Empowering IT Consultants with the Remote-Services Competitive Advantage
Empowering IT Consultants with the Remote-Services Competitive AdvantageAugust 14, 2007 @ 2:00 p.m. Eastern / 11:00 a.m. Pacific
Duration: 45 minutes
Register:
click hereA recent study conducted by the Technology Professional ServicesAssociation (TPSA) discovered that professional service organizationsare only realizing billable utilization rates of 65% or less. How cantechnology service providers maximize their productivity to evolve frombeing a "vendor" to a "valued business partner?"
Join us for a live Webinar on August 14 to learn how a variety of companies yield higher revenue and customer satisfaction by leveragingremote support to provide value-added services to clients withoutsending consultants into the field. Thomas Lah, executive director atTPSA, will also share results from a recently conducted industry surveythat reveals trends that every professional services organization needsto know.
During this interactive Webinar you will learn how to:
*Generate new revenue streams by using on-demand remote access to meetcustomer needs
*Move your support organization from a reactive cost center to aninnovative professional services profit center
*Increase your consulting capacity and customer loyalty whiledramatically lowering costs
If improving your consultant or agent efficiency is important to you,then you should register for this special event today.
Featured Speakers:
Ronan Vance, Senior Channel Marketing Manager - Citrix Online
Thomas Lah, Executive Director, TPSA
Michael Krieger, VP, Market Experts Group - Ziff Davis Enterprise
Register:
click herePlease visit
http://www.eseminarslive.com/ for a complete list of upcoming ZiffDavis Enterprise eSeminars.
Labels: business strategy, citrix, consultants, IT management, remote access, remote services, seminar
Building a strategy focused organization.
Building a strategy focused organization. Strategy expert Michael Porter describes the foundation of strategy as the “activities” in
which an organization elects to excel. If the foundation of strategy is, as Porter maintains,
the “selection and execution of hundreds of activities,” then strategy cannot be
limited to a few people at the top of an organization (Michael Porter, “What Is Strategy,”
Harvard Business Review, November/December 1996).
Strategy must be understood and executed by everyone. The organization must be
aligned around its strategy, and perf o rmance management systems help create that alignment.
Herein lies one of the major causes of poor strategic management. Most performance
management systems are designed around the annual budget and operating plan.
They promote short - term, incremental, tactical behaviour. While this is a necessary part
of management, it is not enough. You cannot manage strategy with a system designed for tactics. It is our belief that it is this need—the need for strategic enterprise management—
that has been driving the widespread adoption of the Balanced Score card .
full articlemanagement stategy, business strategy, implementation, proactive strategic managementLabels: business strategy, implementation, management stategy, proactive strategic management
Apply New Metrics to Measure IT's Business Value
Businesses Apply New Metrics in Measuring IT's Value
Old metrics like ROI are still necessary, but they don't tell the whole story. So some CIOs are exploring new ways to demonstrate IT's value to the business.
AT IT BUSINESS EDGE:
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Companies Wasting Ten Percent of Employee Time Looking for Information•
The Team at the Top•
IT Workers in DemandReturn on Investment and other staples of IT metrics aren't likely to disappear. Yet those traditional metrics don't always get you where you want to go with IT/business alignment. Some CIOs are shaking things up by adding new measurements, some of which you may find a bit unusual. For instance, one CIO measures how many times IT personnel go on sales calls. Another strives to improve IT's value by setting a "benefit per developer" goal of $450,000 by 2009. The metrics vary so widely, you may wonder how these ideas can be applied to your company — and that's just the point. To successfully measure how you're helping the business, you should start by looking at the company's unique business strategies and then establish metrics that support those strategies.
Measuring Up: How to Prove IT ValueMeasuring and monitoring the benefits delivered by IT is becoming more important in enterprises, and many CIOs find that established financial measures such as ROI and total cost of ownership don't cut it. Traditional IT metrics such as system availability and transaction response times are a necessary part of good IT governance, but they do not express benefits in terms business execs can understand. Business and IT must work together to establish meaningful metrics, agree several analysts interviewed for this article. Tips for doing so are offered, complete with real-world examples. Short on time? Scroll to the end, where the article is nicely summarized with a concise list of best practices.
How to Create Stronger Value PropositionsMetrics offer a great way for companies to attract the attention of potential customers, and they work equally well when it comes to keeping current customers happy. This article suggests using metrics such as: How much did sales go up? What kind of savings were realized? How much did you lower the cost of goods sold? Don't round the numbers; the more specific the number, the more credible it appears, the article says. If you lack such specific metrics, consider using industry statistics to your advantage (there are always plenty of those to go around), extending customers' existing business metrics, or asking your customers to help you create benchmarks. It's important to not get too technical with metrics; highlight the business impacts instead.
More reading on this subject:Push Your IT Value or Suffer Suspicion :: WhatPC?
July 2006 Survey: What's the Value of IT? At Many Companies, It's Just Guesswork :: CIO Insight
IT, technology management, technolgy strategy, business strategy, metrics, technology risk, ROI, VaR, value addedLabels: business strategy, IT, metrics, ROI, technolgy strategy, technology management, technology risk, value added, VaR
