A BLUEPRINT FOR SERVICES
Over the next 12 months and likely beyond, revenue growth coming specifically from the Professional Services (PS) function will be crucial in multiple sectors. This, in the most part, is due to increased competition, demanding client expectations, and continuing economic uncertainties. Firstly, new forms of Services Recurring Revenues (SRR) are being called for from upper-management (namely the CEO, CRO and CCO) for company valuations, but also to prevent the function from becoming an expensive resource in tough economic times.
Additionally, PS leaders are under intense pressure beyond simply continuing to demonstrate the value of their expertise - added innovation and efficiency requirements are being tested by by the needs of modern service delivery models. These needs are being positively paired with revenue growth, and in turn companies can be enabled to invest in technology, talent, and partnerships, which are naturally essential for remaining competitive.
Growth also helps firms navigate economic volatility and capitalize on new opportunities (often within digital transformation and other industry-specific solutions) ensuring long-term sustainability and resilience.
In this article, "key levers" will refer to the strategic areas or initiatives that organizations can adjust or optimize to significantly impact their business outcomes. In the Professional Services sector, focusing on these levers - namely utilizing Partner Delivery, the Productization of Services, and the tech stack - can unlock new avenues for revenue growth and operational efficiency. By strategically applying these levers, firms can enhance scalability, and drive certain advantages over their peers.
Primary Focus Areas/Levers for Services Revenue Growth:
Partner Delivery: Expanding service reach and capacity through strategic partnerships.
Productizing Services: Creating standardized service offerings for scalability and predictability.
Tools: Leveraging technology to enhance efficiency, insight, and service delivery.
Talent Utilization: Optimizing resource allocation to maximize productivity and project success.
Client Engagement: Strengthening collaboration and co-creating value with clients.
(New) Service Lines: Diversifying revenue by entering emerging markets or verticals.
1. PARTNER DELIVERY: SCALING AND EXPANDING REACH
The Value of Partner-Led Delivery
Leveraging partners allows professional services firms to extend their service delivery capabilities beyond their internal resources and expertise (and capacity limits). By collaborating with partners - think technology vendors, consulting firms, or regional specialists - companies can inorganically scale their operations to meet increased demand, access specialized skills, and offer a broader range of services without the need for extensive, expensive or unavailable internal investment. Whilst there will be the obvious cost savings from avoiding expenditure on any increased internal resource, staff that purely deliver your product or service for example, companies expanding their partner network also avoid the spiralling expense that managing any increased headcount entails.
Done effectively, this approach could enable organizations to penetrate new markets or geographies by leveraging the local presence and networks of their partners, thus expanding their market reach and opening up new revenue opportunities as well as lead to a more flexible and agile service model which enable quick responses to client needs and industry changes. More simply, they can allow capacity for you to do more of what you’re good at - leading to that chief requirement, additional services revenues. Partners who are successful at delivering your services will also, likely, be able to become part of a reseller partnership, further increasing your sales capabilities/capacity.
Many companies have done this successfully. Don’t be disheartened by their enterprise growth; their example is an excellent benchmark of this concept done well, but this can be replicated at smaller scales.
1. Salesforce and its Consulting/System Integrator Partner Ecosystem
Model: Salesforce has built a robust ecosystem of consulting and implementation partners, with a blend of heavy hitters - Accenture, Deloitte, PwC - and boutique integrators. These partners are trained and certified (using Salesforce’s own certification program) to deliver the Salesforce suite of solutions, from baseline CRM implementation to custom development and industry-specific integrations.
Impact: The key is that such a partner network has enabled Salesforce to scale its delivery capacity globally and focus on innovation, while partners handle the complexities of customization and deployment. It has also helped Salesforce tap into various verticals and geographies by leveraging the domain/language expertise, exploiting the local presence had by its partners.
2. Microsoft and the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) Program
Model: Microsoft’s CSP program empowers partners to sell, build, and manage Microsoft cloud solutions and services for customers. Partners like Rackspace and Crayon not only resell Microsoft products but also provide value-added services, including managed IT, migration, and custom application development.
Impact: This model has allowed Microsoft to penetrate the SMB market more effectively, providing tailored solutions that cater to specific business needs. It has expanded Microsoft’s reach and customer base without directly increasing its internal service delivery resources.
3. Google Cloud and Global System Integrators (GSIs)
Model: Google Cloud works with GSIs such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Wipro, and Infosys to drive digital transformation for clients using Google’s technology stack. These partners provide consulting, implementation, and managed services to enterprises across various industries.
Impact: This partnership model has accelerated Google Cloud’s growth in the enterprise segment by enabling large-scale cloud migrations and complex data analytics projects, leveraging the deep industry expertise and customer relationships of the GSIs.
