A Professional Service (PS) group for a company can be viewed like the special forces in the military.  The special forces have a specialized and significantly different mission and therefore are organized, staffed, and deployed differently than the rest of the military. However, they must be integrated into the larger ...

Using Segmentation as a Measuring Stick How does your organization do annual planning or establish its targets and goals for the next year? Is it a top-down percentage growth with a target margin threshold? Is it business unit specific and bottom-up using this year’s run-rate, current account opportunities, recurring revenue ...

As we have discussed in the first two blogs in our series, a solutions portfolio is the embodiment of a company’s where to play and how to act strategies that involves cross-business initiatives and investments. Because a portfolio is dynamic and multifaceted, companies often overlook key indicators that tell them ...

In the last blog in this series, we introduced three challenges companies face that are often symptomatic of poor solutions’ portfolio management. In this blog, we want to delve into the first challenge in more detail – a striking majority of organizations lack a dedicated resource who is responsible for ...

What is a portfolio and why is it important? The definition of the word “portfolio” varies greatly based on context, but for this blog series, the word portfolio will not refer to a suite of technology offerings, a financial portfolio, or a static snapshot of a company’s products and services.  Rather, ...

As mentioned in earlier blogs, B2B companies in mature markets must manage complex businesses in order to grow and sustain reasonable margins. We believe the best way to view the business is through the lens of market segment needs and share of wallet. This is because of the “law of ...

Stop Chasing the Silver Bullet to Maintain Simplicity We have two conflicting pressures in business today.  The first is the need for companies to be successful managing a complex business model – products, software, services, and professional services – in different segments and markets. The second is leaders’ interest and comfort ...

In this blog series, we will begin discussing the important issue of how to play – how to organize the go-to-market assets to address different account categories and different business models – hardware products, software products, services, professional services, outsourcing etc. The goal of a “how to play” model is ...