Today is a day dedicated to peer collaboration at TSW Silicon Valley. Beginning bright and early, attendees came together in the TSW | EXPO for a TableTopic Breakfast, during which services practitioners engaged in open discussions on industry issues we all face every day. These free-flowing sessions allowed participants to openly talk about issues, gain new ideas, and make new industry contacts. Today’s topics included cloud computing, services revenue generation, services technology, social media, and value-added services. Another TableTopic Breakfast will take place tomorrow as well, so come prepared to talk freely about your most pressing business challenges—and get some answers!

Industry Peers in Discussion at TSW's TableTopic Breakfast

Attendees Enjoy Face Time with Peers at TableTop Breakfast in TSW | EXPO

Staying on top of industry trends is fundamental to gaining competitive edge. Yet how do we find the time to do the research required to stay abreast of changing markets and customer dynamics? This afternoon TSIA delivered data-rich “Power Hour” sessions, helping audience members put their fingers on the pulse of our industry.

Below are some takeaways our TSW audience learned. 

• Brand-new TSIA Research reveals common practices and new opportunities for optimized career management in technology services. TSIA’s Diane Brundage, senior vice president, membership development, and Trisha Bright, vice president, conferences and international affiliates discussed these opportunities in “Moving on Up: Best Practices for Managing a Career in Technology Services.”
   
• Panelists from Cisco Systems, HP Commercial, Riverbed Technology, and Schlumberger shared important insights into their support operations excellence initiatives and results in the “Support Operations Excellence: Getting Great, Staying Great, and Transformation Change” panel session, hosted by TSIA’s Thomas Pridham, vice president and general manager, Organizational Development Services, and Joanne Weigel, senior director, Organizational Development Program. Panelists quantified the significance of support operations excellence to their business and the satisfaction of their customers.
   
• Results of TSIA’s recent service spare parts survey are in: The average first-pass fill rate as reported by survey participants is 94.3%. The average spare parts inventory value as a percentage of service revenue is 17%, compared to the average spares inventory value as a percentage of corporate revenue (5%). Attendees learned additional key findings in today’s Power Hour session, “Service Spare Parts Update,” with Michael Israel, senior director of TSIA research and advisory services.
   
• Each year, the TSIA Member Technology Survey results are much anticipated, and 2011 is no exception. Results indicate a dramatic increase in adoption of online communities for both customers and employees, rising adoption of SaaS CRM tools, and high planned spending in many areas, including “bleeding edge” products and infrastructure. In “The 2011 TSIA Technology Heatmap: Service Technology Spending and Adoption Trends,” TSIA vice president of technology research John Ragsdale discussed the top installed products for CRM, knowledge management, reporting platforms, CSAT tracking, and other technology categories, as well as member satisfaction ratings for products in place.
   
• Top performers in Education Services (ES) have demonstrated through exemplary results that there are three key ways to optimize the ES business model: (1) To improve revenue, invest in a dedicated ES sales team and marketing staff; (2) to improve gross margin, maximize utilization by minimizing instructor content development time and focus on expanding the e-learning portfolio; and (3) to improve operating income, drive efficiencies in content development and use a flexible cost structure that includes variable and shared cost models. Maria Manning-Chapman, TSIA senior research director of education services, discussed these optimization tactics in “The Education Services Business Model: More Than Just Revenue.”
   
• Attendees at today’s session presented by Tim Flannery, TSIA senior director of research and advisory support services, saw firsthand what the TSIA Support Services benchmark review is all about. Delegates learned the metrics and KPIs that go into making up the review, the observations and recommendations that are frequently made for individual companies, and more in “Walkthrough of the TSIA Support Services Benchmark Survey Review.”
   
• The vast majority of professional services (PS) businesses today still rely 100 percent on product reps to sell PS. Therefore, they have no choice but to figure out how best to compensate product reps to encourage the behavior that best addresses the needs of the PS business. Bo Di Muccio, TSIA vice president of research and advisory services, provided key insights from TSIA Research on this very topic in “How to Get Product Reps to Pay Attention and Sell Services: TSIA Sales Compensation Study Results.”
   
• TSIA director of programs and community Shawn Santos outlined why social media is “still the next big thing for technology services,” providing market research, case studies, and TSIA data points illustrating how social media is much more than a fad, that it’s disruptive to existing systems and business models, and how we have a long way to go to adequately operationalize social media within our organizations. His session was aptly titled “Why Social Media Is Still the Next Big Thing for Services.”

