Consultants (was Re: AS/400 job market)

Lori,

In a message dated 2/1/00 11:56:32 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
lhainey@hbs-inc.com writes:

> Excuse me, but I am the owner of a consulting firm and I disagree with your
>  statements.  We have frequently moved on to other projects for the same
>  client and we are consultants not contractors. I quite frankly I take this
>  as a compliment. The clients like our work, know we have a high degree of
>  integrity and we tend to develop long term relationships with them. We also
>  have some clients that just need a "once and done" quick turnaround project
>  and as a general rule tend to not use consultants often. We have helped 
them
>  out as well. However, of all our clients we have only had 2 that did not
>  extend the relationship with additional projects and they were both
>  conversions from one system to another - quick need and done type 
scenarios.

Geeze, Louise!  How many times have I posted these very same sentiments and 
that very same quote on this list over the past 5+ years and received nothing 
but "attaboys" from consultants and lame excuses from contractors (as I 
define the terms, as they generally exist in US business, in the 1980's and 
1990's).

I certainly didn't spend the four years at that last client working on the 
same project.  They brought me back over and over because their in-house 
staff that they managed to retain had not learned the basics of what I was 
trying to teach them, they liked my services and realized that it was not my 
fault that their staff hadn't "picked up".  They considered me to have enough 
integrity to allow me to work one week from home followed by one week on 
site.  I helped install an ERP system (not a _SMALL_ undertaking, BTW) at 
four different manufacturing facilities -- two of them twice because the 
first version of the package wasn't Y2K compliant -- each of which had 
entirely different requirements due to the type of manufacturing being 
performed.  I also interfaced diverse systems utilizing SNA, FTP, and 
MQSeries utilizing rule sets that would have made a space shuttle launch look 
simplistic by comparison.  We interfaced VB touch-screens, EDI, RF, warehouse 
management, data warehousing, and hand held data collection devices to the 
point that even Wal-Mart would be jealous.  _YET_, after four (heck, 2.5) 
years I had nothing left to learn there and was ready to move on.

IMO, no consultant should have seniority over 85% of in-house technical 
staff.  If a company needs that much work then, by God, they ought to hire 
some of those folks out there looking for a full time job.  If the "head 
count" is too high to hire adequate full time staff, then by God drop some of 
the "dead weight" and hire some of those folks out there looking for a full 
time job.  Lord knows _FAR_ too many good people in this industry are willing 
to work for a substandard wage just to have a full time job.  Consultants are 
not here to _TAKE_ people's jobs, they're here to help them do their jobs 
better.

Finally, how big a percentage of your overall business do these "repeat" 
customers comprise?  Have you any idea how many "real job" consulting firms 
over the past twenty years have fallen out from under me because they put all 
of their eggs in one basket?  Big client files bankruptcy, consultancy fails 
with the $1M in A/R from said client that they presented to the bank as part 
of their business plan last month.  Big client gets bought out, new owner 
cancels all contracts on shortest term possible, consultancy fails during six 
month moratorium on all new consulting contracts from big client.  Big client 
gets new technical management, which hates all platforms on which consultancy 
is providing services and replaces said platforms before consultancy adjusts. 
 Big client _finally_ gets everything they want, complacent (due to repeat 
business) consultancy sales force fails to drum up enough business to support 
consultancy before it fails.

Really.  I didn't mean to generalize and some of you need to "lighten up", 
but there _ARE_ some real issues here.  Again, I believe that CONSULT400 
would be a far better forum to argue these issues than MIDRANGE-L.

Regards,

Dean Asmussen
Enterprise Systems Consulting, Inc.
Fuquay-Varina, NC  USA
E-mail:  DAsmussen@aol.com

"The brain is a wonderful organ.  It starts the moment you get up, and 
doesn't stop until you get to the office." -- Robert Frost
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