In the process of managing a professional services organization, most people will focus on what I like to call the “primary metrics” of the business: revenues, staff utilization, and billable rates. Clearly, if utilization is high (your consultants are on billable engagements) and you are getting high billable rates for your consultants, business is typically good. But there are other aspects of the professional services business that must be measured and managed. These are areas that have the potential to create long-term leverage for the business. I like to call these the “secondary metrics” of professional services and they include sales costs, project costs, and portfolio maturity. I will discuss sales costs and delivery costs in other articles. In this article, I want to explore the area of solution portfolio management and how a PS organization can drive the creation of a profitable solution portfolio.

from the article:  Solution Portfolio Management by Thomas E. Lah