Delivery operations

Brian Phillips

December 1, 2021 by

Brian has held leadership roles in professional services firms for over 20 years, starting in financial services, and migrating to technology consulting services more than 17 years ago. He has held senior leadership roles in Idea/Astadia, Tata Consultancy Services, and Appirio/Wipro, and now is Vice President, Digital and Product Engineering for Randstad Digital. His experience includes growing boutique consultancies as well as global technology practices within leading system integrators, allowing him to use his experiences and industry best practices for business operations, project delivery, and people leadership. Brian leads with empathy and a focus on attracting and retaining world-class talent…fueled by a commitment to generate positive results for the customers he serves and in the lives of the people he works with.

Why are you passionate about helping people-based businesses?

I am passionate about services businesses because people are at the core of them. I believe that the secret to gratitude and contentment lies in helping other people –to discover their passions, develop their skills, grow their careers and achieve their goals.

You have experience building and executing workforce planning programs for many different firms. What advice would you give to leaders looking to bring this concept into their organization?

Workforce planning marries the organization’s strategic business plans with the people necessary to achieve those goals, along with the tactical plans to achieve future workforce requirements. This is essential to ensure that you have the right people, with the right skills, in the right locations, at the right time in order to meet your financial and business plan targets.

One piece of advice for those just getting started is to “just do it”. Don’t wait for your process or tools to be perfect, but rather start with something, and then iterate and continuously improve your model and your process over time. Don’t let perfection get in the way of “good enough”.

Balancing delivery excellence, talent growth and financial metrics isn’t easy. What advice would you give to delivery leaders trying to achieve this delicate balance?

The reality for most organizations is that financial metrics are often viewed as the most important of these three priorities. However, in order to achieve sustainable, profitable growth from a financial standpoint, delivery excellence and talent growth are critical. Without delivery excellence, organizations spend too much time and resources obtaining new customers rather than extending and expanding the relationships with their existing customer base. Without talent growth, organizations spend too much time and resources replacing and acquiring new talent rather than growing the skills and careers of their existing workforce. My advice is to pragmatically focus on creating and maintaining enthusiastic employees and optimal customer experiences, and allow the financial metrics to show the results of these efforts.

Delivery teams are more spread out than ever. What are a couple tips for building global delivery teams that share a common culture and provide a consistent customer experience?

Global delivery teams have become the norm for technology services organizations, yet many companies still struggle with building global teams that actually work as envisioned. The best global organizations recognize that employees from different countries and cultures work differently, and are able to celebrate these cultural differences.

Start by training team members on these cultural differences and ways of working to create more understanding and empathy, and highlight the common goals, common values, and benefits of a global team. Recognize and celebrate local holidays, take into consideration language barriers, cultural differences, and the ways work is performed, and get to know global team members on a personal level. Avoid the use of “us” vs. “them”…or better yet, make everyone part of “us”.

Managing a global team can be challenging. However, giving team members a sense of shared purpose, promoting open communication and empathy, and using collaborative technology can create an atmosphere of trust and respect.

Joe Norman

November 19, 2021 by

Joe has spent 15 years working in and building managed services teams, and is currently the VP of Extended Services at Neocol. He began his career as a marketing automation consultant and customer engagement manager, eventually moving on to lead the managed service organization at Appirio, a Salesforce and cloud consultancy. Joe brought that experience to 7Summits (acquired by IBM), where he was responsible for defining and growing the company’s managed services offering, partnering with sales to drive adoption and double sales. These experiences have given Joe a modern outlook on managed services — one that understands these offerings are critical to customer success, not just an extension of sales or training. Joe lives in Southern Indiana with his wife and two boys. In his downtime, Joe enjoys playing and working on guitars, spending time with his family, and enjoying all things music.

Why are you passionate about helping people-based businesses?

How often have we heard, “it’s business, it’s not personal”. Anytime you are dealing with people, it’s always personal (the degree to which we compartmentalize that is a different story). Through my time working in and leading various managed services teams with varying methodologies and philosophies, I’ve seen, first hand, that if you focus on people and relationships, you can withstand the inevitable ups and downs of any engagement. Happy workers make happy customers. Hiring the right people, providing them with the appropriate foundation and organizational philosophy, and giving them enough room to make decisions (and mistakes) results in engaged employees and thrilled customers.

You’ve built out world class managed services teams and offerings at 7Summits (now IBM) and Appirio. What are the one or two most important considerations in the early stages of building a managed services offering?

