General Consultant Discussion

I love IT people. As one of them leave in come another batch to give the third degree on how Sage 100 is setup. For a lousy $900 product update installation. Oh and it's a bank....

Or they install Sage 100 Standard on new PCs and blame the program (Sage) for printer\paperless issues. Map a drive IT man.

If there's a way to charge appropriately for all the IT back and forth - I've yet to find it. I think I quoted just a PU (at customer insistence) from which I've since had at least 3 conference calls to explain what is required and exactly what the impact is and what the last two IT people (who since left) were thinking.

I send the SPM, workstation setup rules (AV exclusions, power settings, etc.) and have IT sign it. After that wouldn't the conference calls be covered by Change Request for IT Education?

I've found Moira's approach useful, but as an option. Maybe: Option 1: we apply the PU remotely and alone; walk IT through 1 workstation install/update; customer signs Moira's doc; 1 discussion with IT before signing the doc; we have one session after upgrade with IT person to walk through the acceptance checkoffs. Each additional discussion with IT: $300. Option 2: Same as 1, except Upgrade and workstation upgrade done in 1 session with IT as shotgun. session scheduled 2+ days in advance. If customer cuts session short, we complete the operation. If customer requires us to come back to complete the session they cut short: $400. Option 3. Same as Option 2, but with up to 3 additional calls included with the fee. IMO the base price of Option 3 should be 3x the price of Option 2. We've had very good luck with putting a price on half-baked discussions and haphazard scheduling and response actions by customer.

So wait, you're going to charge me just to explain the proposal you gave to the last IT guy? "". Academically you'd think change orders would cure these types of ills. Practically I find they rarely work and instead you hope that your next proposal is 25% higher to cover the transition. Thats probably what it should have been here. Very few casual customers (ie they use you for one project every two years) are willing to pay a dime for pre-engagement work (the q&a that leads to the proposal and eventually project).

I have started building into the budget review by our certified engineers, so I don't have to deal directly with IT. We also have several customers now that have requested we review their external IT group's work.

Wayne, it's clear to me that your customers are quite different from ours. I'm not suggesting that they pay for pre-engagement on this, nor are they Change Orders in it (the fees for extra rounds are part of the original proposal). But structuring proposals to give them 3 levels of flexibility in the way the project goes is quite feasible. It's particularly useful at encouraging the IT staff to approach the project in a way consistent with deal you work out with management. I've also found that a couple (literally) of paragraphs explaining the backgrounbd of the project and why they will benefit (aimed at users of MAS, not IT) generally help a lot. But again, I think your ""problem customers"" have different profiles than mine.