I really hate consultants that waste your time just to get paid more

[SarcasticDwarf]

The company I am interning for (2-3 people there) found out that they need to have SharePoint Services installed on their server. Now, for those who are not aware, Sharepoint is NOT the most difficult program to install. While I *could* do it, I wanted someone else there that could support it after I am gone.

Last Tuesday we contacted the company that our company normally has do their IT stuff. After spending a week doing basically nothing I find out today that they have scheduled a meeting with us tomorrow. Now the purpose of the meeting is to determine what our needs are. Why is this a problem? Because I ALREADY contacted them and told them exactly what we need!

For reference in case anyone cares: SPS in a 2003 environment with SQL runtime [has a 2gb limit IIRC], ~300 documents to be entered with the need to scale to 1000 within 18 months, ~250MB in those initial 300 documents, need adobe IFilter installed

So basically this guy is driving the 20 minutes each way to our office so he can spend 15 minutes talking to me and then bill us for 2-3 hours of time associated with the meeting.

The great thing is, this project is very time sensitive and they know it yet they continue to jerk us around.



Now, I *could* be overreacting and there could be a bunch of highly complex stuff he needs to go over with me in person tomorrow, but I seriously doubt it.


*end rant*



Again, for those going off below. I am not trashing all consultants. I am simply stating what things look like for this specific situation.

 

[SoulAssassin]

As a consultant, I just want to thank you. My bank account truly appreciates every fat, bloated, undeserved paycheck I get. 😀

http://www.despair.com/consulting.html

 

[ggnl]

Originally posted by: SoulAssassin
As a consultant, I just want to thank you. My bank account truly appreciates every fat, bloated, undeserved paycheck I get. 😀

http://www.despair.com/consulting.html

Hey! At least 20% of the consultants that I work with aren't blatantly wasting the company's money. It's that other 80% that give the rest of them a bad name.

 

[SarcasticDwarf]

Originally posted by: ggnl

Originally posted by: SoulAssassin
As a consultant, I just want to thank you. My bank account truly appreciates every fat, bloated, undeserved paycheck I get. 😀

http://www.despair.com/consulting.html

Hey! At least 20% of the consultants that I work with aren't blatantly wasting the company's money. It's that other 80% that give the rest of them a bad name.

I consider it to be one thing if it is a large company and there is no deadline. It is another when it is basically a ma and pa shop with an urgent deadline to meet.

 

[dman]

Originally posted by: SarcasticDwarf
For reference in case anyone cares: SPS in a 2003 environment with SQL runtime [has a 2gb limit IIRC], ~300 documents to be entered with the need to scale to 1000 within 18 months, ~250MB in those initial 300 documents, need adobe IFilter installed

So basically this guy is driving the 20 minutes each way to our office so he can spend 15 minutes talking to me and then bill us for 2-3 hours of time associated with the meeting.

The great thing is, this project is very time sensitive and they know it yet they continue to jerk us around.



Now, I *could* be overreacting and there could be a bunch of highly complex stuff he needs to go over with me in person tomorrow, but I seriously doubt it.


*end rant*

While your baselines are useful, perhaps they are going to discuss what your longer term needs are for sharepoint. If they build it out with a minimal config now and later you need to grow it could be seen as poor planning on the consultants part, wheras if they build it out for future growth and you are just using for some basic services they could be seen as trying to build something you don't need just to make some extra $$$.

I don't see anything wrong with locking in the requirements it protects both your employer and the consultant.

That said, you could be right. I'm just assuming that if the consultant is any good he/she probably has plenty of work to go around and has better ways to spend their time then driving 2hrs to talk about sharepoint for 20minutes.

 

[JS80]

welcome to the racket of corporate purchasing

 

[SarcasticDwarf]

Originally posted by: dman

Originally posted by: SarcasticDwarf
For reference in case anyone cares: SPS in a 2003 environment with SQL runtime [has a 2gb limit IIRC], ~300 documents to be entered with the need to scale to 1000 within 18 months, ~250MB in those initial 300 documents, need adobe IFilter installed

So basically this guy is driving the 20 minutes each way to our office so he can spend 15 minutes talking to me and then bill us for 2-3 hours of time associated with the meeting.

