R-E-S-P-E-C-T |
By Milind Gurjar December 13, 2021
If you are a leader in Education Services at a Technology company, answer this question – do your sponsors and stakeholders value Education Services? I often talk to technology training leaders. A pet peeve for a vast majority of them is their inability to get executive attention, funding and buy-in for their services. The few exceptions are leaders who work for SaaS companies or enlightened leaders. My own experience inside industry-leading hardware and software companies was similar. I invested more time and effort in selling the value of Education Services to internal stakeholders than Why is Education Services often an afterthought for sales teams and services leaders? Why does education leadership not get a seat at the services leadership table? Why don’t they get opportunities to inform and influence Services strategy? The answer is obvious if you care to dig a little deeper. Education Is Different Different Operating Models Technology companies have four essential services functions: Professional Services, Technical Support Services, Managed Services, and Education Services. Across organizations, the charter and operating model for Professional Services, Technical Support Services, and Managed Services are almost identical. What is startling is that Education Services are organized very differently and have a wide variety of operating models and charters. Some Education organizations operate as P&Ls, others as cost If you are a P&L leader, you face a different dilemma. The size of your P&L is not material enough to get anyone’s attention. The remaining metrics that you track are of limited interest to others. Different Organizational Charters Education teams at technology companies focus on four distinct customer segments: employees, channel partners, customers, and consumers (working professionals and college students). Employee development focuses on building technical capabilities for Support Engineers and scaling professional services. Partner Enablement focuses Different Reporting Relationships CEdMA surveys reveal that Education teams report into Marketing, Customer Success, Engineering, Technical Support, or Professional Services. The parent organization’s circumstances often drive the charter for Education. Technical Support is the largest service with predictable revenues and healthy margins, and consequently, the Education P&L is not material. Education leaders under Support are unlikely to face much P&L pressure. Close to 50% of support cases are attributable to customers not knowing how to use the product. Support expects Education to help deflect service requests and reduce average handle time through better training of support engineers. Since Technical Support serves the entire customer base, stakeholders care more about Education teams’ ability to scale and Professional Services’ (PS) charter is to help customers cross the chasm, and PS Engineers who are often co-located with customers in strategic accounts are invariably at the cutting edge of technology. Education margins, most often are accretive to PS and under PS Education P&Ls come under greater scrutiny. For PS, scale is not as important as time-to-market, and technical depth. High-margin offers like digital learning subscriptions will get stakeholder attention and Support. Having SMEs on your team, is essential. Some Metrics Don’t Matter Operating models, organizational charters, and reporting relationships influence how Education Services leaders present themselves. It is no wonder that Education Services leaders sound very different when they talk about their mission and value proposition. Lost in all this chaos is the fact that the traditional Education Metrics of Revenue, Margin, #s trained, #s certified, and customer satisfaction don’t align with what key stakeholder care about. Why should anyone be surprised that Education Services leaders don’t get a seat at the table?
It Is Time To Lead Digital transformation and the transition to XaaS are fueling the subscription economy. Recurring revenues are driving company valuations resulting in CXOs becoming increasingly focused on customer retention and churn. Customer Success organizations have been created to drive renewals. Their playbooks focus on customer onboarding and driving adoption. This presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for training organizations to step up their game, revamp their business and operating models and play a pivotal role in onboarding customers, driving product adoption and reducing churn. |