Professional Service Productization (PSP) is the process of collecting your Intellectual Property, storing it in a central location, collating and embedding it into your methodology and then publishing and propagating it for later reuse. It also involves a closed-loop feed-back process so your team is constantly improving, updating and adding new IP to the repository.
To be effective with productization you need three components: a) A place to store your IP; b) The IP itself and c) A methodology that requires the IP to be used thereafter.
Most professional services organizations today try and collect their IP by using SharePoint or perhaps an easily accessible file server somewhere. This is a reasonable start. However symptoms of sub-optimal execution are a) Voluntary, or non-enforced, participation; b) A lack of standardization; c) Insufficient meta-data to enable easy searching; d) Limited incorporation, or linkage, between content and methodology; e) No requirement to reuse the best IP already stored somewhere and f) No monitoring and rewarding of best IP usage.
The results are predictable.
- Your team relies on Super-Stars to be the go-to person far too often
- It seems to take too long to get new employees at peak capabilities
- Your project quality is unpredictable and varies significantly
- You find it hard to get junior consultants fully utilized (or you just do not have them)
- Your consultants are constantly re-inventing the wheel or spending valuable time finding information
- There are varying degrees of compliance with your methodology
Ascendive can help you address these challenges and improve your performance. Our solution provides the following capabilities:
- A central repository for all your IP
- A process to harvest, categorize and secure your existing IP
- A technology to productize your existing IP and methodology to ensure your best IP is actually being used
- An extensive graphical toolkit to monitor, manage and report on IP and methodology compliance
- A closed-loop feed-back mechanism to continuously improve your IP and reward contributors
- A modular based framework so you can start small and expand your IP and methodology footprint
Our solution provides the following benefits:
- Facilitates getting new consultants up to 100% of their targeted billable utilization as fast as possible
- Ensures your best IP is being used, thereby increasing quality and reducing credits
- Protects your IP from walking out the door when your consultants leave
- Enables junior and higher margin consultants to be more productive
- Provides a solid foundation for rapid and easier scaling of your organization
- Leverages your existing methodologies (no requirement to change your methodology)