The inability of customers to successfully adopt complex technology is a major gating factor in the growth of tech industries.  The rapid proliferation of digital features and integrated systems have created a complexity avalanche that is burying customers large and small.  End user adoption as a percentage of available features is on the decline while, at the same time, customer frustration is rising.  This growing consumption gap between what products are capable of doing and what users are able to actually achieve is threatening to upset conventional models of how to grow their product revenues.

• Product-based differentiation is happening above the level where customers are actually using the product.
• Product margins windows are rapidly closing.
• Customer re-purchases and upgrade frequencies rates are slowing.
• Stable systems are winning out over complex, risky, new product implementations.
• Customer’s definition of product value is shifting away from cool features and toward end user adoptability.

Unfortunately, most technology companies – from consumer products to enterprise systems to medical devices to automotive manufacturers – lack a comprehensive strategy for addressing the complexity avalanche.  While ease of use and standards could do the job, they haven’t.  Standards simply take too long to evolve and user interface design is not keeping up with features proliferation.
 
Services are a critical component in closing the adoption gap.  Yet today’s vendor service offerings are misaligned with this objective.  We need new services, with a new mission, offered in new ways.  Not only will these services address the complexity avalanche, they can also create new service revenue streams and help defend against the current erosion of the financially critical maintenance model.
 
In this provocative keynote, J.B. Wood will challenge almost every existing assumption surrounding the world of technology services. Throughout this session you will be challenged to re-think your company’s entire long term approach not only to services, but how they link to your product strategy.  You will hear radical new thoughts about how services will be structured, consumed, delivered and, most importantly, how that products sales process will change in the next 3-5 years.  You will also hear about a powerful new way to measure the health of your customer base business. Based on the new book “Complexity Avalanche” this is guaranteed to change the way you view the future of services.

With his keynote as prelude, AFSMI|SSPA|TPSA President and CEO JB Wood will moderate a discussion among senior services executives around the major assertions in Complexity Avalanche. Panelists will discuss and debate Wood’s central premise—that most technology companies lack a strategy for driving technology adoption all the way through to customer success, and that that will become the future role of technology services. The conversation will also turn to such questions as:

• Do you agree with the premise? What are the major roadblocks to realizing that vision?  How can we overcome them?  How long will it take to get there?
• Will services organizations (CS, PS, FS, ED) converge over time?
• Will there be a significant move away from the traditional maintenance agreement and toward project-based services?
• What are the prospects for a tighter integration between services and sales?
• When can we expect services to start pulling through product sales on a large scale, instead of vice versa?

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

Innovative service technology is a key ingredient in operational excellence. It extends the productivity of employees, creates new revenue opportunities, and improves the overall customer experience. In this session, not only will you learn about new innovative products available for PS, tech support, and field service, you also will hear case studies of companies that are leveraging the technology today to improve operations, efficiency, and margins.

Presentation Abstract:

Though technology spending is definitely down in 2009, association members continue to make major investments in key service and support technology that enable competitive differentiation, increase margins, and generate new forms of revenue. In this presentation, Ragsdale will present the major service technology trends for 2009-2010, as well as the top member inquiry topics. In addition, Ragsdale will announce the winners of the Fall 2009 Recognized Innovator Awards, and present case studies on how companies are leveraging innovative technologies to not only survive, but thrive in this tough economic climate.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

If you are debating the importance of services to the future financial success of your company, this is the keynote for you. Gather both data and frameworks that will help you articulate the significant impact services revenue streams will have on the future economic success of both hardware and software companies.

Presentation Abstract:

In the opening keynote of Technology Services World, Las Vegas, J.B. Wood presents a provocative picture of where the technology services industry is heading. In this day two keynote, Thomas Lah, Executive Director of TPSA, presents a practical framework technology companies can use to assess the impact of these market changes on company economics.

Using a unique set of data points derived from both public record and the proprietary benchmarking efforts of AFMSI, SSPA, and TPSA, Thomas will present the shifting margin map facing technology solution providers.  This framework can be applied by all audience members to assess the financial impact of three key industry trends being tracked by AFMSI, SSPA, and TPSA:

• Declining hardware margins
• Declining maintenance margins
• Slowing software and hardware sales

In addition, Thomas will define six unique classes of services product companies will be called upon to deliver if they hope to survive the complexity avalanche defined in the opening keynote of the conference. Finally, Thomas will end his session by identifying a set of initiatives service organizations must consider in the near term to prepare themselves for the pending shift in the margin map.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

The telecom world is changing. With the decline of product differentiation there is an increased importance for the company's service organization to pave the way in how customers choose technology. New services focusing on helping the customer to proactively extend the lifetime of their product investments are becoming more important, and through customer intimacy the services organization is able to give effective feedback on product improvements as supportability and performance to the internal R&D function. Eva Elmstedt will reveal how Ericsson is handling this transition.

