this session, we’ll discuss one company’s journey through that organizational change and discuss the challenges and approaches to the transformation. Linda Hartig – VP of Global Support Services (GSS), Avaya; Dan Pratt – Director, Strategy and Business Transformation, Avaya.

Congratulations to these members and partners for creating such dynamic content that really spoke to the needs of the audience. Thanks for reading!

 

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Getting Ready for TSW: Partner Advisory Board, Knowledge Managment, and Customer Success

Today kicks off our Technology Services World Conference in Las Vegas at the fabulous Aria. Though the conference offically starts today, I was here yesterday for the Partner Advisory Board meeting. We had a very productive meeting, with a lot of sharing on both sides. I presented the findings of my recent knowledge management survey, and our newest research executive, Judi Platz, gave the partners an advance look at the Customer Success data she is releasing at the conference. Great discussions on industry trends related to knolwedge sharing and corporate culture, the cloud economy and impact on service operations, and defining and measuring customer success.

Today I open the conference with the TechBEST Showcase at 12:45, interviewing the finalists for our TechBEST Best in Adoption award. The results are determined by my annual technology survey, and we recognize the three partners who had the largest increase in adoption by TSIA members in 2014 compared to 2013. The finalists are Changepoint, LivePerson, and Verint Systems. For more information, here’s a writeup on the award and finalists.

After the opening keynote speeches, the first round of breakouts are the Power Hour sessions, with each of TSIA’s researchers giving a presentation on what is hot in their service discipline or focus area. My session will be revealing the results of my August Knowledge Management survey, and the results of the survey are being published on the TSIA website today as well.

The survey showed that companies still see enormous potential for productivity improvements from KM, and there is growing adoption of KM processes across service divisions. I also collected a lot of data on new technologies related to KM, including expertise management, unified search, mobility and video, and crowdsourcing content. And, I have data on KM staffing, approach to content maintenance, as well as very interesting data on corporate KM culture.  Stay tuned for a post tomorrow with a few data points from the survey. And for those of you attending the show, send somebody to my presentation today!

For those attending the conference, I still have a few 1:1 meetings available on Tuesday. If you’d like to book a 30 minute meeting with me, please ask at the conference registration desk.

Thanks to everyone for your support, and I look forward to seeing all of you in the EXPO!

Where to find John at TSW Best Practices

Our big spring event, Technology Services World Best Practices, kicks off next week at the Santa Clara Convention Center. The conference begins for me on Sunday with partner advisory board and internal meetings, then we officially open the doors on Monday. I’ve been getting emails asking what I’ll be doing at the conference and where to find me, so wanted to give everyone a look at what I’ll be up to at TSW. Here’s a link to the full conference schedule.

• Monday 11am-12:30pm. TechFUTURES: The Future of Service Technology. This is the opening event at the conference, and I’m really looking forward to it. I will take the audience 5 years in the future for a look at the impacts of Extreme Efficiency and Extreme Automation, focusing on 3 areas: Analytics, Collaboration, and Service Channels. We will have 3 presenters, from Changepoint, Jive Software and Support.com, each painting their view of 2019. Then the audience votes for who gives the most provocative view of the future. Don’t miss this fun event!
• Monday 12:45-1:45pm. TechBEST Showcase. My annual global technology survey covers 24 categories of tools and services, with dozens of vendors/providers in each category. One of the things I survey about is satisfaction, and in general, the numbers aren’t that great. However, there are some bright spots with companies receiving extremely high scores. The 3 TSIA partners with the highest satisfaction scores are finalists for the 2014 TechBEST Best in Satisfaction Award. In this showcase, I will unveil the finalists and interview them about how they are able to have such satisfied customers.
• Monday 3-4pm, Power Hour: The 2014 TSIA Technology Heatmap. In this session, I will reveal the results of my 2014 Global Technology Survey, including adoption, satisfaction and planned spending across 24 categories of tools and services, including analytics, CRM, online communities, web collaboration, PSA, and more. I will also touch on the top technology and social trends I’m seeing.
• Monday 4:15-5:15, Pacesetter Practices: Social Media for Support. In this session I will talk about the results of my recent Social Media in Support survey, then turn things over to two experts on social support: Doug Pluta, Project Manager, Cisco; and Tim Lopez, Social Media Manager, Symantec. We will talk about the importance of social media both for customer interactions, but also monitoring social conversations as part of a larger voice of the customer strategy.
• Tuesday 9:45-10:45am. Workout Panel: Key Criteria for Selecting a PSA Solution. Professional Services Automation (PSA) is now one of my top inquiry areas, with PS teams shopping for automation around resource management, project management, and project accounting. I will be moderating a panel of experts on the topic: Al Gray – Vice President, Bentley Systems; Keith Drab – Solutions Architect, Changepoint; and Jeff Gebhart – Senior Solutions Consultant, Planview. A prize will be given for the best audience question, so be sure to attend and participate!
• Wednesday 11am-12:30pm, Service Revolutions. This is our annual “American Idol” contest for cool technology, with presentations from startups, established tech firms, and some TSIA members, on innovative technologies for streamlining and automating service delivery. I will be doing my best Paul Abdul on the panel of experts, providing pithy comments after each presentation. Live audience voting determines the winners.

