Resources

Business Model

Our business model is to contract expert consultants that have worked together before on successful projects and pay them at their market rates. Our expertise is to understand the client requirements, source the correct people and manage the project effectively. We also have the desire to build better solutions and make sure our projects have the technical capability to deliver.

The model may result in higher per person costs but the model is guaranteed to deliver lower overall costs and a better delivery. This model provides smaller project teams with the relevant knowledge and experience. The client does not have to train up new graduates or to pay for management salaries. To assure the client all of our experts are required to have £1m professional indemnity insurance.

Client Benefits

• Best people
• Independent advise
• Specialist consultancy
• Lower cost

1. Project Managers

Our project managers are SAP consultants who have graduated from implementing SAP functionality to managing SAP implementations and they all have over ten years experience. System knowledge is imperative to provide good advise to client and fellow consultant alike. They understand each step of the process through many years experience. All project managers are also qualified accountants emphasising our expertise in financial solutions. On smaller projects we expect the lead functional consultant to manage the project.

2. Functional Consultants

Our functional consultants are the best people on the market and all have over eight years sap experience. We have worked with these people before and can guarantee their competence. All our functional consultants have a financial background, the best qualified as accountants before becoming company or system accountants and lastly SAP consultants. Consultancies poach the best people from accountant functions during SAP implementations as it is easier to train people in SAP implementation than teach business knowledge.

3. Technical Consultants

Our technical consultants are the best people on the market and all have over eight years SAP experience. We have worked with these people before and can guarantee their competence. We hire consultants with a genuine interest in finance functions demonstrated by many years experience in this area.

4. Administrators

Bigger projects require administration staff to ensure they run smoothly. We can provide the right people to each of our projects, alternatively we are happy for the client to provide their own people.

5. Support from SAP

SAP willingly supports all SAP instances for a negotiable service fee. The level of service is also negotiable. At the lower level they customer can just pay the license fee and receives software fixes and access to the SAP online services: SAPNet, Online Service System (OSS), Early Watch, Remote Consulting. At the top end SAP will implement the system for you through their in house consultancy.

As stated above SAP is unable to provide the best consultants to implement their product. Therefore what level of SAP support do we recommend? Our general recommendation is to negotiate lower licence fees and lower support costs before purchasing the system as these costs can greatly affect the cost of ownership. It may be wise to allow SAP to review the blueprint before signoff, test the hardware environment and provide a pre and/or post implementation audit. Unlike other consultancies we stand by our expertise and welcome external verification of our output.

6. Application Hosting

Most companies would prefer to host their SAP application on their own servers. We believe that a viable alternative is to allow a specialised third party to host the SAP system and they could be based anywhere in the world. This company subject to an appropriate service level agreement would manage the software installation, update the system for any fixes and provide copies to be used as testing. The major benefit with this arrangement is that the hardware and technical resources to look after the system are outsourced to a company with the specialist capability.

Vs Big Consulting Firm & Vs External Team

We are confident our consultancy will deliver the best results based on cost benefit criteria. We would like to demonstrate the differences in approach between our business model and other popular project structures.

1. Team Size

• SAP Financial Solutions:
• A small team of experts that have worked together before.

• Consulting Firm:
• A large team of people of varied experience usually made up of a lot of juniors with little experience. Some experts are obtained directly from the open market, who have varied capabilities. The increased headcount provide false comfort and the possible lower cost per head is a false economy, as mistakes made due to lack of experience will affect both cost and timelines.

• External Team:
• The largest team allowed due to the uncertainty of hiring a selection of people from the market that have not worked together. Expect a high turnover due to a proportion of the people hired not being up to scratch.

2. Cost

• SAP Financial Solutions:
• Charge out a small team of experts at market rates on a cost plus basis. These will be the best people on the market, who have worked together before and can be added to at any time if the client desires. The client does not have to incur any recruitment fees and the cost plus percentage is only slightly higher than a standard agency fee.

• Consulting Firm:
• Charge out a large team of people at top rates. Most of the people on a project can assumed to be juniors allowing a high margin to go to the partners. Additional contractors hired as contractors on the open market and charged to the client at the consultancies higher rates.
• A larger team costs the client extra in external costs such as housing and equipment.

• External Team:
• Charge out a team of experts at market rates, plus recruitment costs, plus agency fees. This method will cost a client materially more in internal costs.