| Why
is it that so many customers look for the
most experienced consultants? After all, we
probably all know of projects that use the
cheapest, least-experienced consultants that
can be found. Although these reasons are not
guaranteed to be the case for any specific
consultant, on the whole, they tend to be
true. Additionally, you can use these reasons
as guidelines to determine whether one consultant
is going to provide more value-added activities
for your money than another:
#
1 - Software Knowledge
Even
the most experienced consultant still has
to search to find where to put code or which
functions to use. After all, most LIMS software
packages these days are incredibly complex
and offer a tremendous variety of functions.
However, experienced consultants often suspect
where to put something and can find the right
spot fairly quickly. Experienced people have
written many, many lines of code, often the
same types for many customers. Because of
this, they can often write the code faster
than a more junior person can copy someone
else’s code, understand it, and adjust
it to work in a particular situation. Even
if experienced consultants have not written
that type of code before, they usually have
a strong understanding of how the coding tools
work in determining several the best ways
to approach a problem.
#
2 – Process Knowledge
Knowing
how a process fits in a LIMS is not usually
obvious. In some cases, a software package
might provide modules similar to the outside
process, such as the stability modules many
software vendors provide. In other cases,
however, it is not quite that clear. Even
with something as common as stability, a number
of process issues could be resolved in a number
of ways, depending on the customer’s
needs.
To give one example, stability inventory tends
to be handled in a variety of ways. There
are several decision points within most stability
software packages and a significant learning
curve with regard to which of these decision
points map to which portion of the inventory
solution.
#3 – Training
One
school of thought is that it is cheaper to
train someone who knows nothing about the
application than to pay a higher charge rate
to get someone who already knows it. Remember,
however, that the cost of training is not
just the cost of the training class. It should
include the following:
- The cost of the training class plus
travel expenses.
- The cost of on-the-job training afterwards;
i.e., as trainees try out what they just learned
in the class, they are actually still in training
and you’re paying for that.
- The cost of your or someone else’s
time to help the trainees when they need direction
and guidance.
Add these together and you’ll get a
truer idea as to what the junior person costs.
If your project is short, the cost of training
per project hour can be outrageous. Even with
longer-term projects, this cost is significant,
as such projects tend to have more personnel
to amortize over the greater number of project
hours.
#4
– Other Customers
Granted,
working with more customers doesn’t always
benefit a consultant’s experience. Possibly,
it could mean a consultant has gone to a number
of places and been eventually thrown out of
each one. With that said, however, a large number
of consultants in the LIMS market do actually
learn more as they go from customer to customer.
Each project, even if they are similar, tends
to have a slightly different twist that a consultant
can learn from.
Once again using stability inventory management
as an example, there are a number of twists
to the solutions that customers desire. Some
customers ask for the “best” solution,
but often find that they still have a few quirks
of their own to add. Still, more experienced
consultants should be prepared to give examples
of some of the ways to go about implementing
something of this sort.
#5
– Other Issues
Once
again, consultants will learn more about the
following as they work with more and more customers:
- Working with people
- Transferring their skills to the customers’
employees
- Understanding the various terminology
used by other consultants, by software vendors,
and by the customers; thus, being better able
to avoid misunderstandings and head them off
early in the project
One catch, here is that the consultant who is
no longer interested in learning and growing
as a consultant is not as useful as the one
who is constantly looking to harvest new knowledge
from every situation they work in. The consultant
who looks for new information and best practices
is usually the one who can help you the most.
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