In line with a worldwide strategy to dissolve its consulting, education and support operations into a single entity to provide a more holistic service offering, Lotus Development SA has formed Lotus Professional Services SA.
Martin Smith, head of the new division, describes the move as consistent with parent IBM`s strategy of presenting a single face to the customer. "We will still maintain and track ourselves by the three disciplines of support, education and consulting but our customer interface will be a unified one," he says.
The primary goal of the new division is to provide greater value to Lotus customers. "In order to accomplish this we must become better integrated as a services organisation, more solutions focused and provide a better interface to product development and management," adds Smith.
Describing the logic behind the move he describes the typical customer interaction process as beginning with consulting services. These being followed a need for education and training, and finally underpinning the entire relationship with solid support.
"The inception of Lotus Professional Services by combining the three individual disciplines enables us to focus on our core competencies. This will allow us to build service practices around initiatives such as ERP integration, document management, knowledge management, mail migration and distributed learning," explains Smith.
The effect of the worldwide consolidation locally will be to bring the skills of over 30 people from the previously individual divisions under a single roof and allow them to feed off one another.
"This move is part of the global Lotus drive to become a solutions-oriented as opposed to product-oriented organisation," he concludes.
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