Nobody ever got fired for choosing a "BIG 5" Consulting firm!

I have been around long enough to remember when the saying was, "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM."

In our industry, custom software development, nothing is more true than to outsource a “large project” to one of the big boys.

Smaller consulting firms such as Konverge run into this dilemma time and time again. We get invited to bid on large projects as the “go between” consulting firm that might help in negotiation with the big 5. It is rare that the smaller consulting firms actually get the multi-million dollar projects simply because of the "fear of failure". The consensus is that if you do fail, you can’t be blamed by choosing one of the big 5.

Here is some question to ask yourself the next time you are sourcing a software consulting firm:

Q: Do the “Big 5” firms have better Business Analysts?
A: NOPE. The International BA community is currently working diligently on standardizing Requirements Documentation through what is known as the BABOK

Q: Do the “Big 5” firms have better People?
A: NOPE. Maybe higher paid people, but the knowledge base and brainpower is in abundance here at Konverge and other small firms.

Q: Do the "Big 5" firms have more people?
A: Sure they do, so what?? It is your burn rate? If you want something done quickly it's never an issue.

Q: Do the “Big 5” Firm have better Process?
A: NOPE. Maybe more rigid, but we all utilize best practice methodologies such as RUP, JUD and AGILE methodologies. Small firms actually have the ability to bend, adopt and be more flexible to each individual project.

Q: Do the “Big 5” Firms fail less?
A: Have a look at the below “Software Hall of Shame” Picture. Who do you think failed on these projects?



If the name of the game is to innovate & grow your business. Give a small consulting firm such as Konverge a shot. We won’t tell you what to do, but I guarantee that we will work with you to achieve your business goals.

To Better Success,
Cheers,

The cart leading the horse

I see this type situation arise all too often: A VP of Sales has a great idea like “if we knew more about our customers’ collective buying patterns I could be more effective at providing them with value added solutions at the right time”. Sounds like a pretty good idea.

Well, this idea gets tossed around with management, and eventually a decision is made to do something to capture the opportunity. So the process starts. They get somebody to write down requirements for such a project. Because this deals with customers, someone at some point will likely suggest “you need a CRM (Customer Relationship Management System”. Upon doing more research, all the wonderful things that CRMs do are built into the requirements document, because - ‘that’s a good idea’. At some point, finance is involved to set a budget. Then they give it to IT with the instruction: “Source a CRM system and someone to implement it for this much money”. IT now owns the project and goes about casting its net and find CRM implementers.
Can someone say ‘broken telephone’? The poor VP of Sales is looking for something to help him analyze customer buying patterns, but he’s going to get a full-blown CRM - how is that going to help him?

This is an exaggerated example, but the underlying flow of events is common among a lot of companies. What those companies don’t get is that software is supposed to solve business problems – not keep IT guys employed. I don’t mean to be hard on IT guys, since I’m one too on some days, but since when did the role of IT start to involve making key Business decisions to solve Business problems? Maybe I missed that memo.

If you’ll indulge me, let’s go back to the example and look at it from the bottom up. The bottom in this case is the poor CRM implementer who is entering into a situation they just can’t win. They don’t know anything about the customer’s business or what specific problem the software application is trying to solve. They may gain some keen insight as to what’s required by going to their IT gatekeeper, who will tell them all about what a CRM is supposed to do within their organization. They may even get a chance to meet with others and maybe even that VP of Sales, who has by this time been convinced that what he needs is a CRM system – because that’s what’s been approved for purchase. Chances are they won’t get to the root issue of what started this whole thing off.

This could have gone a different way. The VP of Sales could have directly gone in search of a partner to provide him with his problem: “if we knew more about our customers’ collective buying patterns I could be more effective at providing them with value added solutions at the right time”. What he would have found is a partner with expertise in Business Intelligence. That partner could have worked directly with him to understand his business, understand the problem and the impact it has on the business, and propose a solution that would specifically meet the business needs with a measurable return on investment.

Sound too easy? Well in our business the second scenario is a recipe for success – if we can’t engage with the business user then we won’t take on the project. We just won’t do that to your business.

BI for the little guy

Business intelligence has traditionally been a term used exclusively by big multinational companies with huge amounts of data, big systems to house it all, and expensive consultants to make it all work. Traditionally, it was because big companies had the systems to collect all the data and therefore the slicing and dicing of it became necessary. That’s not the case anymore. As smaller companies made investments in CRM, ERP and other systems they started collecting data that needs as much slicing and dicing as the big guys.

From a technology side, a few of the latest trends and concepts in BI are Dashboards and Datamarts. Let me explain:

Dashboards: There were two words that used come to mind with regard to end user BI tools: clunky and unreliable. The latest generation of end user tools are really slick – and you don’t need to be an MIT grad to figure out how to use them. Today, everyone from the CEO on down can have their own personal dashboard where they can view, manipulate, filter, slice or dice whatever flavour of information that’s meaningful for them. That’s a huge step forward.

Datamarts: The original BI concept was the Data Warehouse – great if you’ve got tons of storage space and tons of time to wait while your data was crunched because that guy in accounting was pulling of his monthly report. The new concept is a Datamart where small subsets of the Data Warehouse are compartmentalized (typically around KPIs and business units). You might have a Datamart for HR, one for Finance, one for Sales, etcetera - aligning them with business units really reduces the load on the system and therefore the time it takes to crunch data.

The bottom line? As these smaller (and even the bigger) companies become more mature and can create measurable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), the need for fast, easy to use and reliable Business Intelligence tools is going to continue to grow.