What changes in Services Delivery do you envision persisting long-term?

Piyush Dogra
Piyush Dogra Founding Member | Scholar ✭✭
edited February 2023 in Services Delivery & Operations

In the post-Covid world most of our professional services delivery has moved to offsite. Do you envision this delivery modality shift to persist long-terml? What are the other big shifts you envision persisting as the economy starts opening up?

Answers

  • John Ragsdale
    John Ragsdale Member | Guru ✭✭✭✭✭

    So far, the companies I've talked to have successfully transitioned PS to remote/virtual with little problems, and many (most?) projects were already being delivered remotely. The one challenge I've heard is that even remote projects often start with an onsite meeting to do process mapping and identify customization requirements. I've had members ask if I know of any virtual whiteboarding tools to enable this, and I don't, other than being told there are white boarding plugs-ins for Zoom. I'm not a PS expert, but where I think the opportunity is that 51% of projects today, on average, are pre-defined, fixed price, repeatable, projects. But these represent only about ~40% of revenue. I think many firms don't do a great job of building project templates, and leveraging lessons learned/best practices from previous projects. I'm hoping companies will begin focusing not just on how do to remote delivery, but how to encourage collaboration, knowledge sharing, and templates with built-in coaching to dramatically improve delivery, margins, and project times for remote delivery.

  • We have been using Mural (https://www.mural.co/) for our remote "design" type sessions and it is pretty easy to use and for all levels to participate. We conducted an internal session with our sales and consulting leadership to get everyone a hands on understanding of how to do these design / up front collaboration sessions remotely. It takes practice and planning but it can be pretty effective.

  • Thomas Lah
    Thomas Lah Member | Guru ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Piyush Dogra we have a live poll related to remote service delivery. 96% of respondents answered "yes" to the following question:

    After COVID-19, does your company intend to keep delivering some services remotely that were previously delivered onsite?

    Check out the poll for additional insights:


  • StevenForth
    StevenForth Founding Partner | Expert ✭✭✭

    This will depend in large part on what our customers decide to do. Our largest customer ( a 16 billion revenue med tech company) has moved to fully remote working styles and plans to remain fully remote for the rest of this year. Another of our larger customers (a $3 billion software company) is also in full remote mode and will be at least until the end of October (and probably till the end of the year).

    So we are going to let ourselves be guided primarily by our customers situation and not try to direct this ourselves. We would be a very small tail trying to wag some very large dogs!