I still have a few slots left for 1:1 meetings on Tuesday, so see Susie at the registration desk to book a time to discuss your service technology challenges, or to find out the best Mexican place close to the conference center. Thanks for reading, and see you next week!

Sneak Preview: TSW EXPO Theatre Sessions

Our Spring Technology Services World Conference is just a couple of weeks away at the Santa Clara Convention Center, and I wanted to highlight some sessions from TSIA’s partner network you won’t want to miss. On Tuesday, May 6, we have four special sessions taking place in the theatres inside the EXPO. Grab some lunch, pick a presentation, and get the most out of your EXPO time.  Here’s a look at the agenda:

• I Know Social Media. What the Heck Is Social Support? In Theatre One at 12:20, we have this presentation by Jive Software: The term Social Media gets tossed about a lot these days. So, what is Social Support? At Jive, it includes Social Media, of course, but it’s much more than just monitoring Facebook and Twitter. True Social Support means meeting your customers where they are, even as their support expectations evolve and change. Doing this well equals meaningful ROI in case deflection and improved customer impressions. We’ll define the key deltas between social media and social support with a framework to understand which will delight your customers. We’ll also discuss effective ways to bridge the two and share results from businesses succeeding at this now. Also learn to imbue your brand’s messaging into your social responses, with emphasis on reaching Millennials. Customer Care is now social. Join us to discuss a strategy to make you successful. Presenter: Tim Albright, Senior Director Community Strategy, Jive Software, Inc.

• Innovate in Customer Support: At Least Six Hard-to-Fix Needs Satisfied Through One Solution. In Theatre Two at 12:20 we have this presentation from Sykes Enterprises: Great support is what your users expect. Delivering this and successfully handling the multiple, and often opposing, goals of maintaining high quality while minimizing waste, managing costs, increasing access, and remaining flexible, agile and relevant is what your business really needs. Virtual Contact Centers deliver on this by using home-based agents. Imagine if your customer support could: Meet seasonal demands without adding real estate; Barely miss a step when bad weather hits; Handle unexpected volumes within minutes/hours instead of days/weeks; Match agent knowledge/experience to customer needs/interests in their own area; and draw on skills and abilities from virtually the entire population of North America. Your speaker, Nick Sellers, TSIA Partner Advisory Board member, will: Describe how to recruit, train, manage and engage the team safely and securely without seeing employees daily; Show how the operation scales and flexes to meet changing needs; and provide examples of how regulatory compliance, security, and other requirements are satisfied. Join this session for insights into how Virtual Contact Centers are changing the way that customer support is being delivered and business objectives met. Presenter: Nick Sellers, Senior Director, Strategy and Marketing, Sykes Enterprises.

• Convert Stellar Service into Revenue with Enhanced Digital Engagement. At 1:10 in Theatre One, we have this presentation from LivePerson: Best-in-class companies know the secret to converting high value visitors: You need to engage them at the right moments with the right message with the right medium. Companies like Intuit are re-inventing engagement strategies by moving away from treating website visitors with a “one size fits all” approach. The secret to their success is in identifying, segmenting and targeting those who are high impact, and engage each differently to convert them into lifetime customers. With the help of LivePerson, Intuit drives product adoption by creating a customized path for their most valued customers, maximizing the customer service experience to drive revenue. Learn how to use technology to identify your most important customers and guide them through their service journey, resulting in increased lifetime value and creating brand advocates–while lowering costs along the way. Presenters: Tim Egolf, Customer Care Designer, Intuit Inc., and Alon Waks, Head of Product Marketing, LivePerson.