The first is to start strong: With a new offering, nothing fuels the sales cycle like positive customer testimonials. You need to convince customers that your people have the experience and skills to get the job done well, with as little hassle as possible. Build a core team of senior people who can think on their feet, operate in conditions that aren’t fully defined, and who are willing to wear multiple hats. Ideally, as the offering grows, these people will become your management layer. Early on though, they are your spine. Look for people who WANT this opportunity, see the value of these offerings, and are bought into your mission statement.

The second is to recognize your most important customer isn’t always external….it’s also sales. This is more than just enablement. You will be asking folks who carry a quota to spend time selling an offering that, most often, results in smaller opportunity amounts. Spend time with each seller explaining the value to them, as well as the customers. Sell your team and convince them that with a little effort up front (with your help along the way), they can get repeatable revenue that carries very little, if any, day to day hassle.

More organizations are looking to provide managed service offerings as a way to stay close with customers and as a source of ongoing, predictable revenue. How should leaders think about differentiating their specific offering?

Resist the urge for your value proposition to center around cost. If the only thing you have going for you is that you have low rates, growth is going to be hard fought. With today’s connected workforce, any customer who has basic needs that could get by with your junior folks is likely better off just hiring. The best case scenario is you get a one time sale before they realize this. In nearly every space there is a major player who can afford to go cheaper than you, to the point of losing money if the relationship is valuable enough to them.

Remember that at the end of the day, it’s a people business. Staff your team such that your offering is easy to use, flexible where it must be, and results in quality work without putting burden on the customer’s internal team. If you do this, not only is the difference in cost going to be easier to explain, it can become a strength. Lastly, don’t be afraid of who you are. Especially early on, there will be temptation to stretch to meet growth needs. Remember, what you need is positive customer experiences. Tread carefully and don’t be afraid to not be the answer for every situation.

Matt Henwood

August 24, 2021 by

Matt has been working with services companies for more than 20 years, starting in telecommunications and evolving into software services. Over the last 15 years he has supported three services startups at Sumtotal Systems, Appirio and 7Summits, which all led to successful acquisitions. He is familiar with high-growth environments, has successfully attracted and grown talent organizations and the people within them, and implements operational models that can scale. Today, he leads Operations and Delivery at Envoy.

Why are you so passionate about helping people-based businesses?

I gain the most satisfaction helping people to succeed, whether it’s career growth, customer success, or on a personal level. I believe that it starts with attracting and sourcing the right talent, and from there, focusing on how to remove blockers and motivate them. I love helping people succeed in their careers and I’ve found that I have been able to make the biggest impact with services companies.

Your focus on ‘people first’ has led to highly engaged teams with strong business results at 7Summits, Appirio and Sumtotal. What advice would you give to leaders looking to bring this concept into their organization?

Having a people-first philosophy means keeping the “team” front and center when making decisions and creating processes. It starts with bringing the right talent in, fostering their growth once they arrive, and supporting them throughout their journey. I believe that if you take care of the team, all of the other performance metrics will follow.

Here are a few concrete tips: When it comes to making smart, impactful hires, make sure you create recruiting models that allow for multiple data points. Hire for aptitude and culture fit over other attributes. Next, make sure there’s a high level of engagement with multiple points of interaction. It’s easy for consultants to get lost in their project world, especially when working remotely. Tools can help. Lastly, foster growth and performance through mentoring and training. Ensure there are resources in place that allow people to grow and perform in their specific roles. Centers of Excellence are one way to accomplish this, in lieu of functional organizational models.

What is one tip that you have for building a truly global delivery team and culture?

One of the activities I’ve found can positively impact a global buildout is to align respective teams and leaders with their counterparts in different regions. At Appirio I was able to spend a lot of time in Europe and India as we built out our customer base. Getting alignment and routinely engaging with my counterparts in those geographies helped us grow and scale the services and teams respectively. These relationships led to stronger communications, ultimately leading to achievement of our shared goals.

What advice would you give leaders seeking to transition a delivery team’s focus from being project based to truly sustaining ongoing customer relationships?

I believe there are two core ingredients that feed into strong customer relationships: understanding their business and understanding the outcomes they are looking to achieve. Customers have a lot of choices when it comes to who they want to partner with for technology services. The organizations that come in, learn and demonstrate a strong understanding of their customers’ business, and then shape solutions that lead to tangible business outcomes are the ones that will win. That, and having the right people.