General Consultant Discussion

Wayne and others, you've inspired me to move toward a project-based billing. As I contemplated defining scope and pricing the first one, I realized that there are a lot of variables to consider and account for in coming up with a price. The first thing I did was to look back over the past three years at what was billed on all upgrade projects. That was enlightening in itself. Second was to put together a list of scope considerations to discuss with the client. I would appreciate your feedback if I've left off anything major. Here's what I came up with to send to our client: In order to create a project plan and cost proposal, we need your input. Please provide feedback on the following: 1.Number of workstations, operating systems, list of users, list of remote users 2.Network environment, operating systems, number of network and local printers 3.Validation, documentation and QC requirements ( 4.List of forms (AP Checks, Invoices, Sales Orders, Purchase Orders, Picking Sheets, Packing Lists, etc) 5.List of custom reports (see the Reports folder under the MAS_CompanyID directory) 6.List of new custom forms or reports needed 7.Anticipated training schedules 8.List of integrated systems (EDI, ShipGear, Sage Payment Service, etc.). List of VI jobs. 9.List of MAS companies to be upgraded (indicate production companies versus data archives) 10.Paperless office objectives (save journals to pdf, email invoices, statements or reports) 11.ACH implementation objectives (Payroll and/or AP) 12.Project team, area of responsibilities, anticipated involvement and time commitments/availability 13.Timeframe and requested schedule 14.Budget and/or budget constraints Please call me if you have any questions or if we can assist you in gathering some of this information.

@KathrynScofield I have attached the Sage 100 upgrade quote template we use for all our upgrades. As the name implies, it is a template. It is tailored to fit each clients needs. We typically run each upgrade 3 times; the first is done in our office on our servers on our time frame (we check everything we can think of regarding reports, interfaces, VI jobs, etc.), the second is on the clients network (the client is responsible for checking everything they want to in order to sign off that they accept the conversion results), the final time is our go-live process (we and the client both test all critical processes and balances to ensure all is working). The price is set based on the value to the client and is effected based upon many things including but not limited to the level of risk we are taking, the amount of downtime the client is willing to accept, etc. We make sure we cover our costs plus a reasonable margin but also look to be compensated for the risks we are assuming and the inconvenience we put our families through if working nights or weekends. @WayneSchulz had an upgrade checklist he passed around a while back. That might help putting together a more detailed punch list. We kept ours general by category so we have to research each section by client to make sure we don't miss things. Hope this helps.

Here's how I've done it (not the best but a way that works for me) - I'm greatly condensing. Also attaching copy of my initial upgrade worksheet. I find most customers don't like doing the review themselves so do it vs sending it to be completed. Use 4 stages (similar to Shawn): 1. Install 2. Test 3. Live 4. Post go live (support) Once the customer approves each phase - they cannot go back without a fee based change order (this eliminates all the risk of ""oh I'll check it later""). This is in my opinion THE most important rule of fixed price upgrades. Always set the timetable for start/complete based on adequate access to the system (admin login) as well as customer approvals. If your schedule is tight set the stages based on business days from customer approval of say ""Testing"". Do NOT let them drag feet to Friday at 5pm then expect you to work all weekend on go-live unless that was your plan (a very high percent of customers will pull this). Instead you want to stage your go live as ""xx business days from approval of testing"" . Learned this the hard way. In reality you're only going to bill so much for an upgrade for an existing customer. I no longer give free quotes to people non-local who ""found me on Google"". I've found that a chart (pricing menu) works wonders for providing a quick idea of cost -- and always use the verbiage ""starts at"". This further eliminates risk when the customer suddenly remembers they have 125 Crystal Reports in Jimmy Joe Bob's desktop that need converting....(hopefully you catch that upon your initial review). I might do a pricing menu for EXISTING customers that's similar to: Min upgrade fee - $ 3,500 Each level upgrade that is more than 1 behind - $ 1,500 There's just a practical limit to what you typically can charge. Even though you can spend all day working up a spreadsheet it always seems to come down to a practicality test no matter what your outline of cost says. And in my opinion you should not be doing these over the weekend unless the customer has chosen an option which (for a higher fee) includes weekend (or night) work. Here's my pre-upgrade checklist: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g1XzVQCMhdff2GDslyWKDO5IgDdegBxSrRiYbB5RBYc/edit?usp=sharing Here's my upgrade proposal: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fxVjyGwDSrxu4meiZ6BhJNwpBukYtd-2OPTBCYKlJrc/edit?usp=sharing I'm constantly changing and tweaking these documents as I run into situations which I did not initially consider. I recommend setting these documents up as Google Templates within Google Apps but you can also probably do it within MS Office, etc. Also I use Basecamp for tracking all sorts of tasks within projects. I find that MANY upgrades get delayed or I send out the quote and the customer fiddles for a year (just got a request to upgrade a quote I sent out in June .... of 2012). It is SUPER handy to open a project as soon as you start talking upgrade. Put all your relevant material into that project then if the customer disappears for 12 months you can pick up where you left off when they come back and ask for a new quote.

@KathrynScofield, you should sign up for the Minds of the Future symposium. We have 25 attendees but there's still room left.

I agree with a lot of what @WayneSchulz has outlined. In our document, we define our responsibilities as well as the clients. One of the client responsibilities is to complete their acceptance testing within a fixed number of days. If the drag things out, a change order is sent out with an additional charge. (BTW, we collect all fees for upgrades BEFORE we begin. And yes, we DO get away with this. This is non-negotiable and part of our price guarantee.) BTW, we track all tasks on a project; ours and the clients. Each has a scheduled start and complete date. We use a tool called Smartsheet (www.smartsheet.com). It has a nominal cost and is a spreadsheet we can share with clients with security by worksheet. We have one worksheet per project. We pay based upon the number of open worksheets open in a given month. We can share with an unlimited number of people. This allows us to track more things per task than we can in Base Camp. (I like Base Camp but we like to track the original planned start and complete date as well as the actual start and complete dates. This way we can document if clients are getting their assigned tasks completed timely and support change orders when required. We can also use it to review staff performance. We don't track staff time anymore, we track on-time completion of projects AND tasks.) We ALWAYS collect a surcharge for weekend work. The first thing we do on every project is hold a kick-off meeting with the client. In the meeting, we set start dates and milestone dates. This allows us to issue change orders when schedules slip. Every significant change in a project gets a change order but not all change orders have fee adjustments. This allows us to document significant events and get client sign-off. All our standard forms are done in Excel or Word and saved in a secured directory on our network which staff has access to but can't change. This avoids accidental over rights. We have one employee who saves changes to the directory. Again, this is to avoid accidents, it's not a trust issue.

Ditto on @JohnShaver suggestion. We have a new hire going through it to help him better understand our corporate philosophy.

And when you look at the cost of these courses and travel investment, etc - they're expensive. Until you realize you're probably going to make 50% more on each engagement. I know I am.