• Product Support 2.0: Addressing the Shifting Demands of Customer Support for Products and Services Businesses. At 1:10pm in Theatre Two is this presentation by Cognizant Technology Solutions: Product evolution and customer expectations on the support experience are going through fundamental shifts. As the velocity of business accelerates and products move to an “as a service” model, technical support is increasingly becoming critical to business continuity for end customers. Customers of products and services are demanding a high-quality service experience – available anytime and anywhere. Business leaders expect their customer support organization to become a strategic revenue driver rather than solely be a cost center. Further, businesses want to gain deeper customer insights to determine appropriate cross-sell/up-sell opportunities. The combination of these evolving business demands is what we are calling “Product Support 2.0.” Cognizant has a successful track record of delivering a next generation support experience across software product generations – through desktop, web, mobile, cloud models. Cognizant integrates world-class support operations with business/domain consulting, product/platform engineering, IT delivery, and analytics capabilities. Combined with our best-in-class people practices and “customer first” DNA, we are transforming support operations for our clients globally. In this session, we will share some of our best practices and approaches around “Product Support 2.0” and how you can deliver greater value to your customers. Presenters: Cary Oshima, AVP, Technology Industry Group, Cognizant Technology Solutions; and Mahesh Jadhav, AVP, Business Process Services, Cognizant Technology Solutions.

Stay tuned for more updates as we get closer to TSW! And as always, thanks for reading!

 

Sneak Preview: Case Study Sessions at TSW Santa Clara

Sorry I’ve been absent from my blog for a while. My annual technology survey closed on 3/31, and I had 2 weeks to write 10 reports based on the data in order to have them edited and published in time our upcoming Technology Services World Conference in Santa Clara. All the reports are done, and now I’m ready to start working on slides for TSW. Many of the top attended sessions at our conferences come from the case study track, in which TSIA partners and their customers present real-world examples of technologies and services in action. Our conference theme is “Extreme Efficiency,” and the case study sessions will all include a focus on how innovative technology and service providers are driving increased efficiency for service operations.  Here’s a look at the sessions planned so far:

• Delivering Support thru Technology Skill Groups. Technical Support organizations tend to be characterized by teams with product focus, serial escalation of more difficult problems, and complex workflows. NetApp has embarked on a path to bring the appropriate level of technical assistance as close to the customer as possible while continuing to improve support efficiencies. In this session, PWC and NetApp will share an approach to achieving these goals while servicing a highly demanding, global, extremely heterogeneous customer population. Leaders and practitioners that would like to explore new ways of providing high levels of service in complex technical environments will be interested in this presentation. Speakers: Matt Stone – Director, Customer Success Services, NetApp; and David Yoffie – Customer Impact Consulting Practice, PwC.
• From C-Suite to Practitioner: Patheon Leverages PSA to Maintain Competitive Edge. In a global climate of outsourcing, services businesses are no longer exclusive to technology organizations. With greater emphasis on speed to market and extension of technical capabilities, one such industry moving more and more towards outsourcing is the pharmaceutical industry. However, there is one characteristic shared by all services organizations – the need to continually improve core KPI’s (revenue and margin) in increasingly competitive environments. Hear how Patheon, a global leader of contract drug development and manufacturing services leverages Changepoint to give it a competitive edge to improve efficiencies in delivery of services and profitability. Temoor Saeed, manager, Global PDS, Business Processes, discusses how Patheon, by strengthening its core operations, has deployed a strategy to drive efficiency improvements throughout its facilities, materials and supporting operations, giving it a broader solution for project delivery within its pharmaceutical development services division. Speakers: Temoor Saeed – Manager, Global PDS, Business Processes, Patheon; and Matt Weick – Director, North American Sales, Changepoint Corporation.
• Next-Generation B2B Online Community. If you think online communities are just discussion forums, think again. Companies like AppDynamics are stretching the boundaries of a B2B community, encompassing documentation, learning, ideation, app exchange and other elements to create a one-stop shop for sharing and learning. In this session, Steve Levine, Senior Product Manager at AppDynamics, will share the business rationale for creating such a hub and what it took to bring all the right pieces together. Joe Cothrel, Chief Community Officer at Lithium, will set the stage with some observations about B2B trends across Lithium’s global customer base.
• Power to the People! During an epic 15 year journey, Rackspace® has transformed from an obscure San Antonio start-up into the global leader in hybrid cloud, the founder of OpenStack®, and a constant on Fortune’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For. The home of fanatical support, Rackspace® now operates on four continents and is helping the world through the cloud revolution. Learn how they empowered customers to guide them on this journey by combining trusted disciplines and a fiery culture, with a unique set of tools. Then get a sneak peek into the future as they share their plans for empowering front line employees to drive the next wave of innovation. Speakers: Julian Lopez – Head of Customer Loyalty, Rackspace Hosting, Inc.; and Clayton Sherwood – Business Development Director, Clarabridge.

