Comment by ErrantX | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ErrantX | Hacker News Reader

Honest to god answer? I think this would be hard to sell to most companies as a consultancy.

Rarely will you get a broad enough mandate to actually pull it off (based on your description). The other problem is entirely custom solutions put companies off because they then have to rely on your for support (one lucrative area that I do consultancy is supporting such programs for companies silly enough to go that route :) costs 'em a fortune). A custom solution sounds expensive from a companies perspective; both in cost but also in development time.

But most importantly the concept of "data liberation" and custom built databases are just not really on the commercial radar at the moment. Selling it to them could be pretty time consuming. To give you an example Im currently working with a company that are doing some pretty cool things - they've asked me to work on expanding their web app and database. It's a total mess and I have suggested a complete redesign which will cost about the same and be a lot easier for the both of us; they are resisting like hell...

(this is purely my opinion ofc, YMMV)

Not to put you off; but it is worth considering it from this perspective now rather than later. To answer your questions:

Where should I look for my first client?

People you know. I started contracting through a friend who, via religious connections, had a lot of eager clients/friends with work. However based on your description this is probably a very hard market to sell to.

Would I have to link up with an existing consulting firm or can individuals find success in this space?

Depends how much success you want - but I would say no. The resources and tools (legal templates, time tracking, invoicing) are now freely available on the web with a little looking. The only real need you may have is getting a foot in the door with large corps (which strike me as your target market).

Is this even a problem that businesses acknowledge?

See above. I suspect you will have to work pretty hard to sell this as a concept - at least initially.

I have to agree with the summation here, it will be a hard sell. The only way that I can see that you would be able to sell this service in the 30 second window of open ear time, would be to offer the service for free, with a contract in place that time expenditures will be measured before and after and you will be payed x for the amount of hours you save the company post-results. It is a big risk on your part, but if you can actually provide the service and prove the results, you would never want for clients again. It is just too exotic for the average decision maker to "get" in the 30 second window of interest.

That's a cool idea. I wonder if technology firms actually ever take a contract like that.

If you gave me a metric, that could show me that you saved me money, I would sign up for it in a heart beat. Granted that is only anecdotal evidence from one individual, but I have been a senior executive in several companies some of them fortune 500 so, I would assume that there are a few more like me. Further, putting on my start-up hat, you are offering me a service for free if it does not work and less cost if it does. Reducing my cost as a start-up decision maker is always going to get an open ear.

Good thoughts. To answer your main thoughts, maintaining custom reports on a generic platform is itself a major cost. I agree I'd love the repeat business but I think my approach is dead simple enough that I could easily hand it off to existing tech talent within a company.

My main thought is that rarely can a company pull either their business or tech people off of "working in" the company to "work on" the company for a few weeks to improve their reporting.

Don't forget - most companies that are interested in reporting this way probably already have an internal team tasked with this job.

You need to market your services to high level decision makers and be adroit at negotiating the murky waters you'll be in (essentially competing with or doing the work of an existing team).

I can't disagree with your thoughts; to be honest it could be you occupy a specific but useful niche (just based on language; reporting, data liberation, etc.) but it is hard to say for sure on generalities.

I actually have an anecdote about reporting in a piece of software we use. It's a highly customized database which then lets you design reports using Microsoft Report Server. Honestly, it's, really, a complete nightmare to use. But is it cost effective to get a consultant in to make it like, say, Gmail? That would be a dream (and if I had the decision you'd be at work on it tomorrow morning :)) but the truth is that your additions would mean re-auditing the whole thing, hiring other consultants to ensure it met data standards, retrain staff, etc.

Essentially what I am saying is that while the trade off of your cost vs. the man-hours saved is probably a net gain. When you get into a largish company lots of additional costs come into effect.

In addition (and this is probably a more important factor) habit breeds contempt; or, rather, if I was using this DB for the first time today I would hate it. But after 2 years it doesn't bother me any more.

If you came to us with a knowledge of the software, our requirements and a proposal of how to beat it then that would probably be considered - making a pitch like that can be hard though (because how do you know what we use and how). Something with before/after figures dressed up in the kind of language managers like.

Turning up with a "vague" (If you follow me) proposal to liberate databases is nice, but unlikely to hook anyone in the few minutes pitch window.

Again; not to put you off. But you may well need to use a different approach to "normal" consultants to get companies involved (I really wanted to give you a suggestion here but I am struggling, sorry).

Depressing but true.

My experience is that a company would rather assemble a team of low level business people to power through raw data or cobbled together observations for weeks rather than pull a developer off of doing CSS tweaks on the company's about page to actually solve the problem once in for all.

Using good tools can be a religious experience and make a company much leaner, meaner, and effective. However building good tools is high risk and rarely something company's want to work on (hence the problem with enterprise software in general).

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