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ERP Consulting Exchange FAQs
1. What is the ECX and how is it different from other resources like social networking sites, job boards or recruiting sites?
The ECX is an online community that reduces the time, simplifies the process, lowers the cost and enhances the experience of both engaging ERP consultants and working as an ERP consultant.
2. What’s wrong with how ERP consultants are engaged now?
Both ERP customers and consultants are unhappy. Clients are looking for true consultants, not just implementers — and they need a fast, efficient way to figure out whom to hire and how many to hire. Consultants are looking to separate themselves from the pack and put their resumes in front of the right decision makers for the right projects.
The predominant way of resolving these issues has been to rely on tiers of recruiters. A tier-1 recruiter takes a job posting from an ERP client organization and posts it on job boards. A tier-2 recruiter sees the posting and posts the opening on its own job board and so on. There might be three or four tiers -- each one taking a percentage of the salary the ERP client is paying for the job. The consultant who contracts with a recruiter may not know at what tier the recruiter sits in the chain, or what the "real" client is paying.
The problems with this engagement method are, of course, multiple:
- It takes a long time to fill jobs
- A $160/hour opening may only engage a consultant worth $60/hour
- Given all the layers involved, it’s very hard to ramp consulting resources up or down fast
- Low compensation leads to high consultant turnover on projects
- Consultants have no effective way to advertise skills to clients needing those skills
- Clients have limited means to prove consultants are as good as they say they are
- Consultants are isolated from peers without effective channels to gain professional status
3. How does the ECX solve these problems?
The ECX provides a centralized "home" in which ERP customers and consultants can engage:
For ERP consultants, the ECX is an umbrella organization that represents the interest of and offers benefits to an independent ERP consultant or contractor other than simply posting his or her resume on a job board.
For ERP customers, the ECX is a consulting organization and technical platform that effectively balance supply and demand of project resources in a Resources as a Service (RaaS) environment.
We believe that these two pieces complement each other perfectly. Providing a home for ERP consultants -- with services that improve quality of work life -- opens a channel through which ERP customers can engage top-tier consultants on projects much more efficiently than is currently possible.
4. What are some good examples?
Resume writing, resume posting and resume search. The ECX is the only site where consultants can have their resumes professionally written to a best-practices standard that allows resumes to be effectively scanned by human readers and also efficiently searched in a database. This speeds up the hiring process, ensures a better match between openings and job seekers, and allows ERP customers and ERP consultants to engage directly with each other without going through a third-party. Cutting out the middleman means the consultant actually receives 100% of the consulting fee the client company actually pays. That reduces friction in the relationship, saves money on both sides and shortens time to value.
5. What is RaaS?
RaaS (Resources as a Service) does for consulting what SaaS (Software as a Service) does for computing. Resources can reside anywhere in the network worldwide; they need not be present locally in order to apply value. In both cases, a layer of intelligence dynamically applies business rules optimizing resource allocation across the network. In RaaS, the ECX is that layer of intelligence. Benefits include:
- Consultants are assigned on a "best qualified" basis regardless of proximity to the job
- Consultants can be engaged on-demand as needed with little or no downtime while engaged
- A much wider universe of consultants can be considered when making an assignment
- Much less money is spend on travel and logistics so more is available for creating value
6. RaaS sounds a lot like conventional outsourcing or off-shoring. What’s the difference?
Traditional outsourcing is like an old-fashion timesharing model -- where everyone shares a dedicated expensive resource to reduce their individual costs. The focus is on cost sharing and cost reduction alone, with no consideration of best-fit between resource and task. The connection between applications and resources is fixed. There is little or no decision making (certainly not in real time) with respect to task allocation across resources as the nature of those tasks changes.
7. What is the business benefit of RaaS to ERP customers?
They enjoy lower contracting costs, faster recruiting and greater flexibility to employ the right consultants and the right number of consultants at each point in a project.
8. How does the ECX accomplish this?
The ECX addresses three overlapping areas:
Finding consultants. Advanced resume writing and search tools help consultants and project owners engage faster, at lower cost, with fewer middlemen, and with a better matchup between skills and projects.
Deploying consultants. The ECX employs two key assets -- country ambassadors and proprietary consultant management technology to effectively interface with customer organizations locally and to dynamically balance worldwide resources against tasks.
Consultant loyalty. It’s one thing to assign consultants to projects. It’s another to make them want to come to work. The ECX provides a rich set of services that enhance quality of work life, making the ECX a consultant-friendly home. Those services include easy and low-cost SAP technology access, a huge and dynamic social network, career services, access to discounted personal services we endorse, and a marketplace in which to buy and sell consultant-generated solutions.
9. While on projects, do consultants work for ERP customers or for the ECX?
ERP customers and consultants engage directly, so the consultant works directly for the ERP customer. The ECX works closely with the ERP customer to make sure as needs change that talent is engaged or disengaged as appropriate on a project. Consultants can choose whether to handle the administrative aspects of contract work, such as billing and filing tax forms, or let the ECX handle this for a small fee.
10. What are Value Partners and why are they part of the ECX?
Value Partnership is a great way for businesses to promote themselves within the SAP and ERP communities. A Value Partner is a business that supports the mission of the ECX by advertising on the Value Partner page. A Value Partner can also offer bonus payments to members who refer customers to the Value Partner.
11. If I am a SAP Customer or Value Partner....How do I buy a service? For example, if I am an ERP customer, how do I buy resume database access or engage a consultant listed there? How much do companies pay to access the consultant database? What fee is charged if a company hires a consultant listed in the database? What do Value Partners pay to advertise on the Value Partners page?
Please contact us to inquire about our services and pricing for SAP Customers and Value Partners (service@sapconsultingexchange.net)
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