Re: Programmers VS Consultants

Joe,

I concur with you and other posts on this, the head of IS is generally
not a corporate officer.  IMHO, companies do themselves a disservice by
not embracing tools, and the people who wield them, to improve their
enterprise.

It's quite often that a company will hire a person from their CPA firm
to become the CFO.  But where does a company even go to find a CIO?  How
large does that company have to be to even recognize that IS is -not- a
cost center?

I was standing in the hall jawboning with the CEO/President of a client
when the Marketing Director approached us, and in his "humor" he asked
if I was here to cost them more money. Now, I felt that was a slap in
the face to the industry as a whole. My first reaction was to head butt
him, but I said: "Computers are costing you money? Tell you what, let's
turn them off for a week and see how much you save."

From that day forward, he was polite and asked for, and readily
accepted, the assistance we provide.  He learned that there were many
things about customer buying patterns that we could help him with to
improve sales.  Maybe the CEO had a talk with him afterwards. Don't
know.

The sorry war stories being told in this contractor/consultant thread
have to do with the nature of the relationship with the client.

Geez, I just had a flash ... maybe the consultant list -can- have value
and I'm going to have to eat a whole bunch of crow for Thanksgiving!
(Sure beats frogs though <g>)

OK, here's my first "consultant" recommendation: If you own your own
business, NEVER make your deal with a person of a lower postion at the
client.  I've always done business owner to business owner
relationships.  What you get is the ear of the "true" decision maker,
their backing and when you do a good job, their respect AND repeat
business and referrals!

The company is the client. IMO, the company is the CEO/President.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving all,
James W. Kilgore


Joe Teff wrote:
> 
> > Well, if that were true, it would all come back to the point I wanted to
> > make in the first place... MIS should be viewed as an integral part
> > of your corporate strategy, NOT as overhead to be minimized as
> > much as possible.  Maybe I'll just go back to sleep... if someone
> > will wake me up the day that comes!!
> 
> This I can agree with, both from the view of an employee and as a
> consultant, as I have been both. I quite often see that the head of IS
> is not a corporate officer and doesn't even attend the high level staff
> meetings. Rather they get the corporate strategy secondhand through
> the CFO, controller or head the head of HR.
> 
> Joe Teff
> 
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