The great thing is, this project is very time sensitive and they know it yet they continue to jerk us around.



Now, I *could* be overreacting and there could be a bunch of highly complex stuff he needs to go over with me in person tomorrow, but I seriously doubt it.


*end rant*

While your baselines are useful, perhaps they are going to discuss what your longer term needs are for sharepoint. If they build it out with a minimal config now and later you need to grow it could be seen as poor planning on the consultants part, wheras if they build it out for future growth and you are just using for some basic services they could be seen as trying to build something you don't need just to make some extra $$$.

I don't see anything wrong with locking in the requirements it protects both your employer and the consultant.

That said, you could be right. I'm just assuming that if the consultant is any good he/she probably has plenty of work to go around and has better ways to spend their time then driving 2hrs to talk about sharepoint for 20minutes.

The thing is that I already discussed all of this with his partner. The ONLY thing that we need sharepoint for is a document repository. Sharepoint perfectly fits the needs of the company and all the other solutions are extremely expensive. The company is growing, so we will hit the 2gb limit (assuming it still exists) in a few years. By that time it would not be much of a cost issue to upgrade to the full version of SQL server if needed.

I'm just baffled that there is any need to show up in person. A phone call sure, but a face to face meeting?

 

[Descartes]

As a consultant, I'm guessing you're completely wrong. This is an ill-conceived perception that many in-house employees have of consultants, and it's really very unfortunate.

A couple of things:

1) Your company likely has arrangements with the consultants. No offense, but you're an intern; you're not going to be involved with decisions that affect the entire company, and consultants aren't brought in to simply focus on one immediate need (sometimes they are, but let's not miss the point here); rather, they have a broad scope that tends to extend well beyond your immediate need. They have to consider enterprise-wide issues, etc.
2) I doubt they're billing for the meeting time unless it was previously arranged.

As consultants, we have to turn the "This is what I need!" into what you really need, and we have to consider a multitude of other criteria that most individual employees don't know about.

So, broaden your horizons a little. You can offer disdain to the consultants or you can take a little extra effort to understand that side of the business. You'll find that it's never as simple as you think it is.

IMO

 

[yllus]

If you'd like to outsource your Sharepoint hosting as an alternative option, let me know. 😛

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Originally posted by: Descartes
As a consultant, I'm guessing you're completely wrong. This is an ill-conceived perception that many in-house employees have of consultants, and it's really very unfortunate.

A couple of things:

1) Your company likely has arrangements with the consultants. No offense, but you're an intern; you're not going to be involved with decisions that affect the entire company, and consultants aren't brought in to simply focus on one immediate need (sometimes they are, but let's not miss the point here); rather, they have a broad scope that tends to extend well beyond your immediate need. They have to consider enterprise-wide issues, etc.
2) I doubt they're billing for the meeting time unless it was previously arranged.

As consultants, we have to turn the "This is what I need!" into what you really need, and we have to consider a multitude of other criteria that most individual employees don't know about.

So, broaden your horizons a little. You can offer disdain to the consultants or you can take a little extra effort to understand that side of the business. You'll find that it's never as simple as you think it is.

IMO

/thread

 

[Descartes]

Originally posted by: SarcasticDwarf

Originally posted by: dman

Originally posted by: SarcasticDwarf
For reference in case anyone cares: SPS in a 2003 environment with SQL runtime [has a 2gb limit IIRC], ~300 documents to be entered with the need to scale to 1000 within 18 months, ~250MB in those initial 300 documents, need adobe IFilter installed

So basically this guy is driving the 20 minutes each way to our office so he can spend 15 minutes talking to me and then bill us for 2-3 hours of time associated with the meeting.

The great thing is, this project is very time sensitive and they know it yet they continue to jerk us around.



Now, I *could* be overreacting and there could be a bunch of highly complex stuff he needs to go over with me in person tomorrow, but I seriously doubt it.


