For any large organization, purchasing a new piece of technology isn’t just a case of buying a piece of software and getting the CD to install it. Alongside any significant purchase, comes the need for accompanying services and consultancy – the people and expertise to support the implementation and ongoing management of the system.

In the past, services were delivered on an ad-hoc basis – there was little structure to service offerings and each project was treated as a one-off by the vendor. Customers found it hard to know what they were buying and what their likely costs would be, and ‘scope creep’ was all too common.

This is changing now, however, with the ‘productization’ of services. This gives the customer a choice of what services they want to buy, in clearly-defined packages. Of course they can all be customized for the individual customer and project, but fundamentally they offer a consistent approach and methodology. They are designed to be repeatable, so the vendor knows exactly what they are delivering and the customer knows what they will receive and when they will receive it from a well defined structure of work.

I believe this is the future of services and consultancy. Customers are under greater pressure to justify all aspects of project spend, and vendors can help by being much more transparent about what they are delivering at each stage, rather than just X more people!