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Building Professional Services: The Sirens' Song By Thomas E. LahSteve O'ConnorMitchel Peterson ( Prentice Hall PTR )
Release Date: 2002-06-22
Average Customer Rating:
List Price: $59.99
Price: $47.99
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Product Description
Product companies worldwide are recognizing that their best growth opportunities lie in professional services -- but building professional services organizations at companies that have traditionally focused on products can be extremely challenging. Now, two leading experts present a comprehensive guide to creating professional services organizations, managing them to maturity, and delivering both excellent services and excellent profitability. Using real-world examples, Building Professional Services offers a complete, practical framework for creating and managing organizations that provide support, education, managed services, consulting, outsourcing, and other professional services. Coverage includes: chartering, organizing, and establishing metrics for professional services; addressing the unique challenges faced by professional services in traditional product companies; and managing a professional services business at every stage of its lifecycle. Part of the Harris Kern Enterprise Computing Institute Series, the world's foremost source of information on the people, process, and technology issues behind enterprise computing.
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Very good, a must read for product technology people
This book is the most complete and clear text about the transition that many companies are doing from product centric to solution enabler organizations. A must read, highly advisable if you are in the IT business.
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Insightful frameworks for an effective PSO ( sanjaykanungo )
This book is absolutely the best! It provides frameworks to structure and implement an effective professional services organization (PSO) for an IT product vendor. A product company PSO matures over time through various phases characterized by the types of services it offers. This book is full of practical yet winning strategies and tactics to maneuver the high risk waters of professional services. There are clear directions on how to manage key levers that increase profitability but it also sets realistic expectations. Although the book provides the `recipe' for a sample $100 million professional services organization, it lists all the necessary `ingredients' to cook up a PSO of any size.
I liked the fact that it is written in a style that is free of any jargon. Authors are professionals who clearly understand the industry from inside. My least favorite part are the diagrams and illustrations which are at best adequate but could be better. Highly recommend this book!
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Building professional services in a product-based company ( kegorova )
This is the absolutely best book devoted to building pro services organization in a product-based company. While there are a lot of sources on managing stand-alone pro services firm (i.e. accounting, law), this book addresses the common pitfalls in moving into services for product-oriented companies.
The book is easy to read, well organized, and packed with sound practical advice you can start applying right away, whether you're in delivery, sales, or marketing -- you'll be going back to it often.
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You will sleep with this book ( michaelcizmar )
This book absolutely is the best book I've ever ready regarding professional services. They describe a pragmatic approach from their experience at SGI services. This book will take you through planning an PS organization, development of various groups, reporting strucutures, templates for tools to help you.
It's focus in on a PS organization of a product company but you can take much away from this book if you are purely a services organization.
What I like the most is that it helps you do begin to address the various challenges where other books gloss over these topics and leave it to you.
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Excellent pragmatic approach ( lutz )
This book as become my day-to-day bible to managing a professional service division within our product-oriented company. If you have your objectives and strategy clear, this book will help you getting organized with the tactics.
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