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and will end in tragedy. Even within the oracle EPm product line, an hFm (hyperion
Financial management) consultant is not likely to do a good job as an Essbase developer
and vice versa. The EPm product line has become vast and specialties have developed
out of necessity. Planning and Essbase, for instance, are not synonymous. These are
sophisticated products and the expertise is similarly specialized.
11.4.2.3 A Taxonomy of Consulting Companies
When Caesar uttered, “All gaul is
divided into three parts,” he could very well have been defining Essbase consulting
vendors. (okay, maybe not, but three categories do make sense and, besides, you will
now be able to pick the right consulting company all thanks to this one chapter; talk
about value.) Consulting vendors can be divided into three ranks: large full-service ven-
dors, midsized regional players, and boutique (oracle EPm-only) consulting companies.
The breadth of company size is terrific, from global behemoths with tens of thousands
of employees to boutique groups of less than 20 consultants. Add to that the fourth
resource group: independent consultants. As the relative strengths and weaknesses of
each type of consulting group are discussed, compare what they offer (and sometimes
do not) with what your company needs for Essbase to succeed.
When you go big, you get the whole package: A sophisticated client management
experience, business advisory, big name consultants, access to all the technical resources
the vendor has to offer, and maybe a passel of extremely smart college graduates. not
all of the larger vendors work like this, particularly with regards to recent graduates,
but you are buying expertise and scope that can implement practically any product.
Process reengineering as part of the preproject? Is Essbase part of a global project with
multiple international simultaneous implementations? Do you need someone to inter-
face back to a gL (general Ledger) package last actively sold in 1983? Do you want the
slickest documentation, the most masterful status reports? There is no question that a
large consulting vendor can do the work, the question is: Is this overkill for your proj-
ect? only you can answer that question in your own project scope definition. Also, do
not assume a big vendor has the technological depth you require for your project. Due
diligence on their consultants should be completed regardless of the type of vendor you
select.
Perhaps the size of your project is smaller; maybe it is just an Essbase implementa-
tion across your company and its subsidiaries or even just a single application. regional
and boutique vendors play within that space, although the smaller vendors may have
difficulty backfilling if resources roll off the project. regardless, at this point, you are
looking for a vendor that is interested in growing with your company. As a rule (and,
yes, there are certainly exceptions), smaller vendors are going to charge lower rates for
equal and sometimes better resources. however, particularly in the boutique vendors,
these companies are not going to be able to rapidly add resources, move outside of their
expertise, or travel all over the world at the drop of a hat. moreover, you are getting less
professional management—small vendors simply do not have the base that the larger
multinationals do. It is not that smaller vendors do not have excellent project managers,
consultants, and status reports. It is simply a matter that within a given vendor, there are
fewer resources and the ones you get may not be the best. So, if you ask to replace them,
there is no depth to the services bench.
Lastly, we come to the smallest of all consulting entities: the independent consul-
tant. often, these are senior consultants, talented and skilled in their craft. one big
advantage of the independent is that you are never shown one resume and then get
