Vendor Management

Is SharePoint WSS dangerous to SharePoint contractors?

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ February 5, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

Firing Up Internal Opportunity It was true last year, but even more so now; SharePoint is very important for corporate IT, both strategically (medium- and long-term) and tactically (short-term). Sure, it’s a terrific way to iterate on collaboration, internal portals, document management, etc. – “enabling innovation” in every buzzword-compliant sense. But there is solid benefit [...]

Field Notes: Lean Times for IT Services

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ November 29, 2008 ⋅ One comment

I know it’s lean times in IT, and product / services vendors are all beating the bushes. Some interesting patterns have emerged over the last few months … My Boss Is In Town: This is far and away the #1 meme / structure of incoming cold calls; I get a (very) brief synopsis of services/value [...]

Strategies for Malware in Consulting Engagements

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ May 28, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

Last in a series on some practical legal mumbo jumbo (disclaimer: IANAL) for your Master Consulting Agreements (MCA). This one was particularly interesting to put in; it’s really interesting to see who catches it, but it was an amazing (in retrospect) observation that led us to include the language. The Trigger Event: A virus outbreak. [...]

Strategies for Risk Sharing in Consulting Engagements

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ May 13, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

I am late is responding to a comment on this post, first in a series about Consulting Engagements. Earlier this week it was Intellectual Property, with another good comment … so, why all the harsh language about protecting IP that I probably can’t commercialize? Ah – welcome to the world of Risk Sharing. The issue [...]

Strategies for Intellectual Property in Consulting Engagements

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ May 8, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

Previously, I wrote about Fee Structures in Consulting Engagements, which is the stuff that the consultants are primarily interested in. If the consultant / firm has any strategic skills,their next concerns will be about Intellectual Property (IP) rights. <aside> Not that IP, this IP </aside> Do you really think that they make it all up [...]

Strategies for Fee Structures in Consulting Engagements

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ March 5, 2006 ⋅ 2 comments

Yet another vendor seminar last month, and the idiosyncrasy of the day was an abnormal amount of focus on the fee structure (they were presenting their expertise on a certain platform, and talk of fees was a tad disconcerting). The vendor is, of course, railing against the fixed fee – puts all the risk on [...]

Vendor back and forth getting a little comical these days

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ September 21, 2005 ⋅ One comment

It’s definitely getting near the end of the year – the vendors / sales reps are just amazing these days with their tenacity. One was peppering me with voice mails – I give him credit for knowing some pretty effective ways to get past the “defenses”, like leaving an email address to try and get [...]

Sally is a really busy person – more vendor yap (anti-buzzwords)

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ March 20, 2005 ⋅ One comment

Had a week full of vendor meetings and presentations this week, captured some random thoughts: Bad Buzzwords 1 – I definitely tune folks out when they use the word “cool” to describe some piece of technology – how 1990′s. The weird one came this week from a older gent, representing a fairly large company that [...]

Driving cost savings with packaged software vendors

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ February 23, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

Well, we’re not exactly seeing agressive price drops, but we are looking for ways to either cut or control growth of software costs. Some specifics: Understand how the software is licensed. Concurrent Users? Actively monitor the number of users during peak times. Make sure you are paying maintenance only on the number of users that [...]

Vendor Management

Categories