SPI Research | Accelerate Service Productivity & Profit

“Over the past five years, Astound Commerce has grown at a breakneck pace, and we wanted to tap into the wealth of information and operational insights offered by SPI to learn what we can be doing better as our company continues to grow. We worked with SPI on benchmarking various elements of our operations and ultimately derived extremely valuable and actionable insights from our engagement. You may have noticed coming through the news an announcement of a major investment into Astound Commerce by RLH Private Equity. This was the recapitalization that I have been pushing for and focused on running over the past 18 months! With this transaction the "founders era" of the company has come to an end and I'll be stepping away from the company in the next few weeks to give room to a professional management team to take the company to the next level. I wanted to say "thank you" again for your involvement and crystal-clear recommendations that helped me "push the train onto a right track"! The work of your team was very insightful, valuable, objective, and very well articulated/presented!”
Roman Martynenko
Founder and EVP Global Services
Astound Commerce
"The 2020 Professional Services Maturity™ Benchmark continues to build upon the wealth of data that SPIResearch has developed over the years. To be able to compare my business to that of my peers using benchmarks that are aligned with my business is invaluable. I am able to use the data to improve the efficiency of my business while also ensuring that I avoid the pitfalls others have encountered. To my fellow owners of PSOs, I encourage you to both subscribe and contribute to the work of SPI Research. You and, most importantly, your business will reap the benefits.”
Michael O'Toole
VP Services
Bright Idea

“Digital Transformation is fast changing how companies work. Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics are essential tools in our war chest to remain competitive. SPI Research’s “2020 Professional Services MaturityTM Benchmark” report is one of those essential tools. A must read!”
E. Bruce Lovenberg
Chief Financial Officer
Logical Design Solutions

“Over the past five years, Astound Commerce has grown at a breakneck pace, and we wanted to tap into the wealth of information and operational insights offered by SPI to learn what we can be doing better as our company continues to grow. We worked with SPI on benchmarking various elements of our operations and ultimately derived extremely valuable and actionable insights from our engagement.”
Roman Martynenko
Founder and EVP Global Services
Astound Commerce

“Service Performance Insight has helped our organization improve immensely. Particularly as a consulting and software solution provider their reports help our organization target critical areas for continuous improvement”.
Kirk Chan
VP Business Development
Smart ERP Solutions, Inc.

"As the world becomes more complex, company needs and demands grow along with it; naturally leading to a greater desire for service-driven organizations. As a result, we have seen, and will continue to see a tremendous spike in the growth of the professional services market," said Christian Weinbrenner, VP Global Professional Services Programs at Navis. "Regardless of sector, companies are dealing with constant changes - technological, political, economic, social etc. - requiring them to work harder to increase productivity without adding substantial costs. The potential impact on the bottom line is exactly why clients across the board are seeking organizations that can help them navigate these new opportunities and challenges. Navis, along with the other organizations that made the Best-of-the-Best list, take great pride in applying specialized knowledge and skills to solve the complex challenges that our clients are presented with on a daily basis."
Christian Weinbrenner
VP Global Professional Services Programs
Navis

“This is - BY FAR - my most eagerly anticipated annual piece of PS research. I use the content all the time for budgeting, benchmarking, research, and staying on top of trends. Worth the $$$. Kudos and thank you @Jeanne Urich and Dave Hofferberth!”
Patrick Zelten
Senior Director of Professional Services
Forescout Technologies, Inc.

“Great insight and data for professional services leaders - very useful for comparing your business performance against the industry benchmark!”
Ben Clare
Team Lead Business Development
Kimble Applications

“Great work again guys, *the* most comprehensive annual insight into Professional Services.”
Paul Moskwa
Professional Services Director
Mitrefinch LTD

“Top Step has long valued the PS Maturity™ benchmark report and the ability for us to compare ourselves to our peers for fostering continuous improvements. The results prove out as we are the only 10-year winner of this prestigious award.”
Ronn Breaux
President and CEO
TOP STEP

“As we continue to expand our reach in the Salesforce ecosystem, SPI Research’s Benchmark report remains an important touchpoint for us on how to remain competitive and keep up the momentum.”
Stephanie Picardi
CEO
VFP Consulting

"We look forward to the new SPI benchmark report every year. SPI continues to produce the only report with as much detail on a massive variety of variables and KPI’s that PS organizations have to look at to hone their businesses. There is no more efficient way to evaluate our progress and compare strategy and tactical options as we continue to build out our organization through fast growth."
Steven Laine
President
Future State

