Thats a good question. A friend asked me. What is the difference between a product company and services company (in other words, a services department in a product company and services company). How could companies like Infosys deliver so much so fast for so less. I gave the following answer. They have processes so much established that a newbie becomes productive in less than three months, where as it takes upto 6 months to be productive in a product company. Definitely he did not buy the idea of process. Of course, then I started thinking and started writing this blog.
Priorities
Define who are the customers. In a product company the customers could mostly be either internal or sales force. Sales force would (perhaps) promise heaven and earth to customer and sometimes customer is willing to wait (till end of the year or till the current contract comes to expiry). Revenues would be realized as per the contract and may not be so much dependent on 'all' promised deliverables. But in a pure offshore services company majority of the projects are handled in Time & Material way. Which means one could bill only to the amount of 'actual work'. This means a clear visibie signs of functionality to customer. Customer would not pay unless things are moving. Situations like this forces offshore companies to really deliver something with time. But product companies which get the pressure only towards the deadline do not see any motivation to deliver.
More on the way...
1 comment:
Interesting... You should write more about this topic soon...
Thought a little bit of encouragement may do the job...
Binnyker
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