As a web development firm scales, it will inevitably run into a complicated dilemma: whether or not to productize its services. Particularly with a complex and labor-intensive content management system like Drupal, turning away from a business model built around providing specialized service to each individual client becomes increasingly logical as a web development firm expands and builds a reputation.
But, as you may have already noted, this comes at a cost—productizing your Drupal services means that each client ostensibly receives less individual attention from its web vendor. However, if done correctly, productizing your Drupal services will not only improve a web development firm's services, but will streamline the design and development process and ensure that clients consistently receive excellent customer service, support, and, ultimately, superior web products.
So contemplating productizing your Drupal services doesn't need to run hand in hand with your company having an existential crisis. Here's why:
Productizing your web services means that you'll only need to develop a platform once, instead of starting from scratch each time you take on a project. It also means that a development firm only needs to maintain one system instead of several, which allows software engineers and customer support managers to focus all their energy on that particular system and thereby improving the overall experience for all of a firm's clients collectively.
So in short, what does productizing your web development services achieve? It reduces the total cost of ownership; reduces operational costs for the vendor; makes higher quality standards easier to attain; and finally, delivers a dependably high-quality product to clients.
Check out this presentation assembled by Vardot's CEO, Mohammed Razem, that outlines the product vs. service debate by breaking down the phases of developing a website using Drupal. It details how consolidating these practices into a streamlined product will provide a more refined development and implementation process and will allow a team to produce more consistent products by cutting down on the unnecessary and time-consuming aspects associated with a service-focused model, and how that will result in better overall results.
Dig in:
http://www.slideshare.net/doublethink/the-drupal-ecosystem-for-drupal-services