The recommendations from seasoned vets Basil, Wayne, and Gary are excellent. I will put a somewhat different spin on them.
1) We are NOT IT consultants, despite the common image we have among our customer's senior execs. We must work at talking about ourselves with that in mind. "We are your BMT support and consulting resource. We work to ensure that your operational data goes into the system as effortlessly and correctly as possible and that you get the information you need (and the whole point of your BMT investment!) as completely and timely as possible.
"From that goal, we try to turn your BMT into a "black box" utility like your water or electric service. The ERP world is quickly moving to make this dream come true.
"The only way we can affordably and effectively deliver on this promise is to let us have sole control over the systems on which the BMT software resides. We prefer to do this by putting the system onto a cloud utility provider and effectively turn this into an "app" with which your other IT consultants will very little interaction. (It makes their jobs easier and more effective too!). But as a next-best we require a single ERP server in conjunction with a dedicated RDP-type delivery server. "
When you have the arrangement with the customer defined more-or-less this way, now you have sole responsibility for this. It ALSO lets us talk with senior management in a less convoluted manner.
2) Wayne's details about meetings, responses, etc. are spot on. We only do fixed-fee work, with good/better/best proposals. We define how many meetings to have, how much lead time for scheduling, the deliverables by each party, sessions for training, detailed definitions of completion and by whom, and how much time they have to respond to our questions, drafts, or other deliverables. We consider that task completed if we don't get adequate responses in the agreed time. If they want to change it after that, then a flat fee (usually starting at $300) is charged. If they try to schedule on a shorter time than included, it costs another $300. In other words, they pay more if they don't follow the expectations.
(BTW, we don't define how long virtual meetings will go. Nobody wants to sit for more than 2 hours. Same for training sessions: we define one as "not to exceed 4hrs, and they never go more than 3.)
Like all our work, projects are prepaid and come with a money-back guarantee. Penalties are paid as they are incurred, or work stops.
The "good" option has reasonably tight deadlines, minimum number of "draft/review/fix" cycles, etc. If the project is not a new installation, it's pretty straightforward to define the deliverables/definition of complete. (But, it IS hard work for you to develop your first template for this, but but after that, they are easy to expand/modify for a new situation.)
This lowest-level project plan is laid out as one that could happen if everybody is paying attention. But because management is painfully aware of how hard it is to herd their cats, and the penalty costs of not meeting them are quite clear, they always choose one of the other 2 options, which have looser deadlines, more meetings, more reviews, etc.
In more than 10 years, I've never had pushback on this approach. It makes obvious business sense to the buyer.
We must all figure out how to turn our customers' Sage 100 usage into something like Intacct or Acumatica. The longer we let the customers run it like they did in 2010, the faster the day will come when they leave all the IT BS for this essential function and move to a cloud system.
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Jerry Norman
Smartbridge Partners
(512) 653-7498
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-01-2025 11:18
From: Gary Feldman
Subject: Best Practices Working with IT Service Providers as a Sage 100 Consultant
The relationship with MSPs and customers is deeply affected by your organizations size, specialty and objectives. A traditional "value added reseller" is looking to grow its customer base, increase its valuation and other objectives that do not exist with sole practitioners or smaller consulting focused organizations. Since "reorganizing" as a consultancy I try to avoid break fix support and focus on projects. The reality is we all will have some level of "support" and we are all impacted by third party service providers whether they be MSPs, third party product developers, independent consultants or the actual value added reseller whom we are working with.
As an independent I have learned from @Wayne Schulz, John Shaver and @Ed Kless to think more creatively of my relationship with customers and the other entities working with them. Both Wayne and @Basil Malik point out the importance of the clarity in the services agreement. Although none of us want books to cover every possible situation, we must outline the limits and conditions of our service. I address many of these issues by being clear that we are not an on-demand consultancy but need to be scheduled. Most of my engagements are sold on a monthly fee for a specified capacity, similar to a retainer. We don't specify a number of hours, but do specify an anticipated scope for the period of the engagement, and when continued, typically for the upcoming quarter and clarified on a monthly basis. Although this limits the number of customers an individual can work with at one time, I would rather work with fewer customers at a time with greater focus and profitability.
With respect to the MSP situation, we recently encountered the resistance to cloud migration from the MSP who managed the local infrastructure. We engaged them with the Cloud Service Provider and had to utilize a frustrating amount of our "capacity" explaining the obvious and mitigating their security concerns. In the end, that investment of time clarified their ongoing role (and that they would remain entrenched), and that they were really only losing one monthly server fee.
My advice is leave the local IT to the people who want that work and move your ERP systems practice to a cloud partner who understands the product and wants to work with you as the consultant. Upgrade and break fix support is a lower value service that will continue to migrate to the publisher. Focus on the business value you can create as an application and business expert. Publishers have continuously proven that they are not as good at developing the close relationship to the customer that provides the best service experience.
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Gary Feldman
Principal
I-Business Network
Marietta GA
16786270646
http://www-i-bn.net
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