Industry experience and background

Ambareesh Kulkarni

• 23 years of Industry experience, with 16 of those in Professional Services and in Customer Success roles

• Proven track record in establishing Professional Services as a Strategic, Customer-Success focussed, Revenue generating and Margin contributing organization

• Enabled Professional Services organizations to go beyond implementation and own Customer Success

• Developed growth strategies based on Innovation, Solution selling, Partnerships and building Trusted Advisor relationships

Professional backgroundGlobal Expertise in Enterprise Software companies

• Worked for 11 years at Actuate and held various roles ranging from hands-on implementation consultant, project manager, trainer and regional director in Professional Services

• Lead a cross disciplinary team that won Actuate’s largest combined software + services deal

• Strong industry, technical background and ability to communicate at ‘C’ levels contributed to my success at Actuate

• Lead a Global, Professional Services team at Accelrys (Biovia), a Spotfire partner• Again at Accelrys, lead a team to close its largest Software and Services deal at

DuPont• Transformed the existing Accelrys PS team focussed on delivering scientific

consulting services to one that delivered Enterprise Consulting services

Professional backgroundStrong Analytics, BI and Business Process Integration background

• Over the last 4.5 years at 1E, I have consistently delivered year-over-year growth and made strong margin contributions

• Augmented focus from implementation services to delivering ongoing Customer success by transforming Professional Services to Client Services

• Built and managed a Client Services team that now includes Professional Services, Training, Customer Success (enablement) and Technical Support

• The new Client Services group under my leadership is now mainly responsible for managing the customer from on-boarding to renewals and expansion

Professional backgroundTransformed Professional Services from Cost to a Profit Centre

Values and what’s Important

Professional Services mission

In the subsequent sections I have described my management philosophy

and methods that I have developed and actively use through my teams to deliver impact and customer success

• Focus on customer success, through measurable and quantifiable impact

• Grow, while influencing Software pull-through• Run Professional Services in a profitable manner• Create and build industry presence• Attract and retain key employees• Disperse information from projects and customers to

various groups within the Organization

Define Mission & CharterValues adopted to embrace and deliver Customer Success

• Take the risks out of customers projects• Bring deep and multiple skills to projects, thereby

reducing the need for multiple resources• Understand typical Business Processes, and devise

ways to Optimize and Automate them• Measure and quantify customers savings and

business impact delivered• Complement technical skills with domain knowledge

Become a Trusted AdvisorWhat should Professional Services do for customers?

• Direct access to product experts• Accelerated implementation times• Improved operational efficiency• Increased and rapid return on investment• Intensive transfer of knowledge and best

practices, focused on the unique characteristics of customer implementation and environment

Why engage Professional Services?Demonstrate value on every engagement

Cost of not engaging Professional ServicesAccelerate time to value with Professional Services

Impact

Optimal

Imple

mentat

ion Loss of impact

TimeProduction Full Adoption

Slow Adoption

Pilot

Revenue, Bookings & MarginProfessional Services

Operations

• Consistent, Predictable and a Repeatable methodology will lead to successful projects, high maintenance renewal rates and Referenceable customers

• Referenceable (happy) customers will deliver high quality Revenue

Professional Services as a Profit centerRepeatability, Reference-ability and Revenue

• Aim for 20-30% attach rate• 20% should come through software pull through• 5-10% revenue to be delivered by the efforts of the

professional services team• Build at least 2 quarters backlog to manage

consultant utilization effectively• Design bill rates, implementation methodology and

resource plan to deliver 20-30% net margin

Professional Services as a Profit centerRevenue, Backlog and Margin

Measure and Monitor numbersProvide full visibility through performance dashboard

• Develop Services offerings (targeted and focused packaged offerings) that can be offered to existing customers

• Invest in a PS Engineering team whose main focus should be to build “solution accelerators” that can be sold as services offerings

• Consider offering Managed Services or Resident Experts for ongoing maintenance and upkeep of the solution deployed

• Compensate PSO Senior Management on bookings, revenue and margin and the PMO on project success

• Expand core consulting offering to include Training as well. Run and manage Training as a separate profit center

Building sufficient backlogThink of Services as a product too

The graph below shows how the customer engagement tends to drop post initial implementation (gray line on a downward slope). Post implementation is where the services team has the opportunity to offer follow-on services (shown by the black lines) and generate additional and steady revenue from customers

Continuous EngagementKeep delivering value

Designed to deliver Customer Success

Professional Services Organization

• Automate and manage day to day Operations with a Professional Services Automation System

• PSA’s provide real-time visibility into resource scheduling/availability and project profitability

• Early detection, will ensure that Utilization targets are met and projects are run in a profitable manner

Professional Services OperationsAutomation is critical

• 24 X 7 support through a globally distributed team

• Key escalation engineers located in major regions like EMEA and the US

• Dedicated Sustained Engineering team to accelerate resolution of product issues

• Systematic RCA (root cause analysis) of issues on a quarterly basis

Global Technical SupportRunning operations by the numbers

• Leverage Training to secure renewals, maximize adoption and reduce churn

• Build a community of experts to support implementation and enhancements of solutions

• Reduce support overhead and costs by having trained customers

Education ServicesMaximize Adoption and reduce Churn

• Built a de-centralized model for regional autonomy and performance accountability

• Central PMO, for quality control, standardization and escalation management

• Global coverage

Professional Services Organization structureDesigned to deliver implementation and project success worldwide

• Align all teams that own and impact customer success under VP, Customer Success (my new role)

• Measure and influence Retention and not just Renewal rates

• Drive Software & Services revenue by delivering customer success

Professional Services Customer SuccessNatural Evolution

1. Achieving savings & business impact2. Buying more3. Trained & Certified4. Following Quarterly Business Review cycle5. Customer is an advocate6. Part of community7. Low support costs8. High customer satisfaction rating

Customer SuccessWhat does it look like?

THANK YOU

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the author.