When I first started the company, the idea was to bring a high level of consulting professionalism and extraordinary value to mid-market companies. This continues to be the focus, but in order to properly sell our services it was critical that we identify key practice areas. These practice areas are Custom Software Development (using an agile approach, and proven intellectual capital to jump start critical software development), Technology Strategy (helping companies select the right applications, and then customizing and configuring them to work for the business as well as integrating these applications into other systems), and lastly we decided to officially focus on Enterprise Content Management (from document management all the way through Web content management and workflow systems).
This focus allows us to tie our marketing materials to our skills and also to continue to create impactful intellectual capital to deliver to our clients bottom line. We should see more information on our web site regarding this shift in message- www.spitfiregroup.com.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Clearview ECM
Recently we inked a partnership with Clearview ECM, an Enterprise Content Management package that we are quite impressed with. This package runs on top of Microsoft's Sharepoint, and has what we consider the best integration with Sharepoint to date. The software allows users to quickly search on key words and bring up documents related to that keyword-for example, an employee name, or number,a customer etc. Its quite impressive in how it takes document management to a new level that is truly affordable for the mid-sized organization. More info on the partnership at www.spitfiregroup.com, and www.clearviewecm.com.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Why use consultants?
I have many thoughts about why consulting provides better business value for companies than hiring full time employees. One of the reasons is that in the application development world, there seems to be two distinctly different personality types: Developers and Maintainers. Developers are creative, they, like artists, builders or architects, are excellent at creating new solutions where none previously existed.
Maintainers are trouble shooters. They are excellent at unwinding why something doesnt work, and making corrections to make it work. We often call them the forensic scientists of application development. Their role is less about building and more about fixing. Typically this role is less valued and the pay rates for those willing to do maintenance is significantly less than it is for developers.
Developers enjoy building new products, but once the product is built they are often ready to move on to more interesting pastures, and are not enthused about maintaining their creation. Thus, often times the intellectual capital associated with their role in the creation departs the company, and most often not at the time favored by the company. Maintainers are soon hired to replace them and so goes the story.
I believe engaging a top notch team of developers who know they are going to go away after the product is created provides for a less expensive full time technical team that is more appropriately matched to the long term goals of the company. The consulting team has expertise at transferring knowledge regarding the application for suitable maintenance, and often the consulting firm can be engaged to provide ongoing support during the transition time (and a nice backup if things go awry), or can even work in a joint environment with maintainers to provide strong knowledge of the interworkings of an application.
I need to work on a model that shows how much money can be saved by working in this fashion.
Maintainers are trouble shooters. They are excellent at unwinding why something doesnt work, and making corrections to make it work. We often call them the forensic scientists of application development. Their role is less about building and more about fixing. Typically this role is less valued and the pay rates for those willing to do maintenance is significantly less than it is for developers.
Developers enjoy building new products, but once the product is built they are often ready to move on to more interesting pastures, and are not enthused about maintaining their creation. Thus, often times the intellectual capital associated with their role in the creation departs the company, and most often not at the time favored by the company. Maintainers are soon hired to replace them and so goes the story.
I believe engaging a top notch team of developers who know they are going to go away after the product is created provides for a less expensive full time technical team that is more appropriately matched to the long term goals of the company. The consulting team has expertise at transferring knowledge regarding the application for suitable maintenance, and often the consulting firm can be engaged to provide ongoing support during the transition time (and a nice backup if things go awry), or can even work in a joint environment with maintainers to provide strong knowledge of the interworkings of an application.
I need to work on a model that shows how much money can be saved by working in this fashion.
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