Today’s Power Hour sessions offered attendees a glimpse into some true opportunities for improved and accelerated results specific to their lines of business.

Conference Learning in Progress

“If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” These words can do a good job of keeping us in our respective comfort zones. But sometimes—oftentimes—change is good. Services leaders at HP are undertaking the daunting task of transforming HP’s significant software services business from independent silos, each focused on their own core capabilities, to a new converged organization providing value-added services focused on delivering customer-centric business outcomes. Anand Eswaran, vice president of global professional services software and solutions for HP, gave attendees the inside story during his provocative keynote, answering questions others might be considering in making their own such organizational changes, such as: 

• What macro trends and other business indicators suggested the need to retool the organization?
• What well-entrenched dogmatic beliefs had to be revisited both internally and externally?
• How did the HP software services executive team win the support of the software c-suite to undergo their sweeping transformation?
• What is the bold new future role of services according to HP Software?
• How does this fit in under the vision for services under HP?

Attendees Listen as Anand Eswaran Discusses HP's Services Transformation Story

The global economy is recovering from “the crash,” but there are artifacts of the downturn that will continue to impact technology service organizations for a decade to come. In his opening TSW keynote, TSIA executive director Thomas Lah outlined four trends that are disrupting traditional service business models: cloud computing, utility computing, mobile computing, and social media. 

Utilizing extensive industry datasets managed by TSIA, Lah outlined how service organizations can best address these challenges. Discover how to address them and read the full write-up on Lah’s discussion in this evening’s ConferenceNews Daily newsletter from TSIA.

TSIA Executive Director Thomas Lah Delivers Opening Keynote Address

The Recognized Innovator Awards have become highly regarded in the services industry. Recognized Innovator finalists were showcased during the Innovation Tour at 1 PM today, officially opening up the Technology Services World event—what better way to start TSW than with highlights of the latest in technology services innovation? Led by John Ragsdale, TSIA vice president of technology research, tour participants were led through demonstrations of the hottest technologies in the areas of knowledge management, social collaboration, and value-added services (see our press release for more details). Conference-goers have a second chance to catch the tour tomorrow at 11 AM, with the chance to vote for “Best in Tour” (voting takes place during both tours). Check out our press release for more details.

Attendees Enter TSW | EXPO

Innovation Tour in the TSW | EXPO

Pre-conference Professional Development Courses started the learning off early for many TSW attendees. What’s great about these courses is that they are open-forum settings, where attendees can debate issues and ask questions they’ve been wanting the answers to for a long time. Definitely worth arriving early for, the Professional Development Courses were delivered by experts from Allegro Associates, DB Kay & Associates, DG Associates, FT Works, and Lamson Consulting.

David Kay of DB Kay & Associates Delivers Professional Development Course

Pre-Conference Learning

Tim Flannery, senior director of TSIA’s research and advisory support services, recently spoke with Syd Garrett, Director, Global Service Delivery Excellence and Bill Beach, Senior Manager, Global Quality at Cisco Systems to interview them for their upcoming TSW Santa Clara conference breakout session on the topic of J.D. Power/TSIA CTSS do’s and don’ts.

In this session, attendees will learn:

• Best practices in preparing for a J.D. Power/CTSS program
• About potential pitfalls on the road to a J.D. Power/CTSS certification
• Lessons learned from a continuous improvement program

Read the interview at Tim’s blog, Support Time.

John Ragsdale, our VP of technology research, has been conducting interviews with our Professional Development faculty in his blog, Eye on Service. Please visit the following link to read his lastest interview:

Creating a Customer Experience Management (CEM) Strategy: A Conversation with Dennis Gershowitz

Creating successful support communities, efficient and effective knowledge management, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty, fostering cross-cultural teamwork, getting marketing support for services—these are topics important to TSIA members. These also are the topics you’ll find when choosing to attend a Pre-Conference Professional Development Course.

John Ragsdale, our VP of technology research, recently interviewed two of our instructors. Please visit the following links to read his interviews:

Calculating the ROI of Community Projects: A Conversation with Francoise Tourniaire

Innovation from Cross Cultural Teamwork: A Conversation with Melissa Lamson

We’re excited about the new TableTopic networking breakfasts taking place at TSW on May 3rd and 4th from 7:30 – 8:30 a.m.    We want to make sure the discussions are focused on the topics that are most important to you.   Please take a couple of minutes to give us your input via a quick online poll.   Thank you!