4. ServiceNow and its Partner Delivery Network
Model: ServiceNow collaborates with partners like KPMG and Cognizant for service delivery, from initial platform implementation to managed services. These partners are trained on the ServiceNow platform and help customers optimize workflows and automate processes.
Impact: The partner network has been crucial for ServiceNow’s expansion into new markets and industries, ensuring high-quality service delivery and customer satisfaction at scale, without overwhelming internal teams.
Building and Enabling a Partner Ecosystem
The are three core steps for building this partner ecosystem:
Define Strategy and Partner Types: Establish clear objectives and identify the types of partners needed. Should they be resellers, integrators, consultants, a blend?
Develop Enablement and Incentives: Create training, resources, and incentive structures to equip and motivate partners to deliver your services effectively. Evidence prior successful relationships even if they weren’t formalized at the time.
Manage and Monitor Performance: Regularly evaluate partner performance and provide support to ensure alignment with business goals.
Obviously there are further complexities to this process, which is why we’ve written a playbook on this topic to aid the creation or growth of your partner network. Download free here.
We want to highlight the importance of enablement programs, formalized training and certification programs within your partner network. This is likely to be or become essential to maintain the quality of delivery your customers have come to expect. It means you can rank your partners based on said quality and expertise and, should you have to, churn partners who aren’t performing to standards. The necessity to cleanse your partner network as it expands may be a necessary evil.
Ensuring Quality and Consistency
When creating your partner delivery ecosystem, the final need in architecting such networks is creating strategies for the maintenance of service quality and, by association, the customer satisfaction when specifically delivered via partners. The same measures and metrics of success for your own internal delivery should be [rigorously] applied to the network and KPIs should also match. Partner scorecards can be used to track and then to benchmark partner performance; examples of key metrics are partner specific CSATs, gross margin from subcontractor projects and partner escalations. Find others in the playbook.
It's good practice to use the same in-house tool/PSA for your partners to have this overview of quality; if your PSA tool doesn’t support Partner-led delivery requirements, speak to Precursive today.
Such tools and necessary frameworks should also be adopted to standardize processes and allow for communication between your PS function and partners. Create partner channels and forums whereby best practices can be shared but also for collaboration during delivery so as risks can be identified before they become an issue.
2. PRODUCTIZING SERVICES: FROM CUSTOMIZATION TO STANDARDIZATION
We have also written a free playbook for this - so for more detail on how to productize your services, head here. But in a nutshell…
What Does It Mean to Productize Services?
Productizing services drives scalability and predictability in revenue. By building or selecting your best services and packaging them in a consumable and repeatable way, you’ve honed your “menu” to deliver better and at scale. Note, this likely should be established prior to building a partner network.
Identify Opportunities for Productization
Evaluate criteria in order to determine which services can be productized. Perhaps these might be the most frequently offered services, or the repurposing of ad-hoc offerings into a consistent package that customers can purchase in order to achieve an outcome. The likely outcome is uncovering those repeatable elements of delivery in order to scale efficiently.
A great example of someone doing this well is HubSpot. They initially provided marketing software and transitioned from offering custom onboarding and consulting services to productized service packages. In their early days HubSpot offered an onboarding process that was highly tailored; consultants were required to customize implementations based on each customer’s unique needs. As you can imagine, this approach was difficult to scale as the company rapidly grew.
To address this, HubSpot developed standardized onboarding packages that provided a structured, repeatable process for common customer use cases. These productized services included fixed-scope offerings like “Starter,” “Professional,” and “Enterprise” packages, each with predefined deliverables and timelines. This shift allowed HubSpot to scale its service delivery efficiently, reduce costs, and improve customer outcomes, contributing to its growth and success in the competitive SaaS market. This allowed for the growth of its partner delivery network, now over 1600 strong, as each implementation process was clearly laid out for the partner to replicate.
Building Repeatable and Scalable Offerings
The following is a useful framework for developing packaged service offerings.
It's also key to think on your pricing models and go-to-market strategies for such productized services.
3. TOOLS: LEVERAGING TECHNOLOGY TO ENHANCE EFFICIENCY, INSIGHT, AND SERVICES DELIVERY
The Role of Technology in Services Growth
1. Service Delivery Tools:
Project management platforms, PSA solutions, and collaboration tools streamline project execution, automate service workflows, and enhance communication, ensuring smooth delivery and coordination across teams and with clients.
2. Resource Management Tools:
Resource planning, capacity management, and time tracking tools optimize the allocation of personnel and resources, improve productivity, and provide insights into resource utilization, helping teams deliver projects efficiently and on time.
3. Customer Success Tools:
CRM platforms, customer success solutions, and feedback tools help monitor customer health, track engagement, and collect feedback, enabling proactive relationship management, retention efforts, and continuous service improvement.
