Launching a Professional Services Organization

Starting a professional services organization in a product company requires an investment in new processes and infrastructure, including the following:

Sales processes to effectively qualify opportunities, manage proposals, and negotiate contracts.
Legal processes to manage contracts with clients and subcontractors.
Financial systems to accommodate tracking project costs, invoicing, and billing.
Processes and procedures to manage engagements and deliver services.
Database and processes to leverage the knowledge and experience of consultants.

We can help you design an infrastructure and organizational structure that can effectively accommodate your services needs.

Organizational Structure

You clearly need an organizational structure that will help your company effectively manage services as a business. Yet, unnecessary overhead can deeply cut into profits. Let us help you design an organizational structure that will provide a cost-effective infrastructure for your services business.

Starting a Services Marketing Department

Because marketing services is different than marketing products, it is important to have marketing personnel who clearly understand the services business. Having launched and managed professional services marketing organizations for Sun Microsystems and Tandem computers, Mary Ann Whiteman understands how to build a services marketing organization in a product company. Leverage her knowledge to start or grow your services marketing department.

Launching a Consulting Practice

Whether you are starting a new professional services organization or have an established consulting business, we can help you create the strategies, plans, processes, services, and promotional materials to roll out a consulting practice in a new competency area.

Skill Competency Models

In order to hire and develop people for your services business, you need to define the required roles, determine the skills required for each role, evaluate the skills of your existing staff, and develop plans to fill the gap between the existing skills and the required skills for each employee. We have developed skill competency models for professional services organizations. Leverage our experience to help define and build the skills needed in your services organization.