Presentation Abstract:

By supporting customers in their day-to-day operations as well as through major events pressuring the operators' networks, Ericsson helps its customers through peak traffic periods.  Ericsson has achieved outstanding customer satisfaction year after year in their Customer Support performance measurement, serving more than one billion end-users. Eva Elmstedt, Head of Ericsson Customer Support, will give you insights into this vital business. She will also share her thoughts on the decline of product differentiation, the increase of services in the way user’s value technology solutions, and the importance of Customer Support to feed back knowledge of how products behave in the field to the R&D organization for further development. It’s all about performance and the growth that customer interaction provides. Handled correctly, Customer Support will generate more business for the whole company through customer intimacy and services differentiation.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

Is your company moving to respond to market conditions and customer demand for faster time to value, a better cost-to-value ratio and reduced risk? If so, you’ll want to hear about how CA has enhanced its product portfolio with standardized services and lessons learned from the associated internal and external change management campaign.

Presentation Abstract:

The weak economy is putting pressure on companies to show a faster return on investment from their software purchases. In the 2009 “How Customers Choose” survey by the ITSMA and PAC, IT and business decision makers list two of their top decision criteria as:

• Resources to meet deadlines and speed time to market
• Commitment to deliver measurable business results

And somewhat further down in the list of criteria was “a proven track record.”

In addition, an industry report by the Standish Group points out that “Project success rates have decreased over the last year, with 44% of all IT projects reported as late, over budget, and/or with less than the required features and functions; 24% were actually cancelled prior to completion.”

Repeatable standardized services have been a goal of many professional services organizations for years. Standardized services reduce project complexity, so projects can be delivered on time and on budget and lower risk through the use of proven deployment methodologies and best practices. Organizations that provide standardized Services in this weak economy have a strategic advantage.

Richard Sills, CA Corporate Senior Vice President and GM of CA Services, talks about CA’s move away from customized solutions that meet the needs only of individual customers to providing innovative standardized services that meet the needs of a wide range of customers, provide rapid business value and act as a foundation for dramatic enterprise-wide innovation. He will present lessons learned from the major change management program that accompanied the development of standardized offerings.

Standardized services exemplify the dramatic innovation that changes the meaning and impact of professional services organization offerings, taking into account both the customer’s immediate, stated needs as well as the broader needs within the customer’s industry. These changes are relevant not only to our current economic situation, but will continue with the more cautious approach that will persist beyond economic recovery.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

Learn about HP Technology Services transformation and hear our perpspective on the future of infrastructure services.

Presenation Abstract:

HP Technology Services is the industry's largest infrastructure services business with over 35,000 employees in more than 120 countries. HP leverages this scale and reach to deliver outstanding client experiences in the Enterprise and the SMB market.
 
The global economy is creating pricing pressures on commodity infrastructure services. At the same time, proliferation of x86, storage and fabric virtualization as part of business technology transformation is creating demand for infrastructure consulting and proactive / out-tasking services. Over the past 18 months we have refined and standardized our labor model, accelerated investments in automation, and aligned our GTM to address these market forces. During this presentation, I will share our experiences and journey as we strive to elevate performance and growth in our business while focusing on the client experience.

Presentation Abstract:

Tom’s presentation on The Ten Faces of Innovation will highlight the meta-lessons his firm IDEO has learned from working with its worldwide technology clients on thousands of innovation programs. He will describe how adopting powerful creative roles can make innovation personal in a way that yields renewed energy and improved agility for individuals, teams, and technical organizations.

Among these innovation roles are the Anthropologist, who finds new opportunities by observing how people interact with technology in their lives; the Experimenter, who learns through enlightened trial and error; and the Cross-Pollinator, who looks far afield for insights from other industries and even other countries. Kelley will describe how nurturing those roles can help technology companies build and reinforce their own unique culture of innovation.