Choosing the Right Tools for Your Services Business
When selecting tools, ensure they align with business goals by evaluating their ability to enhance operational efficiency, support strategic growth initiatives, and integrate seamlessly with existing systems to provide a cohesive and scalable solution.
Evaluate project management, PSA, and CRM tools based on their ability to streamline workflows, automate services delivery processes, and centralize customer data, respectively; they should be integrated to enable seamless information flow across project execution, resource management, and client engagement, ensuring a unified and efficient service experience.
Leveraging Data for Decision-Making and Growth
PSA analytics and insights can inform service strategy by providing data on project profitability, resource utilization, and client satisfaction, helping identify growth opportunities and areas for operational improvement.
There is plenty of literature out there for the best practices that utilize data in order to track key performance indicators (KPIs) and outcomes. The change over the next 12 months is that PS leaders will have to employ predictive analytics to forecast future performance, identify potential risks, and uncover new growth opportunities, enabling data-driven strategic decisions; use genuine AI tools that can reduce the admin burden.
4. TALENT UTILIZATION: OPTIMIZING RESOURCE ALLOCATION TO MAXIMIZE PRODUCTIVITY AND PROJECT SUCCESS.
Talent utilization is crucial for optimizing resource allocation, ensuring that the right skills are matched to the right projects to maximize productivity and drive project success. Effective talent utilization involves understanding the capabilities, availability, and workload of each team member and strategically assigning them to tasks that align with their expertise. This approach not only improves efficiency but also enhances employee satisfaction and retention by reducing burnout and ensuring individuals are engaged in meaningful work.
By leveraging talent management tools and analytics, organizations can gain visibility into resource capacity and skill gaps, allowing them to proactively manage demand, balance workloads, and allocate resources in a way that supports both project outcomes and long-term business growth.
5. CLIENT ENGAGEMENT: STRENGTHENING COLLABORATION AND CO-CREATING VALUE WITH CLIENTS.
Client engagement is about building strong, collaborative relationships that go beyond transactional interactions to truly co-create value. By actively involving clients in the project lifecycle - through regular communication, feedback loops, and strategic workshops - organizations can ensure that solutions are aligned with client needs and deliver meaningful outcomes. This approach fosters trust and transparency, enabling teams to anticipate challenges, adapt to changing requirements, and deliver higher-quality results.
Engaged clients are more likely to see the partnership as a strategic alliance, leading to greater customer satisfaction, loyalty, and opportunities for future growth through upselling, cross-selling, and referrals.
6. (NEW) SERVICE LINES: DIVERSIFYING REVENUE BY ENTERING EMERGING MARKETS OR VERTICALS.
Adding (New) Service Lines involves diversifying revenue streams by introducing or optimizing offerings to target emerging markets or industry verticals. This strategic expansion enables organizations to capitalize on evolving client demands and market opportunities, providing tailored solutions that address specific business challenges. By leveraging existing expertise and exploring innovative service models, companies can attract new client segments, increase cross-selling opportunities, and strengthen their competitive position. Whether launching new services or refining existing ones, this approach drives growth and resilience, ensuring long-term sustainability and relevance in a dynamic business landscape.
CONCLUSION
Integrate Partner Ecosystem with Productized Services:
Collaborate with partners to co-develop and promote productized service offerings, leveraging their market reach and expertise to enhance the value proposition. Ensure that partners are trained on these standardized offerings and incentivized to drive their adoption, creating a unified approach to market expansion.
Leverage Tools to Support Partner and Productization Efforts:
Use project management and PSA tools to streamline collaboration with partners and manage the delivery of productized services. Implement CRM systems to track partner performance, client interactions, and service usage, ensuring that all tools are integrated for seamless data flow and efficient operations.
Align Service Delivery Tools with Strategic Goals:
Ensure that the tools selected for service delivery, resource management, and customer success support the strategic objectives of both partner programs and productized services. For example, use analytics from PSA tools to refine service offerings based on performance data and partner feedback, and utilize CRM insights to tailor partner and product strategies to client needs.
Create a Unified Go-to-Market Strategy:
Develop a comprehensive go-to-market plan that combines partner channels, productized services, and tool capabilities. This strategy should outline how each lever supports the others, ensuring a coordinated effort to capture new market opportunities and drive revenue growth.
Monitor and Optimize Performance:
Regularly review performance metrics from tools, partners, and productized services to assess the effectiveness of the growth plan. Use insights to make data-driven adjustments, optimize resource allocation, and enhance partner engagement, ensuring continuous alignment and improvement across all levers.
Considerations for different stages of company growth and maturity.
Use our Maturity Model to better help you benchmark your iterative needs, without trying to jump from an improvised approach (early-stage) to world-class (mature); it won’t happen overnight. Build in process early before jumping to these levers.
So you don't have to hunt for those links again here are the two key downloads that helped shape this blog:
