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Professional service firms’ early steps in using technology to
build new services saw them rushing to embrace the promotional or service-delivery
aspects of technology (web pages and extranets, for example). These technologies
mostly brought disappointment instead of satisfaction, for professional
service firms and for their clients.
Professional service firms are increasingly using technology
to innovate not only their promotion or service delivery; they are also
using technology to enable or support entirely new intellect-based services.
- Some firms take a fatigued service and productize it into software
keystrokes: this step often nets only mixed results.
- Respondents reported that their external marketing technologies were
generally meeting their expectations. Upon further
analysis, though, we discovered that they were least
satisfied with the technologies they used the most.
- New service delivery technologies follow:
- Respondents in architecture, construction, engineering, environment
/ energy consulting, law and management consulting reported that
they used “Extranet[s] to allow clients to download reports,
presentations,” “shared document archiving systems,”
and “web based project delivery.”
- An accounting firm said it was “. . . giving clients access
to their financials on-line.”
Case Studies
Ernst & Young’s award-winning “Ernie,” an online
consulting program introduced in the mid-1990s, whereby subscribers gained
answers to a given number of managerial questions fielded by a virtual
team of E&Y knowledge providers. It generated significant stand-alone
revenues and offered clients significant benefits.
DDB Worldwide, one of the world’s largest advertising networks,
created a totally new value-added, technology-enabled, and difficult-to-copy
service featuring econometricians whose intellectual capital is applied
on a case by case basis. Its econometrics service has demonstrated clear
results for clients: efficiencies in media spending; improved timing of
campaigns and other promotion; optimized media support for maximum return.
Already, fifty percent have become repeat clients.
Figure 10.1 General satisfaction
with external technologies
Professional service
firms were generally satisfied with their external technologies.*
| * |
External technologies
are defined as technologies that are used to build a firm's
visibility with its target audience - those which are
directed towards a firm's outside publics, including clients
and prospects. Studied vehicles included on-line magazines
or newsletters, brochures, faxes, web pages, CD-ROMs,
video- or audiocassettes, as well as others independently
mentioned by respondents. |
source: Expertise Marketing,
LLC
|
Figure 10.2 Least satisfaction with
most-used external technologies
...respondents were
the least satisfied with the external technologies they
used the most.
Use and satisfaction
with external technologies*
| * |
External technologies
are defined as technologies that are used to build a firm's
visibility with its target audience - those which are
directed towards a firm's outside publics, including clients
and prospects. Studied vehicles included on-line magazines
or newsletters, brochures, faxes, web pages, CD-ROMs,
video- or audiocassettes, as well as others independently
mentioned by respondents. |
source: Expertise Marketing,
LLC |
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