"I look forward to participating and receiving this report every year. SPI Research seems remarkable in their ability to stay ahead of the trends that affect PS with insights that are specific to the path we are on. Their analysis is chock full of relevant detail that is actionable in our business. I recommend this to anyone in the professional services or enterprise software markets."
Mike Alsup
SVP
Gimmal

"Every year I am waiting for the results of the PS Maturity benchmark. This year again I was not disappointed, I am impressed with the accessibility of the data and how dead-on your conclusions were with regards to movements in the market. They align with our experience and allow us to make well documented and supported decisions about the ongoing future of our team and our products."
Tirza Lowenstyn
VP, Professional Services
Unit 4 North America

"I just described SPI to someone as my favorite think tank. Seriously. Maybe I’m weird, but I look forward to the annual PS Maturity Benchmark more than any film, album or J.K. Rowling novel. As far as business impact, in terms of raw financials, I used last year’s results (2012’s survey) to frame our revenue and EBITDA expectations for 2014. From where I’m sitting, it looks like we’ll move up the maturity model as it relates to $/hr and utilization. The cautiously optimistic view also sees us hitting an EBITDA goal that will trigger material profit sharing payouts for even entry level employees. We’re on our way.
As far as the “fuzzier” impacts, the PS Maturity Model has taught our org to “act its age.” That is, we collectively see the value in greater maturity and have agreed to routinely assess ourselves and put together the necessary planning for continued evolution. However, we also recognize the level we’ve achieved and are careful to stretch our operations further than the next immediate level. For example, in some areas of our business we still rely on heroics; however, we’ve identified this and devote time to extracting from our heroes what makes them great and then wrapping training programs around it so all may be lifted up around them. We’ve noticed that when you scale your heroes such that their way of operating becomes the standard, you can create premium services that differentiate your business from competitors. This has allowed us to close much larger deals with solid profit margins.
Further, the concept of “productization,” that is, a repeatable process that yields the same expected results every time has been super huge for us. When we sell campaigns, they all begin as uniform offerings with pricing tiers for different expectations (this is obvious but difficult to implement at low maturity levels). Clients looking for services in our marketing communication vertical strongly desire the same experience of buying an iPhone from an Apple store as they do from their services vendors. They want to know that there’s always going to be a beautiful, defect free LCD screen on every campaign so to speak. Relatedly, we’ve taken an iterative approach to service development that we stole from the Agile software development paradigm. It’s working wonderfully and a credit to SPI circa 2012.
Anyway, I love your report and the work you do. It’s incredibly validating to know there are others thinking this way. I recommend it to all my services peers."
Phil Golobish
VP, Services
DigitalRelevance

"Excellent as usual – thanks for sending this through. Must work harder and smarter to get to the B of the B!"
Alan Waitt
Global Director
ASI Consulting

"I look forward to the SPI Maturity Benchmark report every year. We use the report in our annual strategic planning exercise and as an input to many of our operational targets for items like attrition rate, billable utilization and realized rates. Being an analytics driven company, we are especially interested in trends. The study’s multi-year view on many of the metrics is one of the things that really separates this report from much of the other research in this space."
Bob Westerkamp
Dir. PS Strategic Planning and Delivery Alliances
Teradata Corp

"I have participated in the research and have viewed this report each of the last three years. The report consistently provides a representative view of the industry by company type and informs our technology and process decisions."
David Haffty
Stage 7 Consulting

"Once again, you’ve provided a great resource to the industry. The maturity model and benchmark report have provided us a roadmap of improvements to influence many KPIs we now measure, and it’s also been instrumental to internally communicating our performance relative to the industry. Since we began benchmarking ourselves in 2010, we’ve averaged over 22% annual revenue growth and an amazing 92% annual growth in margin. You are heroes for making us heroes!"
Darin Byrne
Sr. Director, Professional Services
Wolters Kluwer Financial Services

"The PS Maturity Benchmark is a core input to our business planning process. It allows us to understand and explain the trends within our industry and provides us with the credibility to set the right KPIs and annual targets. Most benchmark reports only scratch the surface - the SPI report drills down and slices the data to allow a deep understanding of the most important levers in our PS business."
Michael Stamler
Vice President, Global Customer Services
North Plains

"As a growing professional services firm, the very detailed information found within the survey have been extremely valuable for benchmarking ourselves and guiding us on what areas of our business require investment for improvement. Thank-you for this high quality resource!"
Marco Formaggio
Managing Director
BluLeader Pty Ltd

"As a small company, we were not sure if we could extract value from the SPI Professional Services Benchmark. However, we found valuable insights on the consulting market, an understanding for how we fit, and hard-facts that will help us with decision-making, i.e., information that we can use in the near- and long-term. For example, we were able to gain insights that will help to customize, position, and market our services. I am pleasantly surprised by the depth, breadth, and value of the information in the SPI Professional Services Benchmark."
Gloria J. Miller
Principal and Managing Consultant,
Maxmetrics

