More or less for your money?

What I love about being in the technology business is that I get to work with all kinds of cool new technology. I get the biggest buzz when I can take that technology and help a business achieve a new level of effectiveness and efficiency. I have to be careful that I don't too fascinated with the technology and lose sight of the goal. When I am working with a new customer we spend a lot of time dancing around the dollars and trying to find the balance between the right dollars and the right technology. It's hard to lay out $10,000 for a new solution when you are a small business owner. It's a big risk when you need to lay out big bucks for payroll every month, not to mention health insurance and all the other costs of running a business.

When I had my first company we were young and we thought we were pretty smart. We figured that if people were coming to us for solutions that we should come down from the mountain top with the right answer. In retrospect I think we were is little insensitive to the customers budget. I think we could have done more to earn our $150.+ per hour consulting fee. When customers pay $150.00 or more per hour for consulting what do they expect? Do they want to have me recommend they buy a Lexus when all they need is a Toyota? Do we try and sell them a hybrid with new relatively untested technology when they need a reliable low cost car that still gets high gas mileage? I think if you are paying a high rate for your consultant they should be recommending solutions that are the right fit. If you came to me tomorrow and asked me to sell you a great car its pretty easy for me to set you up in a Lexus and know you'll like it. But that car will likely break your budget. How about a used Toyota Camry with 30,000 miles on it at 1/3 the price?

So what I am trying to say is that if you are paying a high price for your consultant. They should be able to help you by reducing your overall cost of technology and supporting the technology. The right solutions fit right, they are stable, and they should have lower overall total cost of ownership. I've seen the opposite where companies are paying a super low price for their consulting but when you look at the over all picture there are a lot of band aided and constantly breaking solutions in place. What you also see in that picture is lost productivity and frustrated staff. I see this time and time again and it takes a while to fix it. It takes a lot of experience and time to be ready to take these sorts of projects on. This is the type of situation where that is also the most rewarding when solutions are put in place and systems are stabilized. In the end its why I'm in the business.

Thanks for reading.