Consultants - can’t live with them, can’t live without them. Majority of today’s software implementations require the need for outside consultants for their technology and industry expertise, but the costs of outside consulting can be a hard pill for top executives to swallow. Engaging consulting experts is a necessary evil in ensuring a successful implementation of your ERP system; however, by outsourcing the design process and leveraging your internal IT resources for testing and implementation, you can effectively utilize the strengths of both factions while lowering your outside consulting costs…
Continue Reading June 4th, 2008
These days it’s standard practice for American based companies implementing software systems to send technical development overseas to countries like India, Singapore, and China. If you walk around the corner of your office, you may find a small offshore team crammed into a cubical gathering and reviewing technical requirements to be distributed to resources located on the other side of the world. In almost all cases, the outsourcing model is adopted in an effort to cut down on development costs. On the surface it makes sense - why pay a US based contractor the high salary when an offshore resource can perform the same work for a fraction of the cost? Several years ago, many IT executives considered this question to be a no-brainer and would have immediately adopted the offshore model. But while all their concentration was focused on cutting costs, project managers neglected other important variables in the offshore equation, and as a result there have been few successes and far too many failures in adopting the outsourcing model within the IT industry. If you’re an executive evaluating the cost benefits of the offshore model, there are other factors to take into consideration.
Continue Reading January 21st, 2008