*end rant*

While your baselines are useful, perhaps they are going to discuss what your longer term needs are for sharepoint. If they build it out with a minimal config now and later you need to grow it could be seen as poor planning on the consultants part, wheras if they build it out for future growth and you are just using for some basic services they could be seen as trying to build something you don't need just to make some extra $$$.

I don't see anything wrong with locking in the requirements it protects both your employer and the consultant.

That said, you could be right. I'm just assuming that if the consultant is any good he/she probably has plenty of work to go around and has better ways to spend their time then driving 2hrs to talk about sharepoint for 20minutes.

The thing is that I already discussed all of this with his partner. The ONLY thing that we need sharepoint for is a document repository. Sharepoint perfectly fits the needs of the company and all the other solutions are extremely expensive. The company is growing, so we will hit the 2gb limit (assuming it still exists) in a few years. By that time it would not be much of a cost issue to upgrade to the full version of SQL server if needed.

I'm just baffled that there is any need to show up in person. A phone call sure, but a face to face meeting?

Much of what you're failing to consider is standard business conduct. I agree that there are often too many meetings, but part of the point of having consultants is to have face-to-face interaction so that you can more effectively identify problems, proposed solutions, etc. A quick phone call is great for some things, but not about any non-trivial project deployment. It's part of the value, and your suggestion that this person is just trying to find billable time is very unlikely. If a consultant has to worry about a few hours of billable time, then they have a lot more things to worry about.

 

[Zenmervolt]

I'm an internal Analyst on a team that does a lot of systems deployment for HR.

The number of times that someone has come to us with a spec-sheet of exactly what they want and had that spec sheet been the correct solution to the needs that the business unit has is exactly zero.

Using the first set of specs that a customer sends you is a surefire recipe for failure on the project.

ZV

 

[SoulAssassin]

Originally posted by: SarcasticDwarf

Originally posted by: ggnl

Originally posted by: SoulAssassin
As a consultant, I just want to thank you. My bank account truly appreciates every fat, bloated, undeserved paycheck I get. 😀

http://www.despair.com/consulting.html

Hey! At least 20% of the consultants that I work with aren't blatantly wasting the company's money. It's that other 80% that give the rest of them a bad name.

I consider it to be one thing if it is a large company and there is no deadline. It is another when it is basically a ma and pa shop with an urgent deadline to meet.

I agree w the corporate vs ma/pa shop thing. I'm sitting at a huge financial shop surfing the internet right now and I'm comfortable with that. I did a 3 day gig back in August for a school district in Alabama...the guy they had doing the IT work ran his own consulting shop w a handful of employees...real small thing. Anyways, his main guy who he just paid ~5K to take all this training so they could implement the project they were working on left. They had to pay for me to fly in two days before it was supposed to be implemented (this was started 18 months ago), I had to tell him the design was crap, the hardware wouldn't work and they paid for thousands of dollars in unnecessary licenses. Before I came down he was trying to get me to stay in a cheap hotel and told me he could loan me a car while I was there. Not realizing the situation I declined, booked a hotel that was 50% more, rented a car (actually got upgraded to an SUV which probably used a helluva a lot more gas which is expensed to him) and had a decent meal the first night I was there. I realized once the project got underway what the situation was and that I was directly taking money out of his pocket and I felt pretty bad about it. I eased back on expenses as much as I could but I think the guy ended up about breaking even on the project which took him a year and a half.

 

[Descartes]

Originally posted by: Zenmervolt
I'm an internal Analyst on a team that does a lot of systems deployment for HR.

The number of times that someone has come to us with a spec-sheet of exactly what they want and had that spec sheet been the correct solution to the needs that the business unit has is exactly zero.

Using the first set of specs that a customer sends you is a surefire recipe for failure on the project.

ZV

Absolutely. The recent posts about it being a "ma and pa shop" (not exactly sure what that is either. Do "ma and pa shops" not have issues that hinder growth/stability?) seem to imply that it's irrelevant for them, but I would suggest that it's even more important. Larger companies often have a very formal process for new projects of any size, and as such there's not a lot of flexibility in terms of solution. Smaller companies can benefit the most from a well-conceived plan, and it's precisely the reactive "We just want to address this immediate need" mentality that hinders growth.

