Applied BI

BI consultancy hiring – good guys for nothing doing a good job ? 13 November 2009

For some years I´ve noticed colleages and fellow companies hiring consultants for quarters or years – cheap! The main thing is to have them close, feel comfortable and that they are – cheap!  However, this is very expensive! Do you agree ?

Cheap is however cheating you. Let´s say you hire two skilled guys for a year, i.e. 3000 hours of consulting. However, you haven´t figured out the clear deliverables. This means the guys are hugging your solution, doing the most urgent requests from your users and making sure business managment don´t come around with the hammer because something “f-up”.

Is this a good job ? Is this value for money ? Probably not. Probably those guys could have done some development work or held up some good service levels IF THE PLANNING HAD BEEN DONE UPFRONT !

The message is that most companies do not have a clear view of their BI roadmap, neither the key deliverables for the next year, and definetely not a clear view of the best competence to do the job. IF they had had a much clearer view, I’m sure they would not have hired the two guys for a year – they would have spent the money on service levels from one company and competitive bids on projects with clear deliverables. Now, the cost will probably be much lower, while the quality and the service of the deliverables is higher,

However, it is much more convenient to hire two “friends” for a year. And by the way, the purchasing department is happy as well…