INTELLIGENT SERVICES DELIVERY
The blueprint for intelligent services.
In the modern SaaS economy, every company must deliver profitable growth. Customer retention is key and Services performance directly impacts a company's success. Here's a guide so your Professional Services teams don't go up stream without a paddle.
What is intelligent services delivery?
The mission of professional services is to maximize ARR without losing money. The shift from growth at all costs to profitable growth means services has a critical role to play in customer acquisition, retention and growth. The services portfolio must accelerate time-to-value as well as unlocking additional value over the customer lifetime.
To do it "intelligently" means a frictionless experience in terms of services delivery and the consumption of value by the customer. The importance of strategy, org design, delivery methods, pricing and packaging, partner ecosystems, resource management and commercial excellence all form the backbone of an Intelligent Services function.
NOT ALL SERVICES ORGANIZATIONS ARE CREATED EQUAL
Operating model for intelligent services.
Professional Services Organizations (PSO) rearchitect their design to deliver customer success and predictable revenue. This operating model articulates the core organizational capability to help you grow and scale success-led services
Key metrics and KPIs are managed in real-time to support governance and functional growth
Integrated processes are critical to a seamless customer experience enabled via your CRM and PSA
PSO needs to mobilise people, capability and skills to meet customer needs across their lifecycle
Systems & Technology
Cross Functional Alignment
Services GTM
Customer Journey Process
Organization Design
Governance
Partner Ecosystem
Roles & Responsibilities
Skills & IP Networks
Culture
Talent & Career Pathing
Workforce Science
STRATEGY
PROCESSES
PEOPLE
STRUCTURE
Customer Journey Process
Services GTM
Governance
Partner Ecosystem
Roles & Responsibilities
Organization Design
Systems & Technology
Cross-Functional Alignment
Skills & IP Networks
Culture
Talent & Career Pathing
Workforce Science
Precursive professional services maturity model.
Precursive developed a maturity model to help customers benchmark their current state of maturity and identify gaps in performance across 5 core capabilities.
Strategic Vision
1
IMPROVISED
Reliant on services as crutch to product market fit
2
DEFINED
Focused on technical implementation
3
REPEATABLE
Strategy to identify opportunities across customer lifecycle
4
GROWTH
Success-led strategy with sustainable operational process
5
WORLD-CLASS
Vision combines robust culture & operating model that fosters innovation
Commercial Excellence
Siloed sales and services with deals thrown over the wall
Defined handoffs promote partnership
Repeatable sales process, structure and collaboration
Prescriptive sales methodology
Professional Services
is a trusted advisor by customers
Resource Management
Jack of all trades approach is ad-hoc & reactive
Foundational processes in place
Automation promotes proactive approach
Insight based method of capacity planning
Intelligent resource management function
Services Execution
Startup process with no consistent delivery process
Initial methodology allows for tracking duration
Repeatable methodology begins driving faster services delivery
Outcomes based engagements accelerating TTV
Innovation across project and consumption based services architecture
Financial Operations
Difficulty tracking performance with ad-hoc financial mgmt.
Early stage financial improvements and fiscal discipline
More accountability and financial control due to standardisation
Accurate forecasting and recognition of revenue and margin
Predictable revenue and high profit margins helps fund future investments
A roadmap for intelligent services.
High performing services teams provide a broad mixture of offerings to meet customers where they need them. With multiple service lines, your GTM needs a rock solid delivery methodology that you can iterate and enable through technology.
The Precursive Engagement model includes a Services Audit and Maturity Assessment to enable the effective deliver your mix of services.
Services team onboarded into framework
Operating model
Defined for global professional services
Precursive maturity assessment
Used to audit services maturity and delivery models
Provides the framework for delivery of multiple service lines
Delivery methodology
Precursive services delivery cloud
Precursive enable services execution across all forms of delivery method
Intelligent services: Predictable revenue.
Take a different view of the customer journey over a multi-year time horizon with a focus on long-term customer engagement and value creation through intelligent services design.
Customer Journey
Your Challenges
Acquire > Onboard > Renew
YEAR ONE
Inconsistent, slow deployments
Optimize > Expand > Renew
YEAR TWO
Evolving customer needs
Enhance > Innovate > Renew
YEAR THREE
Need to do more with less
Services Offering
Implementation
On-demand
Managed Service
Value Engineering
Subscription Service
Expertise Needed
PM, Technical & Change Management
Technical Consultancy
Advisory and Advanced Engineering
Services Margin
-ive > 20%
30-60%
40-60% at Maturity
Precursive impact on services delivery.
$1M
Increase in Productivity
Achieved by resource managers better assigning staff based on skills, geo location and capacity
1000 Hours
Saved for PMO
Automation builds project plans and resource needs based on CPQ line items and services packages
80% Projects
Delivered on Time
Better control throughout implementations and improved backlog management drives efficiency.
Precursive's UX is super clean and it’s simplicity tying different pieces together, from resource allocation to project milestones, makes it an easy project management tool to use and therefore our adoption of the tool is high. The fact that it’s 100% Salesforce native is key.
Dayna Giles.
Director of Operations.
RESOURCES
Free tools to take your Services delivery to the next level.
FAQs.
What is Intelligent Services Delivery? It's a framework for running professional services on data, process and technology that drives profitable growth, faster time to value and lower delivery risk.
Why does profitable growth matter for services teams? Growth without profit erodes margin. Intelligent Services Delivery balances customer retention and time to value against the cost of delivering it.
How does the Professional Services Maturity Model help my team? It benchmarks your organisation's strategy, resourcing and delivery methods against industry stages, showing exactly where to invest next for the biggest impact.
Does Precursive provide tools to support Intelligent Services Delivery? Yes. Precursive offers a Salesforce-native PSA platform plus free playbooks, research and podcasts to help services leaders operationalise the model.
Who should use the Intelligent Services Delivery framework? Any Professional Services or Customer Success leader responsible for revenue growth, resourcing decisions or improving time to value should use it.
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