 

[SarcasticDwarf]

Originally posted by: Descartes
1) Your company likely has arrangements with the consultants. No offense, but you're an intern; you're not going to be involved with decisions that affect the entire company, and consultants aren't brought in to simply focus on one immediate need (sometimes they are, but let's not miss the point here); rather, they have a broad scope that tends to extend well beyond your immediate need. They have to consider enterprise-wide issues, etc.
2) I doubt they're billing for the meeting time unless it was previously arranged.

As consultants, we have to turn the "This is what I need!" into what you really need, and we have to consider a multitude of other criteria that most individual employees don't know about.

So, broaden your horizons a little. You can offer disdain to the consultants or you can take a little extra effort to understand that side of the business. You'll find that it's never as simple as you think it is.

IMO

Fair enough. I admit that I could very well be wrong. A couple of points though: While I am the intern, I actually have a lot of power. The company has all of two people in it (a third is temporarily there). They basically gave me the problem and asked me to deal with it however I chose. Also, this is not an enterprise-level issue. The company owns a single server and a few workstations.

I freely admit that they know more about the topic than I. My suspicion is that time is being wasted here which I am not ok with. In no way do I disdain consultants in general.

Edit: To address Descartes and a few others: I have actually spoken with quite a few people that are knowledgeable with the issue. The problem is that all of them were unable/unwilling to actually install it. We have access to some fantastic IT people that helped us decide on which direction to take.

 

[Brainonska511]

As Dogbert once said: Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime. Talk to a hungry man about fish, and you're a consultant.

 

[Descartes]

Originally posted by: SarcasticDwarf

Originally posted by: Descartes
1) Your company likely has arrangements with the consultants. No offense, but you're an intern; you're not going to be involved with decisions that affect the entire company, and consultants aren't brought in to simply focus on one immediate need (sometimes they are, but let's not miss the point here); rather, they have a broad scope that tends to extend well beyond your immediate need. They have to consider enterprise-wide issues, etc.
2) I doubt they're billing for the meeting time unless it was previously arranged.

As consultants, we have to turn the "This is what I need!" into what you really need, and we have to consider a multitude of other criteria that most individual employees don't know about.

So, broaden your horizons a little. You can offer disdain to the consultants or you can take a little extra effort to understand that side of the business. You'll find that it's never as simple as you think it is.

IMO

Fair enough. I admit that I could very well be wrong. A couple of points though: While I am the intern, I actually have a lot of power. The company has all of two people in it (a third is temporarily there). They basically gave me the problem and asked me to deal with it however I chose. Also, this is not an enterprise-level issue. The company owns a single server and a few workstations.

I freely admit that they know more about the topic than I. My suspicion is that time is being wasted here which I am not ok with. In no way do I disdain consultants in general.

Edit: To address Descartes and a few others: I have actually spoken with quite a few people that are knowledgeable with the issue. The problem is that all of them were unable/unwilling to actually install it. We have access to some fantastic IT people that helped us decide on which direction to take.

Fair enough. You obviously know more about your particular situation.

A final point if you don't mind. You might try just talking to the consultant and asking him what he has in mind. If he's a good consultant, he likely has a broader plan, and if you aligned yourself with him you could serve as the champion of the project for your company. That could work out very well for you and you'd likely gain a lot of exposure to the workings of projects, etc.

Good luck.

 

[dullard]

Originally posted by: Descartes
Absolutely. The recent posts about it being a "ma and pa shop" (not exactly sure what that is either. Do "ma and pa shops" not have issues that hinder growth/stability?) seem to imply that it's irrelevant for them, but I would suggest that it's even more important. Larger companies often have a very formal process for new projects of any size, and as such there's not a lot of flexibility in terms of solution. Smaller companies can benefit the most from a well-conceived plan, and it's precisely the reactive "We just want to address this immediate need" mentality that hinders growth.