We are still finalizing abstracts and speakers for a few additional case study sessions, so stay tuned for more updates! Hope to see you in Santa Clara. And as always, thanks for reading!
 

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!

TSW Top Attended Sessions: Day 3

Our intrepid events manager, Christi Holzer, is so ahead of the curve she already sent me the session counts for today, the final day of Technology Services World.  I started Day 3 with the Social Breakfast of Champions, and really enjoyed the discussion. I appreciate the brave folks who overcame Las Vegas inertia to make our 7am meeting! We then had the final keynote of the event, from my boss Thomas Lah, as well as a couple of rounds of breakout sessions, prior to the closing awards ceremony.

Here’s a look at the 5 top attended sessions from today:

1. Value-Driven Support: Shifting from Output to Outcomes. Pitney Bowes has been on a five-year journey to transform its support organization into an award-winning business service for its customers. By focusing on customer adoption and realized value, the Pitney Bowes support organization has seen a dramatic improvement in customer satisfaction and loyalty. In this session, attendees learned how to retool their organizations to deliver on the only thing that really matters: creating successful customer outcomes. Presenters were Jesse Hoobler, Director, Worldwide Software Support, Pitney Bowes Software; Michael McLasky, Manager, Pitney Bowes Software; and Joanne Weigel, Sr. Director, TSIA.
2. Customer Success: Lifecycle Account Management. In this session, Tony Brucha, director of Customer Success for Cisco WebEx, described the evolution of the Customer Success organization since the acquisition and integration of WebEx in 2007. Brucha  described the Customer Success model, discussed the Strategic Customer Care framework supported by the Consumption Economics model used to deliver business results and outcomes, and defined the Customer Success Lifecycle Account Management Process executed by the organization’s Customer Success Manager (CSM) teams globally.
3. Transforming Customer Experience by Interlocking Support Services and Product Development. The IT industry is undergoing a historical transition. Cloud, BYOD, IPv6, video, mobility, and social networking are reshaping what traditional support looks like, moving it from boxes to solutions. It’s imperative for support services to serve as the voice of the customer—and to drive the right engagement model with product development. This session, led by Danny Montejano, Senior Director, Technical Services, Cisco Systems; and Ken O’Reilly, VP, Research, Support and Field Services, TSIA; educated the audience about how Cisco has orchestrated a tight partnership between its global support organization and its largest product development group.
4. Support and Engineering: Forming New Partnerships to Drive Customer Success. Presented by Marylon McGinnis, SVP Global Support, Infor Global Solutions, this session described how Infor Xtreme Support and Engineering are joining forces to change the way support is provided in the industry today. Infor is delivering innovation in its products to ensure its customers are successful in running their businesses. Working with Infor Development, Infor Support is delivering innovation in its support toolset to help resolve customer issues faster, provide more proactive support, and facilitate stronger collaboration between customers and our support analysts.
5. Upsell and Cross-Sell: Leveraging Your Consultants to Capture Untapped Revenue Potential. Companies like Corptax are increasingly leveraging consulting and service delivery resources in a dual role that includes sales. This can increase customer touch points, add clarity to customer business problem understanding, create a stronger services sales arm, and drive increased revenue—but it’s not without challenges. This session detailed important steps for achieving success in this dual-role environment, such as selection, skill development, competitive differentiation, and value selling. Stuart Dodd, vice president and general manager of professional services for Corptax, and Kyle Andrews, Principal, Pretium Partners presented a case study on this process and the measurable results.

Thanks to all our presenters for your hard work in creating and delivering such excellent content for our members. And as always, thanks for reading!

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!

Announcing Finalists for TSIA TechBest in Adoption: Citrix, Compuware, Coveo

Each Spring I launch the TSIA Member Technology Survey, which tracks adoption, satisfaction, and planned spending across 24 categories of tools and services common within service operations. The survey reveals which solutions are most popular with TSIA members, and it is interesting to find out which vendors see growing adoption. One thing is certain: When the percent of members using a particular solution sharply rises, it indicates that provider has the right messaging, the right tools, and the right price for technology service organizations. Proven success within the TSIA membership means the solution meets the business needs of users, is delivering value, and doesn’t require extensive implementation or customization to be effective.

Comparing the results from 2012 and 2013, the three TSIA partners that saw the largest increase in member adoption are Citrix, Compuware, and Coveo. These three firms represent the finalists in the 2013 TechBEST Best in Adoption Award and will be interviewed in the TechBEST Showcase that opens Technology Services World today in the EXPO Theater. The partner with the highest year-over-year gain in adoption will be named the winner during the closing Awards Luncheon on Wednesday, October 23.

