Results Revealed for Services Culture and Business Model Study
By Ed Petrozelli, President & CEO , The INSIGHT Group and Stephen Brown, Phd, Strategic Partner, The INSIGHT Group
At Arizona State University’s Center for Services Leadership annual Symposium The INSIGHT Group led two well attended and highly interactive sessions. In addition to the outstanding Q & A session led by executive panelists, attendees provided feedback on a self assessment questionnaire at the beginning of each session. The participants were ‘self-selected’ and the insights provided were very revealing.
What are Culture and Business Model Challenges?
The two statements that the group answered most positively with either ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ responses were:
- Senior management is committed to and an advocate of the Services Solutions Strategy & Business Plan (78%)
- We have a formal agreed to Services Solutions Strategy and Business Plan (71%)
Conversely, the two statements with the most significant gap or lowest ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ were:
- We are able to rapidly commit and share resources and assets between our product and services solution business (34%)
- We have formal processes for customer satisfaction management for services and solutions (39%)
The survey results positively show that the attendees’ firms have a services and solution strategy and plan and that the senior executive team is behind them…typically with high expectations for performance. However, it also appears that the attendees’ firms have more work to do in addressing key operation challenges such as, committing resources to services growth and determining the customer satisfaction. Other responses further support that getting the ‘how to’ elements correct are difficult. Below is a chart with all the groups’ Services Solutions Readiness self assessment responses.
Services and Solutions Readiness*
| Question |
Strongly Agree 4 |
Agree 3 |
Disagree 2 |
Strongly Disagree 1 |
Average |
| 1. We have a formal agreed to Services Solutions Strategy and Business Plan (including a dedicated Leader). | 30% | 41% | 25% | 5% | 3.8 |
| 2. Senior
management is committed to and an advocate of the Services Solutions
Strategy and Business Plan. |
35% | 43% | 18% | 5% | 3.8 |
| 3. We have a separate services solutions P&L with specific metrics and accounting practices for our services and solutions business. | 24% | 27% | 29% | 20% | 3.3 |
| 4. We have the capabilities (especially dedicated service professionals) to develop, market and deliver service solutions. | 20% | 41% | 29% | 10% | 3.5 |
| 5. We are able to rapidly commit and share resources and assets between our product and service solutions business. | 3% | 31% | 56% | 10% | 2.7 |
| 6. We have a dedicated Service Marketing Leader and budget. | 17% | 38% | 29% | 16% | 3.3 |
| 7. We have formal processes for assessing customer wants and needs for service solutions. | 15% | 29% | 41% | 15% | 3.1 |
| 8. We have formal processes for customer satisfaction management for service solutions. | 12% | 27% | 46% | 15% | 3.0 |
* The above scale ranged from a 4 for “Strongly Agree” to a 1 for “Strongly Disagree”. The Analysis is based on a total of 42 respondents with a total average score of 20.1 out of a possible 32.
How does your assessment of your company compare with these results?
Next month we’ll review the feedback from breakout session two: Services Infusion – Selling Value-added Services and Solutions.