There are roughly 3 models of consulting being practiced in the Kansas City market.  Two of these 3 models are vendor-based models and 1 is a partnership-based model which I will explain below. A vendor-based model is one that looks very similar to a relationship someone may have with their plumber, mechanic, or cleaning people.  This model doesn’t value relationship nearly as much as it values the façade of control and value.  The first 2 I will be talking about follow the vendor-based pattern that is popular and well-known in our community today.

Vendor-Based Staffing Model

These types of firm typically came from a staffing agency.  Dealing with these agencies can oftentimes be as challenging as placing an ad in CareerBuilder.  Clients tend to have to sift through countless firms before they find one that shows the ability to deliver quality talent honestly and with integrity.  This model was formed for a couple of different reasons.  The primary being as a result of market forces that made placing people difficult.  The other reason was more simple…they had resumes and they had companies needing bodies, so why not?

A staffing agency’s competitive advantage comes from their ability to compete on price.  Secondary to the bottom dollar, comes value and continuity for the client.  Their resources are not committed to their firm nor to the client and turnover is extremely high.  Value is the other concern in working with these vendors as the resources are extremely hit-or-miss with missing occurring far to often.  These firms have an inability to know what to look for as far as talent and background as referenced by the many times I have been contacted by staffing firms asking me what a skill was so they could talk halfway intelligently about it.

Relationships with these companies, while something of a gamble, work for some clients as they may get a hit on a valued resource or have the staff to sift out the talented from those lacking.  More often than not, I have found many companies in our area disillusioned by staffing firms playing at professional consulting firms and do not recommend this model for anyone.

Vendor-Based “Name Brand” Model

These types of firms rely almost solely on the “wow” factor for their success.  I say “almost” only so far as many of these companies also rely on their reputation from past successes.  The best advice I can give on this point is past successes are NOT always indicators of future success.

A branded models’ competitive advantage comes from the ability to “wow” the client with large and very formal presentations.  While these flashy performances and personalities speak well for a company, I’ve found these people tend to disappear shortly after the project is in full swing and are replaced by the same low-end talent often found in the staffing pool spoken about above.  These companies tend to rely on patterns and practices drilled into the heads of their consultants to bring a project to success.

Furthermore, the projects tend to run hidden in a veil of paperwork and process and are extremely fat on bureaucratic inefficiencies.  Presence is everything to these companies but always bear in mind, success is measured by the margins on every project they become involved in.  These companies will do whatever is necessary to protect those margins and keep them in a range that keeps them gainfully employed thereby firmly establishing them in the “vendor-based” space they live in.

The Partner-Based Model

A partner-based model is just like what its name infers.  It has focus on relationships and value first, with literally everything else secondary to that.  At the core of this approach is education and building trust upfront.  This has become a necessity as most potential clients have had negative experiences with a consulting firm at some time in their past.  Since this is the approach that SilverFern takes, let’s take a closer look at how we implement this model.

SilverFern’s Partner-Based Model

SilverFern was built by seeing the failed traditional models spoken about above and molding a model that better fit the personalities and traits that make up a successful software development company in the Midwest market. Our model tends to focus on an extremely open process and working in the organization as opposed to for the organization. In every project that SilverFern is involved, our clients have intimate knowledge of the details. Now the pros of this are apparent…clients know what they’re getting, when they’re getting it, and all the inner workings of the project.  The cons are some clients do not want all of that as they do not think they can provide enough value to make that worthwhile.  We come alongside our clients to show them the truth that a project simply will not be as successful as it could or should be minus a business’ direct involvement as partners on the team.

SilverFern sets itself apart from the staffing model by employing well-known talent in the market as full-time employees.  Our primary competitive advantage comes from our knowledge and understanding that our greatest asset is our employees.

In addition to that, we shy away from the “name brand” model mentioned above simply because that is not who we are.  First of all, we aren’t nearly as good looking as those guys and girls but second of all, we are developers through and through.  From the top level management to the lowest level employee, we roll up our sleeves and get right into the heart of our clients businesses.  There is no one in our organization too proud or too far removed from the technology that they can’t sit down and begin coding today and many are actively doing so.  Therefore, we remove the flashy and somewhat shallow presentations with rich education that our clients can comprehend and base sound business and technical decisions on.

The competitive advantage that is so unique to our partner-based model comes from the quality of our people, an open process, and a willingness to come alongside our clients as a part of their organization.  Having a relationship with SilverFern means not just the investment of capital in a project but investing your organization’s time and energy in the software development process.  This is something most companies have little to no experience being involved in, but is an essential ingredient to the success of all of our endeavors.  It is challenging to develop software, but rather than trying to hide this challenge in hard to understand technical bureaucracy and process, SilverFern puts our clients on the team to build software as efficiently and effectively as possible.