Services

Based on more than 20 years of experience in building, running and turn-around IT Services companies both large and small, our services provide you with the ability to take your business to the next level, improve financial performance, and manage the risk of strategic and operational changes.

Improve your financial performance

It's our belief that many IT Services companies can benefit from a better understanding of their profit model. Too often, companies add services, products or capabilities without understanding how to organize the company to sell and deliver them profitably.

Service Leadership can help. Our profit model is simple:

That's it; nothing else matters.

As we know from our benchmarking and peer studies, the best performing IT Services companies serving the SMB marketplace have regularly attained 20% or more in pre-tax income, after owners' compensation, even during the economic downturn.

The challenge is transitioning your organization's sales, services and management to the most profitable model. Because we've worked with hundreds of IT Services companies - and built and run several successful ones ourselves - we know what works. And we know how to transition to a more profitable business model, while retaining and growing your customer base and bringing your people and your partners along.

Also, see our Benchmarking and Peer Group services.

Add new services offerings

Adding a new service offering should bring in new customers, pull more revenue from existing customers, and add long-term shareholder value. But adding a new service is also difficult and risky:

• How do you position your customer value proposition for the best revenue ramp-up?
• How do you evolve your sales, technical and management compensation plans to provide incentives without conflicting with your other offerings?
• How do you organize the company to sell and deliver the new service profitably?
• What tools do you need to enable your people to sell, deliver and manage the new service?

Service Leadership provides you with the expertise to roll out a new service smoothly and successfully, without trial-and-error, and with maximum financial results. Because we've rolled out new services many times in many different circumstances, we are able to tailor our engagements to your specific needs, timeframe, resources, customers, people and goals.

Buy an IT Services company

Acquiring an IT Services company is one of the most impactful - and risky - ways to grow your company. Done correctly, you can add profitable revenue, get new customers to cross-sell your own services, and bring in valuable new capabilities and people. But it's often nearly a "bet-your-company" proposition.

Studies have shown that successful acquisition strategies focus on two critical success factors:

• The strategy and search: what to buy, how to structure the deal and how to find the right candidates.
• The integration: how to integrate the two companies after the deal is done.

Service Leadership - unlike most M&A advisors - brings unique experience in both phases. Since 2000, we've led or advised on more than 20 successful acquisitions/integrations of IT Services companies.

The Strategy and Search - We've built, run and advised on just about every kind of IT service operation. So we know which services compliment each other in terms of customer segments, skills and abilities of the people, and profit models. This is critically important in developing your acquisition strategy, because adding the right services, customers and people means the difference between creating long-term synergy or long-lasting problems.

We also know how to find the right kind of company, and how to structure a win/win deal. Utilizing BestProspect™, our constantly-updated, proprietary database of over 8,000 IT Services companies in the U.S., we deliver better M&A search results more quickly than traditional search methods.

The Integration - Few M&A advisors actually bring industry experience to the table. So they leave you on your own during the most crucial part of the process: bringing the two companies smoothly and successfully together, retaining the best of both while still realizing the desired financial gains. In a timeframe that is all too short, you must continue to serve your customers and their customers, all the while transitioning operating procedures, pricing models, customer contracts, compensation plans, human resources and so on.

Only Service Leadership brings the relevant experience to the table. Since 1983, we've been leading, advising or participating in the acquisition integration process. For the first 12 years, we were managers in companies on the buying or selling side of acquisitions, responsible for making the two companies work together after the deal closed. For the last eight, we've done the same as consultants. So our knowledge of integrating acquisitions comes from the inside out, and in that, we are unique in the M&A business.

That knowledge is contained in our proprietary BestLeverage™ extranet for reducing the risk and the speed results of acquisition integrations. Service Leadership tailors the BestLeverage™ project database for each client engagement, selecting the appropriate phases and tasks, templates and tools for the situation. Senior managers on the client and acquired team are given secure access, and the project is led by an Service Leadership principal. BestLeverage™ enables our clients to leverage years of experience economically, and apply it in real-world timeframes.

Sell your company or get a valuation

A wise man once said, "A thing is only worth what you can get someone to pay for it."

Your goal, of course, is to build shareholder value. If the time has come to realize that value, or to take strategic decisions that require understanding the current value of the company, Service Leadership can help.

Service Leadership has advised on more than twenty IT Services company transactions in the past four years, many of them on the buy-side. For sellers - or those seeking valuations - this means we know how to best substantiate a desirable valuation in the buyer's terms. We know the market, and we know IT Services, so we know how to articulate to buyers the true value that your company brings to the table.

We also know how to identify the right buyers and talk with them in their own terms, as owners, investors and managers of IT Services companies. So, unlike most M&A advisors, we can help the buyer feel comfortable with their buying decision, removing perceived risk and thereby justifying a price with less risk-adjustment.

Lastly, our proprietary BestProspect™ database of more than 8,000 IT Services companies enables us to promptly identify companies who are currently acquisitive and who fit the ideal buyer profile in terms of valuation, culture and exit strategy.

Establish a channel for your services or products

Companies or investors looking to establish a channel for their IT services or products can benefit from Service Leadership' exclusive position in the industry.

To deliver you the best channel program in the optimum timeframe, we combine our operational understanding of how IT Services companies add new services and products to their offerings, with our proprietary BestProspect™ database of over 8,000 IT Services companies. Together, this allows us to target the right channel partners and to tune your value propositions to recruit them.

Once you attracted them, you need to empower them to sell and deliver your service or product. Once again, Service Leadership' operational expertise gives you the ability to do this quickly. Training programs, tools for individuals and for managers, even tips and tricks: we provide the tools - and the confidence - your channel partners need to generate revenue in the early phases of the program when results are crucial to the long term success of the partnership.