Comments on: Consulting vs. Professional Services

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:41:58 +0000

Interesting comments and arguably accurate – pro services are different than consulting services. I doubt, however, it's a distinction clients care about, if they even understand it. Companies make a distinction between internal and external resources, and in the latter are often disappointed with services (consulting or professional) often because capabilities are oversold or unclear. However, "consultants" or "professional services" personnel who are capable of adding measurable value and doing so with a minimum of disruption (e.g. no "smartest man in the room" stuff) will find themselves "trusted advisors" and rewarded with the all to rare unqualified positive client reference.

By: Sibley

Sibley — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 12:03:36 +0000

Trianz

Hi,

Thanks for writing such an interesting article. It is not easy to take the right employee especially if we don’t have great human resource division inside our company. Special division of human resource usually required but some companies think that is not necessary thing. Trianz is a client-oriented organization that provides an integrated set of Consulting, IT and BPO solutions, each enabled by innovative and proprietary global execution models.

Trianz firmly believes that the flawless execution of business, technology and operational initiatives is a key ingredient of business success. Their mission is to partner with business leaders, who share the belief that Execution Matters. They understand top management vision and objectives, visualize business results and translate these to the execution of strategy using relevant technology and process outsourcing.

Thanks,

- Sibley

By: New Things Blog

New Things Blog — Tue, 04 Jan 2005 17:08:18 +0000

Consulting vs. Professional Services

Brad Feld comments that consulting and professional services are clearly different business models, but are today sometimes used interchangeably.

By: Occam's Razor

Occam's Razor — Thu, 25 Nov 2004 00:21:43 +0000

Product Marketing 103 (or service marketing 101..)

Following on my previous post on Product Marketing 101 and Product Marketing 102, I want to try to touch on what you can do when the product is a service, and when you are looking at the question from the

By: Occam's Razor

Occam's Razor — Thu, 25 Nov 2004 00:21:43 +0000

Product Marketing 103 (or service marketing 101..)

By: The NOSE: Navigating OpenSource, by Al Essa

The NOSE: Navigating OpenSource, by Al Essa — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 18:31:40 +0000

Consulting vs. Professional Services

Feld Thoughts urges us to distinguish between consulting and professional services, noting the nearly universal tendency to conflate the two. Here is a distinction that makes a difference for both buyers and sellers, because failure to get the distinc…

By: James

James — Mon, 15 Nov 2004 18:58:18 +0000

I agree that there is a difference. ‘Consulting’ seems to imply that the client is receiving advice and counsel without necessarily getting any tangible deliverables (other than a notebook of ideas and/or tools). ‘Professional Services’ to me implies that there is a tangible deliverable at the end of the project (i.e., a fixed pipe, an e-learning course, software that works, etc).

I believe the distinction is important for two reasons. First, clients can better understand where they are in terms of where they are in the solution process (Consulting seems to be on the front-end of a solution, Professional Services seem to occur once a solution has been chosen). Second, clients have a better expectation and clarity on what they are buying.

By: Allan

Allan — Mon, 15 Nov 2004 18:14:52 +0000

The difference is that consultants have to charge more to get people to take their advice than professional services people.

(Also that there is a verb for what Consultants do, but not for what Professional Services do.)

More to the point, in my terminology Consultants offer (business) advice, System Integrators implement it (even if it is a process change and does not involve technology), while Professional Services are System Integrators tied to a specific product or vendor.

Not sure if this only add to the confusion…

By: Mike

Mike — Sun, 14 Nov 2004 15:12:28 +0000

I think the confusing word is “Professional Services”. My plumber provides “Professional Services”, but a software company provides either Implementation services or Implementation consulting which is different that “Consulting”

By: Dave Jilk

Dave Jilk — Sun, 14 Nov 2004 05:44:25 +0000

I think the main reason they are typically connected is that they usually have the same BUSINESS MODEL (c.f. your previous post) of selling hourly/daily labor at a time-based rate.