Are you a services executive who feels overwhelmed and unprepared for the economic recovery? If so, this session is designed for you. Acclaimed growth expert and author Lisa Nirell will show you four strategies that successful services companies such as Zappos, Continental Airlines, and BMC Software are using to help them thrive in today’s volatile, time-starved marketplace.

At the completion of this interactive presentation, you will:

This presentation will provide a framework used to build your service strategy and establish your business objectives and tactics.

Examples will be shared from a current service business and the process followed to achieve success. Areas of focus will include specifics on service revenues, management, talent management and architecture.

Chad Williams, Services & Renewals Vice President at Advent Software, will speak to Advent’s partner management strategy, and how the program has been implemented, monitored, and positioned to clients.

Advent leverages partnerships for Client Support, Implementations, Custom Engineering, and is exploring Training partnerships. Chad will talk through examples of how Advent’s partner program has increased capacity and profitability, while maintaining client satisfaction.

What are the most current trends in offshoring technical support? Should companies look at countries other than India? What does the vendor landscape look like? Amrita will address these questions in the context of what factors companies should evaluate when contemplating offshoring Technical Support.

Web support is integral to service offerings for companies that provide exceptional support while effectively managing costs. Documenting customer issues as part of the work flow so the solutions are available online is the focus of Knowledge Centered Support (KCS).

KCS theory suggests that the Support Center should see an increasing proportion of “New” issues as “Known” issues are resolved by the customers themselves using the support web site. This in turn should result in more interesting work for Support Center personnel since they no longer have to spend as much time dealing with repetitive questions.

In this presentation you will learn how Mentor Graphics is putting the idea of “New vs. Known” into practice. Andy Westlund, North America Support Director, will discuss definitions of New vs. Known, techniques and implications for different measurement approaches, and the practical benefits and results of tracking New vs. Known issues. You can be in the know about this new approach by attending this informative session.

Installed base information is a valuable asset that is critical to a company's ability to support its customers, sustain ongoing relationships and increase sales through opportunity identification. Yet many companies have not properly invested in optimizing the creation and maintenance of installed base information. Businesses lose billions of dollars annually because of inaccurate or incomplete customer data. Proper care for this asset can yield a generous return on investment.

Over the last year, NetApp has embarked on several initiatives to improve their customer and partner communities "ease of doing business" with the company. One of the top initiatives was an investment in the business processes, organizations and systems that capture and maintain installed base information. The investment has yielded significant results in customer/partner satisfaction, support costs and sales opportunity generation.

In this session, Nick will share NetApp's approach to solving the complex problem of capturing and maintaining customer data in a large and complex installed base environment.