Technology. People. Projects….Results.

Are Technology Consulting firms losing focus?

I recently had a series of conversations with one of my colleague’s employed with a competing consulting firm. He is in a senior management position and is directly responsible for the success of the engagement. 

I will not divulge the customer nor consulting firm to protect the innocent. What I will say about the customer is that they are a major government contract for one of the large global consulting firms based in Dallas. This is not a small account and is a major source of income.

This Government entity has contracted my colleague’s firm to provide operations support, applications support and a service desk, on-site, in multiple locations. This a multi-year, multi-million dollar, time and materials contract that employs more than 200 bodies spread across the US.

Suffice it to say that this is an important client.

To give a little more incite into the client; this agency and it’s subsidiaries are in the middle of an ITIL service desk architecture implementation. The project is nearing completion and the final phase is nearing close-out. The service desk is in the middle of a pilot program to verify the new help desk software functionality. The project management staff is finalizing the work instructions, operations manual and operations aids. The environment is busy to say the least and in addition to all of the day to day operations duties,  SLA’s must be met, applications serviced, incidents and problems resolved and assessed. All staff are running at about 60% of capacity.

Now for the problem.

It seems in the midst of all of the day to day operations and handling of this customer’s business, the consulting staff has complained about a percieved increase in customer call volume. Each of the operations centers has their own “main” internal number that is staffed 24×7 by operations support personnel. This makes operational sense due to the fact that different applications are in production at different locations with the other sites acting as DR sites. The operations staff at these locations feel that the customer is getting in the way of their work and petitioned management to make a drastic change.

The consulting firm’s solution was to centralize these individual operations centers phone numbers and route all calls through a single point of contact. This centralization in and of itself, is not a bad idea and actually moves them further towards a true ITIL environment. The problem is this; rather than transferring customer calls to the individual requested, the service desk is required to enter a task and assign it to the individual or group that can help resolve the task. These tasks are outside of the scope of incidents and problems and typically require copying files, removing files, creating directories or even the simple task of having a call returned. The service desk has been directed not to share the direct numbers of the consulting firm’s on-site staff and further more there is no system in place to identify or facilitate urgent tasks versus standard. The customer who once called their contacts directly are now being required to call the central number to be queued with all tasks assigned to the individuals and or groups.

Now, I know some of you are saying this doesn’t sound unreasonable but here is a simpler way to look at it. The consulting firm’s answer to problems with their clients was centralizing  task assignment while decentralizing service and individual attention…

The really shocking part is that the customer was neither consulted or notified prior to the change. The consulting firm’s response to their internal staff complaints was not to facilitate a meeting with the customer or communicate in any way for that matter with the customer….They did not attempt to gather any data to validate the concerns of the staff. The solution was simply snuck in after hours one night.  Imagine the customer’s shock and surprise the next morning when they could not reach the contact that they intended, they would now have to input a task to have their call returned and that the decision had been made without them. When I asked my colleague why the customer was not consulted, his answer was simply they they did not think that it was important. He felt that as they were contracted to fulfill certain obligations, it was in his right to manage the engagement as he saw fit within profit guidelines and saw no need to include the customer. 

As one could imagine, the customer’s response was not entirely favorable. What should have been an opportunity for open communication, value added service and problem solving has now degraded into a lack of trust and faith in their consulting company. This company has had this contract now for over 4 years but I believe they will have to really change their focus in order to keep the client much longer.

Consulting firms large or small, live and die by the customer. If the customer did not exist neither would we. Whether you are on-site or off-site, your consultants represent the interests of your company but first and foremost should service the customer.

Every decision should be evaluated to determine how it will impact the customer and their business first. It’s a simple rule and one that is often forgotten. I am of the opinion that the industry in general is loosing focus and this tiny piece of a larger puzzle illustrates this point.

The customer is the focus of our business.

How do your consultants/staff run your business?