IT-Consulting is not a time-share

For the past decade I’ve noticed an alarming trend in the “consulting” industry. At first, during my time in Australia, it started with government agencies making contracts available for technically skilled personnel which service providers would respond to. The service providers would match up the requirements of the contracts with the staff they currently had on board. If one, or more matched, they would then write up the response to the agency and provide the resumes of the staff. This spread to nearly every industry and market.

This is not consulting….

Technical professionals were hired as “Senior Consultants” or “Consulting Specialists” and basically ended up being a temp, in an office where they were expected to spend the next 12 months (or in some cases several years). At a company they originally had absolutely no desire to work for, and often enough without any of the rights and benefits of actually working at a company as a full-time employee. Billable “was king” and any work-life benefits you were sold in the interview, pretty much went out the window the minute you set foot on client site.

This trend also created another industry; namely that of the recruitment agency turned consultancy. Again, parading technical professional CVs around and selling them as consultants.

This is not consulting…

This trend, unfortunately, isn’t restricted to just Australia. Upon arriving in Sweden I saw that the self-same trend had grown big there as well. Again, large corporations and government agencies were subsidising their skills pool by bringing in consultants, with the intention of this being a temporary solution. Quite often the plans to remedy the lack of internal skills, were non-existent, and the consultant position remained on the staff roster.

again…

This is not consulting…

Having pretty much ascertained what consulting isn’t, I’ll eventually have to provide details on what consulting is. Now, I’m not going to take the typical definition of consultant from Wikipedia and paste it in here. But first, I want to explain where this originated from.

The term “billable is king” was something I first saw when I got old enough to spend time with BDMs (Business Development Manager. Read: sales). Essentially the point of this engagement model was based on a set hourly rate and the more hours you would spend engaged, the more you could bill. A practical (and quite lucrative) engagement model that simplified cost to a very basic calculation: 1 hr = $xxx. This was also the foundation for the remuneration model the BDMs functioned under. Said hours x hourly rate was easily converted to the profit and percentage the BDM was given in commission.

The first step was of course selling the “solution” to the clients “problem”…

The clients problem was easily explained as well. We need x number of people with a specific skill set to work on a project we have.

Somebody far smarter than me, and with a far higher pay grade, had pretty much simplified the problem they had down to something very tangible and understandable.

As soon as the skills were acquired, the project would kick off and everybody would start billing.

Eventually the project would either succeed or fail — statistically it had a 68% chance of failing (reference: ZDNet, CIO) so I would expect it’s likelihood of success to be somewhat low.

That however has absolutely no relevance to the consultant(s). You see, the point of a engagement model like this isn’t for the project to succeed. Quite the contrary. The quicker you get the project finished, the less money is actually made. The less money that is made, the less profit the consultancy earns and the less money the BDM earns.

Time-sharing IT-professionals as consultants is not focused on project success or delivery…

This is the very ugly truth that this engagement model is hiding. It is certainly not something which you go to a client with; one who is asking you to provide a number of consultants at a high profitable rate.

It also stands to reason that as long as your consultancy has an available pool of consultants, with suitably matching skills, then the sales cycle is relatively short. That is also a bonus and probably one of the reasons you will get haunted by recruiters constantly on LinkedIn, if you happen to have a particular skill set.

Are all consultancies like this? Don’t be silly, of course not. Much like the simplification of the problem the client is having, I am also taking liberties and generalising the problem somewhat. But for all sense and purpose, this is what it comes down to.

Two partners, working on achieving two completely different outcomes, attempts to successfully deliver a project. But successfully for who?

Actually, in order for this model to work for both partners, a mutually beneficial business relationship has to have been established first. It is essential that both work towards the same type of success. And this is where consulting actually comes in.

So to define an IT Consultant, then it is a technical professional whom is capable of understanding both the business needs and the technology. It is a confidential partner with which a client can expect an honest dialog. The IT Consultant will be engaged to understand the problem and to apply their technical knowledge in order to propose a solution. A dialog must exist where the client is able to query the solution which is proposed.

But would a SharePoint Consultant not simply propose SharePoint as the solution?

It is also essential that the IT Consultant remains agnostic to a certain extent. That is of course not 100% possible seeing as it is vital that experience and skills are taken into account when choosing the IT Consultant. This is where trust has to be built. For a partnership to function, which is mutually beneficial, then the IT Consultant may have to point towards a solution which currently is not within his/her repertoire if a platform was being discussed.

So who is the “king” here? I earlier mentioned that “Billable is King”, however the truth of the matter is that the “Client is king”. I learned that from working with a small startup in Australia, who truly did put the client first. ES2 had that very fundamental approach to engagements that it all came down to the client being the sole focus. From a consultant perspective that is very satisfying. The success focus is aligned directly with the needs, goals and ideals of the client. For both partners. Now the project stands a much higher chance of success than it did before.

This is also the same which stands true with the company I am currently working for and byBrick puts this up with the top priorities. The focus on the client is paramount and has shifted from time-share billable costing to a solution focused delivery model.

The lesson I’ve learned over the years as a consultant is that there needs to be a change in the industry. The time-share consulting model needs to be eradicated and a focus on the basics introduced back into the mix.