Usage

Part of the Brightwork Research & Analysis enterprise software risk model, and a criterion of software measurement and part of the Software Selection Package.

Definition

It is challenging to obtain excellent consulting support outside of software vendors. The major consulting companies generally only have resources, which are trained on the software from the most significant vendors – which is why they continually recommend this software. Keeping a bench of consultants trained on 5 of the significant applications in anyone software category would be a challenge, and the likelihood that one resource would come available when the opportunity presents itself would be unlikely. An easy way to improve the overall preparedness of the implementing company is to add more consultants from the software vendor. Too many projects have gone south because the consulting partner was overly focused on maximizing their billing hours.

Software vendors have the advantage in that they are typically less focused on maximizing billing hours as they make more of their money from software sales. And they have a higher incentive than any consulting company to get the software live (so they can use the client as a reference account for future software sales). This is doubly advantageous because, in addition to paying less, software vendors do not have the incentive to stretch out the project as consulting companies do. Also, the consultants at software vendors will almost always know the software better than the consultants from consulting companies. Finally, the consulting company should not have control over how many of their consultants over other consultants, such as independent consultants and software vendor consultants. The consulting company is supposedly there to serve the client.