"I have found the type of information in the 2013 PS Maturity™ Benchmark report to be invaluable for helping to continue building out a top-caliber professional services team, especially given all the changes that we continue to see in the PS marketplace. It has helped us to identify gaps in our services organization and has presented us with the hard data needed to support opportunities for continuing improvements and growth in our service delivery, especially in areas that are evolving rapidly."
Tony Gray
Director, North American Consulting Services
Webtrends

"I have reviewed this year’s PS Maturity Benchmark. Again, you have raised the bar. This year’s report is an encyclopedia of the state of the PS industry, what differentiates the leaders from the middle of the pack, and methods and investments that can be undertaken to achieve best of breed PS status. There are a variety of paths to PS success, and you provide a roadmap that delineates alternative paths. Congratulations."
Mike Alsup
Sr. Vice President
Gimmal

"Every year we look forward to the PS Maturity Benchmark report. We have a strong internal focus on continuous process improvement, and the report provides valuable insight and analysis that we leverage to improve our professional services delivery."
Steve Canfield
VP of Professional Services
BlueCielo ECM Solutions

"We really have learned to count on the annual benchmark report to measure our progress and prioritize our investments. The information is directly useful to me in running the company today, and also as we have evolved the business from a pure staffing to a primarily professional services organization. The breadth of information and the unmatched quality has been critical in making good decisions, faster. It also offers peace of mind to have data backing up options and decisions. There is no better place to get such a comprehensive overview for the professional services industry. Thank you!"
Steven Laine
President
Futurestate

"Over the years the PS Benchmark has taken the role within Griffiths Waite of a Non Exec Board Member with advice being sought as to trends, comparisons and gaps within our planning. Each year anothr nugget of innovation or best business practice is uncovered and presented in a very useable format."
Ian Heathcock
Business Development Director
Griffiths Waite

"SPI’s PS Maturity Benchmark provides core inputs that as an embedded PSO we are challenged to uncover elsewhere."
David Shimberg
Director, Global Services Marketing
BMC Software

"The PS Benchmark’s quantity and quality of data is unparalleled in the industry. I have found it to be an invaluable resource for all aspects of strategic planning, and am constantly using it as a best-practices / benchmark reference tool as we take our organization from good to great in terms of processes, systems and human capital."
Andrew Fletcher
Vice President
Business and Decision North America

About SPI Research

Service Performance Insight (SPI) is a global research, consulting and training organization dedicated to helping professional service organizations (PSOs) make quantum improvements in productivity and profit. In 2007, SPI developed the PS Maturity Model™ as a strategic planning and management framework. It is now the industry-leading performance improvement tool used by over 35,000 project- and services-driven organizations to chart their course to service excellence.

The core tenet of the PS Maturity Model™ is PSOs achieve success through the optimization of five Service Performance Pillars™:
1. Leadership – Vision, Strategy and Culture
2. Client Relationships
3. Human Capital Alignment
4. Service Execution
5. Finance and Operations
SPI provides a unique depth of operating experience combined with unsurpassed analytic capability. We not only diagnose areas for improvement but also provide the business value of change. We then work collaboratively with our clients to create new management processes to transform and ignite performance.

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The 2021 PS Maturity Benchmark

Service Performance Insight celebrates its 14^th annual benchmark report – The 2021 PS Maturity™ Benchmark!

561 firms representing over 300,000 consultants from around the world participated in this benchmark. The 2021 report offers over a decade’s worth of insight and analysis into the market with a view into the key success factors that drive exceptional performance.

2020 was a strange and challenging year for Professional Services with a global pandemic and US elections, which led to uncertainly in the market. A year ago, SPI Research highlighted that after an exceptional 2019, there would be smooth sailing in 2020. Ouch! Leading firms did quite well in 2020 – they grew and invested in their employees. Unfortunately, an equal number of firms suffered, and if they survive, they enter 2021 working even harder to catch up. Many were acquired by their more successful brethren as economies of scale are working to drive market consolidation.

The Professional Services Maturity™ Benchmark provides clear metrics and guidance on over 160 key performance measurements. SPI Research likes to say, “Running a service organization is a game of singles and doubles.” Small percentage improvements in just a few key performance areas can have dramatic bottom-line results. PS executives often feel isolated and have a limited support base to rely on for advice. The Professional Services Maturity™ Benchmark and score-carding process takes the guesswork out of metrics. Completing the PS Maturity™ survey can highlight new avenues for improvement and enable PSOs to conduct their own self-assessment.

Click here to purchase the report

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