Tyle is a software development company, and while we may be small, we don't consult. What do I mean by that?
We are a tight-knit team: three developers, one implementer, two project managers, a CFO, and me—the CEO, head of sales, CTO, gardener, cook, therapist, and performance coach. Our customers are medium-sized businesses. No one is paying us a million dollars for a deployment (and we don’t charge that much).
We are a serious company with serious results, delivering best-in-class point-of-sale systems, e-commerce websites and business-transforming ERPs, all locally designed and deployed.
Why mention all of this? Because our industry is riddled with “consultants”—people, who are all too happy to take the money of small businesses and offer similar services without offering expertise, skill, a team, or respect for the hard-earned money they take from customers.
Why am I ranting? Today, while discussing the next steps for an ERP go-live for a medium-sized client in the distribution sector, I asked my client to forward the link to his recently completed website built by his consultant. Our task was to port it onto our platform to integrate his various sales channels with his inventory solution (provided by us). What he sent was a blank WordPress e-commerce template with no products, no branding (save a logo), and no payment gateway. The vendor took two years to deliver this. He paid (I don’t know how much) to have this done. The culprit? A “consultant.”
While everyone has to start somewhere and we all need customers to take chances and give us opportunities, I implore would-be freelancers and consultants to have some level of skill and know-how when bidding for projects. It isn’t enough to have a “plucky sense of self” and a bit of audacity. You need to know what you are doing. Needless to say, I assigned it to one of my developers, and in one afternoon, we delivered a version "1" that shocked and impressed our client. He is now making revisions and sending us the appropriate artwork and branding to have a website that will not be laughed off the internet.