Being in a Ma and Pa situation, I've seen this problem. We know for a fact that what we really need is so far out of the reach of the company that it is silly to even consider it (your "solution" would cost 10X more than that product line will make in its lifetime). We spend months, if not years figuring out how to do it in the 2nd best fashion. How to do it in a way that while not ideal, will maximize the possible profit on that product line. We have systems in place and to change the systems would require 100X more money than we have available. We would like the whole overhaul, but it simply isn't even remotely feasible. Sure if random people would throw millions of dollars our way for no reason, we could implement your changes, but it isn't going to happen.

So we spend months or years coming up with what will work for us, we write it up in a nice spec sheet and send it out to the experts to impliment. What happens? They change it so much that nothing meets any of our needs, and we scrap the project as we can't afford to pay for a project that is leading us to certain failure. Do what we need, even though it is 2nd best and we'll be so happy. The thousands of dollars down the drain because consultants won't listen to us and who think they can see the whole picture is what is holding us back. If we didn't waste so much money on outside people who think they can reinvent the wheel, we would have been big by now and able to do the ideal solution.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: ggnl

Originally posted by: SoulAssassin
As a consultant, I just want to thank you. My bank account truly appreciates every fat, bloated, undeserved paycheck I get. 😀

http://www.despair.com/consulting.html

Hey! At least 20% of the consultants that I work with aren't blatantly wasting the company's money. It's that other 80% that give the rest of them a bad name.

That's the trick. You can't be blatant about it - you've got to make everyone believe that you're really being useful. That's what the 80% of your time is spent doing: looking like you're indispensible. That leaves the 20% to actually do the work that truly does make you useful. 😉

 

[SarcasticDwarf]

btw, Thanks to all those who have posted here. There has been a lot of interesting (and helpful) information posted.

 

[Descartes]

Originally posted by: dullard

Originally posted by: Descartes
Absolutely. The recent posts about it being a "ma and pa shop" (not exactly sure what that is either. Do "ma and pa shops" not have issues that hinder growth/stability?) seem to imply that it's irrelevant for them, but I would suggest that it's even more important. Larger companies often have a very formal process for new projects of any size, and as such there's not a lot of flexibility in terms of solution. Smaller companies can benefit the most from a well-conceived plan, and it's precisely the reactive "We just want to address this immediate need" mentality that hinders growth.

Being in a Ma and Pa situation, I've seen this problem. We know for a fact that what we really need is so far out of the reach of the company that it is silly to even consider it (your "solution" would cost 10X more than that product line will make in its lifetime). We spend months, if not years figuring out how to do it in the 2nd best fashion. How to do it in a way that while not ideal, will maximize the possible profit on that product line. We have systems in place and to change the systems would require 100X more money than we have available. We would like the whole overhaul, but it simply isn't even remotely feasible.

So we spend months or years coming up with what will work for us, we write it up in a nice spec sheet and send it out to the experts to impliment. What happens? They change it so much that nothing meets any of our needs, and we scrap the project as we can't afford to pay for a project that is leading us to certain failure. Do what we need, even though it is 2nd best and we'll be so happy. The thousands of dollars down the drain because consultants won't listen to us and who think they can see the whole picture is what is holding us back. If we didn't waste so much money on outside people who think they can reinvent the wheel, we would have been big by now and able to do the ideal solution.

I empathize with that problem. I've seen it numerous times, but I can at least be comfortable knowing that I never caused such a situation.

Unfortunately, I think the largest problem is that there are so many consultants that are simply no good. People think that if you go to the larger consulting firms that you get the best people, but it's actually quite the opposite. Of course, there are plenty of incompetents at the smaller level as well.

Consultant is a service-based business of course. I think consumers take on the added responsibility of identifying the fitness of the consultant just as they would a doctor, lawyer, carpenter or anything else. There are a lot of ways to accomplish this, and if anyone is curious how I do it feel free to PM me.

If I were to take on your project, you would have been given a proposal/POC/something (depending on the situation) showing you your options, each of which would be accompanied by a rough schedule and estimate, the benefits derived from each and other considerations that might push you in another direction. Someone that pushes the "best" solution only is someone that doesn't know anything but the "best" solution; as you've said, sometimes the "best" solution is the worst solution. There is nothing at all wrong with having a solution that isn't the absolute best of breed, but there is something wrong with creating a myopic solution that is either unusable or antiquated far too soon. Consultants have to consider all these factors, and a group with enough experience can roll out a solution that truly fits the need without all the overhead you're talking about.