• 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 any-where. 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, GoToTraining, GoToWebinar, GoToMyPC, Podio, and ShareFile. Learn more at www.citrix.com.
• Compuware Changepoint allows organizations to maximize professional services profitability and maintain a focus on effective product decisions and delivery. Changepoint’s PSA solution includes powerful business analytics and mobility, providing total operational visibility and control over the services portfolio. Services organizations can manage every aspect of their business with Changepoint, from customer acquisition, to services delivery, through to project financial control. Changepoint customers achieve strong margins, manage projects and resources with greater efficiency, deliver a competitive product and services mix, and maintain top-line revenues and bottom-line profitability. Examples of Changepoint customers include Altum, Circle Software, Innovaost, Kana, Patheon, Priocept, Sage, Steria, and Ziggo. Learn more at www.compuware.com.
• Coveo makes companies more relevant and responsive to their customers by providing technology that delivers, in real time, the most relevant, context-aware information for every employee and every customer. Coveo’s revolutionary Search & Relevance technology takes knowledge management to a new, more relevant level by securely connecting with and harnessing an organization’s big, fragmented data from any combination of cloud, social, and on-premise systems. For example, with Coveo for Salesforce, case-relevant knowledge from anywhere (social, on-premise and cloud-based systems) is presented directly into the agent’s context, related to the case at hand: solutions to similar cases, knowledge articles, relevant communications, even experts who can help. Technology companies including Deltek, EXFO, Tokyo Electron America, and SunGard use Coveo to inject more relevant knowledge into customer service interactions, personalize online experiences, and radically boost knowledge management initiatives. Learn more at www.coveo.com.

I’ll be intereviewing the finalists today at 11:30 in the Expo. Hope to see you there! And as always, thanks for reading!

TSW Day One: Top Attended Sessions

Yesterday was the official opening of Technology Services World Best Practices in Santa Clara. I haven’t seen the final registration count, but we have around 800 attendees. I kicked off the conference yesterday with our TechFUTURES event and the TechBEST Showcase. The TechFUTURES event was so much fun–we moved the audience forward to 2018 and looked at how support operations had changed, particularly around social media, knowledge management, mobility and customer experience. Great presentations and audience response. Now everyone is teasing me about the slide of me as “Rip Van Ragsdale.”

I just received the session counts from yesterday’s breakout sessions, and I always like to do a blog post showing which topics received the most attendees. Obviously conference attendees vote with their feet, so this is a good way to figure out which topics are “top of mind” for the audience.  The five top attended sessions from Day One of TSW were:

• Best Practices for Retaining and Upselling Customers. No big surprise, the top attended session with over 100 attendees was focused on revenue generation. Presented by Julia Stegman, TSIA’s VP of research for Service Revenue Generation, this session looked at industry performance with renewal rates and upsell rates for recurring service revenues, based on Julia’s SRG benchmark work.
• The 2013 TSIA Technology Heatmap: Service Technology Adoption, Spending and Inquiry Trends. I’m tickled that my session was the 2nd top attended session. I hosted this session with Edly Villanueva, one of our member success representatives, who was a great presenter and a lot of fun to work with. I presented findings from my annual Member Technology Survey, and Edly and I talked about top inquiry topics across service disciplines and gave a pitch to the audience to submit more inquiries!
• Linking Service Business Challenges to Service Optimization. This session was presented by TSIA’s Operational Best Practices (OBP) team of Joanne Weigel, Charles Thomas and Tom Pridham, who shared their global perspectives on known best practices, what they are and why they are important ingredients to a successful Support, Field or Professional service business.
• How to Transform Your Support Organization into a Knowledge Management Machine! We always have at least 1 KM title in the Top 5! This session, presented by Jeremy Largman, Knowledge Management Program Manager, Atlassian, discussed techniques to get past the common pitfalls with change across the organization. I’m doing a workout session today with Jeremy and looking forward to it!
• Picasso and Einstein: Best Practices in Content Development. It is great to see an education services session make it into the top attended sessions! Presented by Maria Manning Chapman, TSIA’s Senior Director for ES, this session presented research conducted earlier this year outlining best practices for approaching the content development process, timeliness to market, options for managing the expense of content development, metrics to gauge success and how volume of offerings is a key indicator of the level of science required to produce a work of art.

Stay tuned for more updates live from TSW! And as always, thanks for reading!