Using Consulting Help Or Doing It Yourself The A To Z Concept

Many companies have tried to select and implement a CWMS internally and have not been successful, in part, because of lack of experience, lack of resources and a lack of sponsorship within the organization for the project. Conversely, many companies have spent untold fortunes on consulting fees to select and implement a CWMS and have many horror stories to tell about the experience. Figure 8.1 depicts the A to Z selection concept. Essentially, selection (as well as implementation) can be viewed as a continuum: at one end of the spectrum, a consultant is hired to do everything on behalf of the client with minimal involvement by client employees; At the other end, the client undertakes the entire project in-house with very little external (consulting and vendor) support. Both approaches are fraught with problems. In the first example, using external resources can result in a quick selection process and incorporation of best in class practices but is usually very costly, allows for very little knowledge transfer to in-house staff and poor system acceptance by users. In the second example, there can be a low-cost project with a high level of buy-in and ownership but this usually takes a very long time and the existing work processes are generally duplicated. This means that when a company is doing poor work management using a paper-based process, after implementing the CWMS, they are then doing poor work management using a computer and software!