This is an aspect of the industry that truly bothers me, but it extends to all service-based industries. It seems so few care about quality anymore. Get the next dollar and move on. The irony is that consultants are supposed to see a little beyond the immediate need, but then so many tend to operate their businesses with the same myopia they try to address in their clients.

Ahhhh... headache.

 

[PlatinumGold]

Originally posted by: SarcasticDwarf

Originally posted by: dman

Originally posted by: SarcasticDwarf
For reference in case anyone cares: SPS in a 2003 environment with SQL runtime [has a 2gb limit IIRC], ~300 documents to be entered with the need to scale to 1000 within 18 months, ~250MB in those initial 300 documents, need adobe IFilter installed

So basically this guy is driving the 20 minutes each way to our office so he can spend 15 minutes talking to me and then bill us for 2-3 hours of time associated with the meeting.

The great thing is, this project is very time sensitive and they know it yet they continue to jerk us around.



Now, I *could* be overreacting and there could be a bunch of highly complex stuff he needs to go over with me in person tomorrow, but I seriously doubt it.


*end rant*

While your baselines are useful, perhaps they are going to discuss what your longer term needs are for sharepoint. If they build it out with a minimal config now and later you need to grow it could be seen as poor planning on the consultants part, wheras if they build it out for future growth and you are just using for some basic services they could be seen as trying to build something you don't need just to make some extra $$$.

I don't see anything wrong with locking in the requirements it protects both your employer and the consultant.

That said, you could be right. I'm just assuming that if the consultant is any good he/she probably has plenty of work to go around and has better ways to spend their time then driving 2hrs to talk about sharepoint for 20minutes.

The thing is that I already discussed all of this with his partner. The ONLY thing that we need sharepoint for is a document repository. Sharepoint perfectly fits the needs of the company and all the other solutions are extremely expensive. The company is growing, so we will hit the 2gb limit (assuming it still exists) in a few years. By that time it would not be much of a cost issue to upgrade to the full version of SQL server if needed.

I'm just baffled that there is any need to show up in person. A phone call sure, but a face to face meeting?

hmmm, i never charge for these type of meetings, i consider them as part of the sales process.

also, i always charge flat fee per project.

 

[Steve]

They need the billable hours. What they really need is a sche... er, system where they can respond to your needs without wasting your time as described, and then invoice a certain minimum hours or whatever.

 

[SarcasticDwarf]

Originally posted by: PlatinumGold

Originally posted by: SarcasticDwarf

Originally posted by: dman

Originally posted by: SarcasticDwarf
For reference in case anyone cares: SPS in a 2003 environment with SQL runtime [has a 2gb limit IIRC], ~300 documents to be entered with the need to scale to 1000 within 18 months, ~250MB in those initial 300 documents, need adobe IFilter installed

So basically this guy is driving the 20 minutes each way to our office so he can spend 15 minutes talking to me and then bill us for 2-3 hours of time associated with the meeting.

The great thing is, this project is very time sensitive and they know it yet they continue to jerk us around.



Now, I *could* be overreacting and there could be a bunch of highly complex stuff he needs to go over with me in person tomorrow, but I seriously doubt it.


*end rant*

While your baselines are useful, perhaps they are going to discuss what your longer term needs are for sharepoint. If they build it out with a minimal config now and later you need to grow it could be seen as poor planning on the consultants part, wheras if they build it out for future growth and you are just using for some basic services they could be seen as trying to build something you don't need just to make some extra $$$.

I don't see anything wrong with locking in the requirements it protects both your employer and the consultant.

That said, you could be right. I'm just assuming that if the consultant is any good he/she probably has plenty of work to go around and has better ways to spend their time then driving 2hrs to talk about sharepoint for 20minutes.

The thing is that I already discussed all of this with his partner. The ONLY thing that we need sharepoint for is a document repository. Sharepoint perfectly fits the needs of the company and all the other solutions are extremely expensive. The company is growing, so we will hit the 2gb limit (assuming it still exists) in a few years. By that time it would not be much of a cost issue to upgrade to the full version of SQL server if needed.

