Consultants. Parasites.

Our company is of the size where it is attractive for the PTB (Powers That Be) to buy shrink-wrapped software solutions. We have inventory that is tracked with RFI and associated software. We clock in with one program. We manage our sales contacts with another. We cobble reports together from Excel spreadsheets stored and updated on the shared drive.

On one hand, it works, on the other, it’s completely dysfunctional.

I have the power of perspective. Coming from a very large company with many legacy systems, some nearly 50 years old, I know what real, honest dysfunction is.

It’s a matter of adoption. I get the impression that my employer has ADD when it comes to technology. We dabble a bit with this, check out a bit of that, and most people have the opinion that if you wait long enough you’ll never have to deal with the current technology, since we’ll be onto the next cool, new, thing.

Our IT guy wants to shift from one Customer Relationship Manager to another. This is where the “consultants” come in.

My previous experience has been that Consultants are hired, dispassionate third-parties who evaluate your current systems and make costly recommendations that the PTB choose not to do.

This week we’ve had the Consultants in, and they are, as Morbo says, “Numerous and Belligerent.” Well, maybe not belligerent, but certainly biased. Should we be concerned that they are a Microsoft Platinum Partner?

We spent 10 hours in a room with them, each department giving a presentation explaining their operations, their ‘pain points’ and their wish lists for the prospective new software. It was incredibly professional. We hauled out the big projector, put the presentations on animated PowerPoints and catered breakfast, lunch and snacks. People flew in from all the different offices to be here.

The Consultant contingent was comprised of 5 people. FIVE! Is that how many you need? Really? We sat there discussing the things that frustrate us and they took copious notes. Then they put it on the flip chart paper, tore it off and posted on the wall. I felt like I was trapped in a cheesy sales video. “Now how would you prioritize these issues?”

I piped up and asked, “Gosh, this seems so integrated, shouldn’t we be looking at an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) instead of a CRM? The head Consultant smiled indulgently at me and said, “Well, yes, I think that’s the direction we’re going in.” Yuk. If it’s an ERP then we’re 24 months away from anything usable. In the meantime, I’m studying up on how to add to and upgrade our existing CRM. Two years is a ways off in the future and I’m not banking on anything.