Where PS Leaders Connect    
About | Resources | Contact Us
Job Board
Sr. Technical Support Manager, Websense - San Diego, CA
Implementation Consultant - Retail - Kronos, MA & CA
Practice Lead / Manager - Kronos, MA
>>More jobs
Events


image

>>Details & Register
>>All Events
Upcoming Webinars
image


Boston, April 6, 2010
Chicago, April 28, 2010

>>Learn More
Research
>>Learn More
Recommended Reading
Professional Services Firm 50
- Tom Peters
CRM at the Speed of Light, Third Edition: Essential Customer Strategies for the 21st Century
- Paul Greenberg

>>More Books
PSVillager Blogs
>>More Blogs
Voice of Village More Articles Authors
image
Facts, Figures and Features....

How We Often Miss the Point When Talking with Prospects and Clients
-By David Brown, Ridge Global Marketing

You’re driving down a deserted road when your car hits a pothole and the engine cuts out. The car slowly rolls to a halt by the side of the road. 

>>Read More
 
Become a PSVillager
JOIN
Community Projects

2008 Professional Services Compensation Survey Results

PURCHASE REPORT NOW

>>Single Use License - $75
or
>>Corporate Use License - $295

Find out what other software companies are paying for Professional Services talent, from Consultant to VP of Professional Services.


image


Compensation Survey Sponsored by:
imageimage
image  image



Tips from the Trenches: The Collective Wisdom of Over 100 Professional Services Leaders

BUY NOW and receive PSVillage Member price of $29.95!

(Buy 5 or more and pay only $24.95 per book plus shipping. For orders of 10 or more, contact admin@psvillage.com for special pricing.)

image

Please enter purchase information below.


Quantity
Unit Price
Shipping Cost



PSVillage is proud to offer our recently published book written by over 100 PSVillage members.  This book is chock full of tips - 165 of them to be exact - from developing a PS Strategy and Charter to Services Marketing and Selling to managing your offshore resources. We hope you enjoy it so much you’ll tell all your friends and colleagues about it.  Download complimentary ebook.

E-Book Sponsored by:
image  image



Schools for Humanity


image
The children of the world are our future.

PSVillage has partnered with Schools for Humanity, our member-founded non-profit, dedicated to building schools for underprivileged children in developing countries. With your help, we can begin constructing our first school and work towards eliminating illiteracy one village at a time. Learn more.
Discussion Forum

We are a professional services organization within a software product
company.  Our products are all large scale applications in the electronic
payments field.  Every implementation is heavily customized to suit the
business needs of the client.  We are having internal discussions on
what activities should or should not be billed to the customer; mostly
surrounding project management but the discussion extends to all PS
staff as well. 

For example, our delivery methodology specifies that we have weekly
meetings with our senior management to review the status of projects. 
Project Managers prepare for and conduct a portion of the senior
review.  Should that PM time be logged against the customer project
and billed to the customer? 

Another example:  PMs spend time preparing invoices, addressing
billing questions, entering/checking/verifying/editing data in our
Oracle financial and project accounting systems.  Do other companies
bill the customer for this administrative time logged by PMs? 

Another example:  Since our applications are customized for every
implementation, there are inevitably software bugs.  Those software
bugs lead to internal review meetings, delays in delivery, and rework.
Although we would not bill for rework, should the time the PM spends
coordinating all the internal activities be charged to the customer? 

One last example:  our delivery methodology calls out specific
activities & deliverables such as Quality Gates, Quality Audits, Post
Mortem analysis, Executive Review sessions with customer execs,
weekly status reports and many more.  Where do other companies
draw the line between when an activity is billed to a customer because
it is part of the customer project, and when the activity is not billed
because it is an internal action that the company elects to perform that
is only tangentially part of the customer project?

This may seem like a simple question but it is really quite complicated. 
We are finding that making the transition from a pure software vendor
(our old model) to a services company (the new model) is not that
easy.  Maybe you have experienced the same thing. 

People are lining up on both sides of the aisle.  On one side are the
people who think we should bill every hour of time that we think about,
do something about, talk about or work on a project.  On the other side
are those who think that some of the things we do are driven by our
own internal desire for process, methodology and data, and, if an
activity is internally driven, we should not bill the customer as it is a
‘cost of doing business’. 

I’d be interested in any opinions or examples you have on the topic.

Thanks.

>>See all discussion threads and member responses in the archives
PSVillager Spotlight
image
Michael S. Kenny
Managing Director, Slalom Consulting
Opel Astra. Red 1.3L.
Vivande - St San Francisco CA Great Italian food, great atmosphere and I can walk home.
>>More about Michael
>>All Spotlights
Sponsors
>>Learn More
News
PSVillage Hosts Executive Breakfast Series on
Cloud Computing and Compensation Trends
Compuware Launches New Initiative to Help Technology Firms Improve Operational Visibility and Control
Ironworks Consulting Selects Tenrox On-Demand Software to Streamline its Project and Resource Management Processes
Tenrox Project Workforce User Base Surpasses 100,000 Users Worldwide
>>More News