Service 2.0 is all about the service provider getting oriented towards the customers’ business success. So, the service basket should consist of items that are easily understood and adapted by most stakeholders at the customer organization.
The Ingredients
I would broadly organize the ingredients into four categories:
- Building repeatable solutions
- Leverage SaaS
- Ketchup applications
- Consulting services
Repeatable solutions
The talk around repeatable solutions is not new. I know that every service provider talked about it in the past, are talking now, and will talk in the future. There are some good examples of such solutions out there. Ideally, these solution offerings should package technology, domain knowledge, and best practice usage in a healthy mix. Going forward, the vendors will increasingly interact with the business stake holders as against just the IT personnel. The pattern of the discussions will revolve more around the business benefits than just the IT skills. So, it is imperative that the vendors talk and preferably demonstrate solutions that could impress the business stakeholders. For example, selling the concepts of mortgage workflow solutions or accounts payables automation solutions will be more acceptable than the effort to impress upon the capabilities of a FileNet, Documentum or Lombardi. The technology names can be used to drive positioning advantages, but what needs to be sold is a solution for a business problem.
SaaS
In the recent years SaaS as a delivery model gained tremendous momentum. The smaller to medium organizations embraced SaaS a lot more than their bigger counterparts. As a delivery model SaaS is here to stay, but I am not fully convinced that it will totally replace the conventional IT infrastructure in enterprises. It makes sense for some service providers to invest in a SaaS infrastructure of their own and use it as a delivery channel as well as a pre-sales tool. The benefits of SaaS as a solution delivery channel are widely discussed and accepted. As a pre-sales tool, this model holds tremendous potential as well. A potential customer of an enterprise solution can experience a solution before actually deciding on investing on the infrastructure. And this is not merely being on the other side of the table during a vendor demo, but by signing up for the service on a pilot basis for as much time as s/he wishes. This way, having a SaaS infrastructure actually locks the customer in and obviously the vendor does not have to worry about a prolonged sales cycle.
Ketchup Applications
Ketchups are consumed along with a main course dish and are used to make the consumption process better. In the software world as well, ketchup applications can be used to enhance the functionality and usability of enterprise software products. For example, a web based process analyzer reports viewer for FileNet, a scanning plug-in for Alfresco, or a TIFF viewer with annotation capabilities for SharePoint can add tremendous value to these platforms. Service 2.0 vendors can package reusable solution code into such ketchup applications to speedup implementation timeframe, gain competitive advantages during the sales process, and fill a lot of gaps that the enterprise product vendors left out. Ketchup applications can be licensed to customers along with a service assignment or separately allowing the vendor to bring in revenues independent of the service contract.
Consulting
Service 2.0 companies could focus a lot of building the technology and domain expertise and using it for consulting assignments. Technology consulting is mostly about understanding the customer’s business and coming up with a strategy for information technology applications. Many organizations engage consultants to understand and document their pain points and come up with high level solution strategies. In today’s world it is difficult to zero-in on a particular technology or vendor to solve a set of business problems. Many times customers decide on technologies or vendors based on criteria other than the best suited ones. This could be because they could get biased by vendors or pressure groups. Sometimes the required levels of competence may not exist in the customer organization to take technology decisions. Service 2.0 vendors could provide consulting services to their customers in understanding the strengths and weaknesses of technologies when it comes to solving the business problem in hand. These services will assist its customers in choosing optimal software application solutions for their business needs.
Posted by Susanth 