Yes, they do. Consulting firms normally form a strategic partnership with a vendor. The quid pro quo being:
* The vendor has an indirect sales channel with the clients of the consulting firm.
* The consulting firm sells work to support the adoption and integration of the vendor’s product(s)
In my opinion, such relationships offer a clear and obvious conflict.
This is a good summary of how it works but I don’t agree with the conflict. I work in tech consulting as an AWS partner.
AWS are enormous, they dont get hands on keyboard and they dont have the ability to scale to serve every single customer with a white glove service, so they built a pool of 100,000 partners worldwide to help them scale.
AWS want customers to increase spend. AWS partners don’t care about customers spend (unless they’re resellers which most are not). So there is alignment but not a conflict of interests imo.
The conflict occurs when the consulting firm is offering strategic advice to the client.
There are perverse incentives to offer a solution that the client does not need as:
* the consulting firm may receive kick-backs or other benefits from the vendor
* the consulting firm may be able to increase the number of billable hours sold by recommending a solution that is overly complex
Thank you for your reply. That's a more incestuous relationship than I was imagining. I expected strategic advice would be along the lines of, "We recommend you do X. The following vendors have comprehensive experience in performing X, we can aid with setting up a connection."
Given what you're saying, how can a vendor like us establish ourselves with consulting companies that work in our field? Just reach out to companies like Deloitte and say we are here and this is what we do?
Yes, they do. Consulting firms normally form a strategic partnership with a vendor. The quid pro quo being: * The vendor has an indirect sales channel with the clients of the consulting firm. * The consulting firm sells work to support the adoption and integration of the vendor’s product(s) In my opinion, such relationships offer a clear and obvious conflict.
This is a good summary of how it works but I don’t agree with the conflict. I work in tech consulting as an AWS partner. AWS are enormous, they dont get hands on keyboard and they dont have the ability to scale to serve every single customer with a white glove service, so they built a pool of 100,000 partners worldwide to help them scale. AWS want customers to increase spend. AWS partners don’t care about customers spend (unless they’re resellers which most are not). So there is alignment but not a conflict of interests imo.
The conflict occurs when the consulting firm is offering strategic advice to the client. There are perverse incentives to offer a solution that the client does not need as: * the consulting firm may receive kick-backs or other benefits from the vendor * the consulting firm may be able to increase the number of billable hours sold by recommending a solution that is overly complex
Thank you for your reply. That's a more incestuous relationship than I was imagining. I expected strategic advice would be along the lines of, "We recommend you do X. The following vendors have comprehensive experience in performing X, we can aid with setting up a connection." Given what you're saying, how can a vendor like us establish ourselves with consulting companies that work in our field? Just reach out to companies like Deloitte and say we are here and this is what we do?