This is one of my favorites as it brings together technology, pedagogy, professional development, innovation, video and communities of practice. The idea of progressive video assessment was born out of; my experience with WikiEducator, a belief of video as a good tool for communication, a deepening belief in progressive inquiry as a pedagogical approach and discussions with Neil Hammond of AIM language learning. The design for this website is well described in a blog post from a while back.
We had the requirement to upgrade an existing search engine due to performance reasons and the need to have the indexing federated over multiple information silos. The silos also exist within the legal space and needed to be optimized for the legal language. LexUM provided excellent solution design and software construction services, and the insights from the senior staff at CLEBC brought the user design to fit very well into the BC legal community.
This application you can't see directly, though the results are a part of search. We had an issue with our federated search in that not all the silos information taxonomies were aligned, so instead of the effort of cleaning up the source systems (which would have been a Herculean effort) we built a taxonomy mapping tool that gets picked up during the re-indexation of the federated search.
Content level single sign-on goes one step further than cross server single sign-on. This approach enforces content access to the server level without being dependent upon the remote and partner servers authorization system. This solution architecture and derived service is the subject of a paper and another post... stay tuned.
When building new services the hard part becomes integrating with the old sites and services, and supporting your existing customer base. Refactoring is a solid approach for you minimize the change, and focusing on ONLY what needs to be done to go live. Once everything in the new integrated solution has stabilized, then customer facing and feature changes can begin.
Adding Web2.0 features to existing services, particularly those with a successful history and continuing utilization in traditional publishing is hard. And getting it right requires boldness and a willingness to experiment. The publishing team at CLEBC has both the boldness and willingness combined with the rigorous approach you'd expect from legal editors.
The ability to easily introduce new services integrated with an existing infrastructure shows the strength of the infrastructure. The ability for these new services to be integrated with the new CLEOnline and authorization web service test this ability. Even though I have long completed this project and am no longer contracting with CLEBC to see other projects go live within six months of my departure is a great thing.
Leveraging video resources and remixing them with other pedagogical approaches creates new opportunities for professional development organizations.
Determining your value is a challenge, it is like the value of a house; it is determined by what you can sell it for. The value of services comes as a hierarchy, ranging from those where you have a specialty that is hard to come by in your geographic location; to those services that are a commodity and easily found. What are your specialties? and what services do you offer that are unique? Some important advice from the article was to "Develop a communication and invoicing system that ensures clients understand the value in your services".
The idea of billing in different ways for IT services is a practice already in place. I see four different approaches to billing;
- Fixed Fees - this is a set fee for an agreed upon amount of work. This is good for work that has a reasonable amount of certainty and a very well defined scope.
- Hourly Fees - This is the most common when the work has a number of unknowns and is without certainty in the what is being delivered. It is a good way to begin a project when in the discovery phase.
- Percentage Fees - this can be based on the overall cost of the project once it is done. Or as a bonus system for completion and staying to schedule and budget.
- Value Added Fees - this is for when the work you are doing has a high value and occurs at a time with some urgency. Disaster recovery fits well here...
Take the time to review your cost structures and optimize, this will not only benefit your own consulting practice it will also benefit your clients. IT has continuous innovation and improvements which restructure the costs of getting things done. The most recent major trend in IT is the cloud and the cost benefit of leveraging the cloud can be significant. Also look at your operational costs; are there new (less expensive) ways to renew your software licenses? could you use open source? What about office space - could more office sharing occur in concert with remote working? Do you want to consider commute time as a part of cost structure - I use public transit and have increased my R&D and writing time my using my netbook and a mobile connection.
Balancing quality and capability with price is the challenge.With commodity services people are going to be looking at price, when you have a unique capability with good quality the price can be set at a premium. Reviewing your customers based on their price sensitivity and their willingness to pay the premium for the high capability / quality work is a good review to perform. Price your services accordingly while staying mindful of loyalty.
Some organizations are always squeezing the most for the least cost. These customers are hard to work with and disrupt doing good work. The interesting attribute is you often get this sense when first meeting with a new customer. Stay aware of your senses, if you feel a customer is going to be squeezing you on price, compare this to your other customers and ask where is best for you to be spending time. Getting work with your good customers, looking for new ones, or servicing those who are going to be squeezing you on price.
Find ways to reward loyalty. And every year end assess your client list and compared to the revenue generated from each client and do a gut check on your experience with the client.Who do you want to continue to do business with? Who is better at paying bills on time? Who has provided you with longevity in work? Show thanks through discounts for continuous work? Consider providing free workshops that assist your customers understanding of IT while opening other opportunities. Provide discounts to customers who use your services for all their IT needs.
Figuring out what the break even rate is (with some profit) is important as you engage and re-engage clients. This is important to consider in relation to your billing approaches and is good to have some published practices around cost accounting and rate setting so project managers and consultants can make good decisions as related to costs.