I'm just baffled that there is any need to show up in person. A phone call sure, but a face to face meeting?

hmmm, i never charge for these type of meetings, i consider them as part of the sales process.

also, i always charge flat fee per project.

While you may not directly charge for the meetings, the cost ends up in the final bill. Even if they are not charging by the hour, we will still end up paying for the meeting.

Scenerio:
We call them up and say we need them to install SPS 3. We e-mail some questions and answers back and forth. They say ok and schedule the meeting. We have the meeting, discuss the issue again. Now they send a tech out to install it.

Now, if we basically just need a tech to install it and NOT the consulting itself, why waste the time and money of the client?

(I am not saying this is what will happen since we have not had the meeting, just that it could).

 

[PlatinumGold]

Originally posted by: SarcasticDwarf

Originally posted by: PlatinumGold

Originally posted by: SarcasticDwarf

Originally posted by: dman

Originally posted by: SarcasticDwarf
For reference in case anyone cares: SPS in a 2003 environment with SQL runtime [has a 2gb limit IIRC], ~300 documents to be entered with the need to scale to 1000 within 18 months, ~250MB in those initial 300 documents, need adobe IFilter installed

So basically this guy is driving the 20 minutes each way to our office so he can spend 15 minutes talking to me and then bill us for 2-3 hours of time associated with the meeting.

The great thing is, this project is very time sensitive and they know it yet they continue to jerk us around.



Now, I *could* be overreacting and there could be a bunch of highly complex stuff he needs to go over with me in person tomorrow, but I seriously doubt it.


*end rant*

While your baselines are useful, perhaps they are going to discuss what your longer term needs are for sharepoint. If they build it out with a minimal config now and later you need to grow it could be seen as poor planning on the consultants part, wheras if they build it out for future growth and you are just using for some basic services they could be seen as trying to build something you don't need just to make some extra $$$.

I don't see anything wrong with locking in the requirements it protects both your employer and the consultant.

That said, you could be right. I'm just assuming that if the consultant is any good he/she probably has plenty of work to go around and has better ways to spend their time then driving 2hrs to talk about sharepoint for 20minutes.

The thing is that I already discussed all of this with his partner. The ONLY thing that we need sharepoint for is a document repository. Sharepoint perfectly fits the needs of the company and all the other solutions are extremely expensive. The company is growing, so we will hit the 2gb limit (assuming it still exists) in a few years. By that time it would not be much of a cost issue to upgrade to the full version of SQL server if needed.

I'm just baffled that there is any need to show up in person. A phone call sure, but a face to face meeting?

hmmm, i never charge for these type of meetings, i consider them as part of the sales process.

also, i always charge flat fee per project.

While you may not directly charge for the meetings, the cost ends up in the final bill. Even if they are not charging by the hour, we will still end up paying for the meeting.

Scenerio:
We call them up and say we need them to install SPS 3. We e-mail some questions and answers back and forth. They say ok and schedule the meeting. We have the meeting, discuss the issue again. Now they send a tech out to install it.

Now, if we basically just need a tech to install it and NOT the consulting itself, why waste the time and money of the client?

(I am not saying this is what will happen since we have not had the meeting, just that it could).

so basically, you are a communist, only labor matters.

common, you are absolutely not being realistic, that's like buying a TV and then complaining that what ever you use to hold the TV up (entertainment center, stand, mounts or whatever) are all a waste of money.

no, there is a process. and all factors of getting that technician to your place of business cost money, how do you expect it to be otherwise?

i have clients like that, for me, it's a little more difficult as i am the consultant, the salesman, the project manager and the consultant.

but basically they want to just pay for me as a technician. that's ridiculous as if i only billed my hours as a technician, i could only bill about 30 hours a month.

i have to spend significant hours doing consulting (deciding what needs to be done), Project Manager (deciding the logistics of what needs to be done) and the technician (carrying out the project).

plus, i have to do sales and i have to bill (obivously i do billing off hours).