Sightings in SaaS

Like one of those old TV police shows where the preferred method of killing your enemy was to cut the brake cable on their car, I awoke yesterday to a snapped Emergency brake cable on my vehicle. Could not therefore release the emergency brake and had to have the car towed over to my mechanic at Nightingales to put in a new cable.  I was thinking maybe one of the blog’s readers had done the dirty deed, but comments have not been particularly abrasive lately, so I think I’ll chalk it up to operator misuse, or something.

At any rate, after going through the process of having it fixed by Ray and the boys for a mere $74 I caught up with an interesting article by Vinnie Mirchandani about using a local repair shop, like Nightingales, compared to a Dealership. It’s an interesting article, more so because Vinnie uses the Dealership/Corner Auto Repair comparison  as a proxy for software support from the Vendor vs a 3rd party. I think the analogy makes sense, especially in terms of the interests of various parties.

We have a similar situation at SightLines. When a prospect interviews us about NetSuite implementation they often ask why should we use SightLines instead of the vendor’s own professional services group. Our answer is straight out of the corner auto repair playbook: We only answer to you, the client, and your needs, not corporate’s; and since we are a small consultancy, not employees of a large company, your reference means a lot to us – it’s how we build our business.

Having been an Oracle Consultant for Oracle earlier in my career, I can relate to the interest in having the software vendor handle the implementation. Oracle used to ask prospects “Who knows our software better than us, Oracle?” Well, actually, a lot of smaller consultancies knew Oracle as well or better than Oracle’s own consultants because they had been at it longer.  Oracle tended to hire and train the newbies while the small solid consultancies brought in experienced users and trained them in consulting.

If you are looking for experience and for a consultant who will look out for your interests more than the software vendor’s folks then look at an independent consulting firm. They often have well trained, experienced people who not only want to complete the project on time and budget, but also want to delight the client and perhaps pick up a reference along the way.