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Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Chicago Overpaying Computer Consultants?

Attention Computer Consultants: Do you do computer consultant work for state agencies? And do you happen to be a computer consultant in the greater Chicago area?

There’s an interesting, eye-opening AP article about computer consultants that I found today on cbs2chicago.com. The article references a report about how some computer consultants for state agencies in Illinois cost up to 3 times as much the salaries of Illinois state computer employees, with comparable skills.

The article goes on to give specific financial examples of a computer consultant contract between IBM and Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS).

Regardless of whether your computer consultant business is in Chicago or elsewhere, this is a good read on the politics of billing between huge IT services companies and government agencies that utilize computer consultants.

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Computer Consulting 101 Hardware Spares Best Practices

Over the last few days, we’ve looked at how Computer Consulting 101 suggests that you handle hardware spares with your small business clients.

Again, just to be clear, Computer Consulting 101 is not advocating that you haul your computer consulting clients’ broken desktop PC equipment out to the dumpster.

However, we do strongly recommend that you encourage your clients to invest some of their technology budgets in select spare parts and full desktop PC’s… so that they can handle warranty claims at their leisure, not when your company is swamped and functioning in panic mode. This also offloads much of the “fire-fighting” stress that’s often imposed on you and your computer consulting company… because your clients get a more immediate resolution on simple broken parts.

To guide the discussion with your small business clients, Computer Consulting 101 encourages you to use the following discussion points:

  • Do you and your clients keep track of each time some piece of PC hardware breaks, so that you and they can look for trends over time?
  • Have your clients had much experience in placing PC hardware tech support calls, the general prerequisite for getting a PC vendor to provide related warranty service?
  • Are your computer consulting clients aware of the time required to place a warranty service call with a PC hardware vendor, as well as the time it will ultimately take to get the system repaired?
  • Who is responsible for contacting the PC vendor to initiate a warranty service request: the end user, your clients’ internal guru or your firm as the trusted computer consulting vendor?
  • If a PC is unusable while your clients await vendor repair, what plans do they have in place to mitigate the impact of system downtime on employee productivity and bottom line?
  • Do you and your clients know roughly what it costs their company for every hour or business day that one employee or multiple employees are without access to a critical PC hardware system?
  • Do your computer consulting clients keep a spare mouse, monitor or keyboard at their offices?
  • Have your consulting clients considered investing in spare fully configured desktop PC’s to mitigate expensive system downtime at inopportune times?

    Respectfully submitted by Computer Consulting 101

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Computer Consulting 101 Advice on Desktop Hardware Spares

As the price of entry-level desktop PC hardware has plummeted and expectations for zero downtime have risen, at Computer Consulting 101 we’ve also seen small businesses purchasing an extra PC, to keep fully-configured and ready to plug in on a moment’s notice.

In the old days of expensive PC hardware, small businesses used to routinely spend $100 to upgrade their warranty from one year to three years on-site coverage.

But today, if your standard, fully-configured entry-level desktop PC only costs around $500-$600, an office with as few as six PCs can fully fund the purchase of a spare desktop PC, simply by self-insuring on the warranty coverage for years two and three. At the same time, consider how much the $600 desktop PC really is worth on paper (after depreciation) following years one and two.

And you know the really cool part that we’ve found about this at Computer Consulting 101? When you help your consulting clients preserve their IT budgets for projects that matter, and avoid wasting it on stupid crap, you free up their IT budget for more meaningful IT investments that bring real return-on-investment for them… and make it easy for you to justify getting paid premium hourly billing rates.

Which adds more high-margin dollars to your bottom line!

Respectfully submitted by Computer Consulting 101