Totalamber

Totalamber maintains quality of service but at a lower cost through our unique Centre of Resource and Excellence. This C.O.R.E. network provides a client with skilled and experienced resource to deliver their project successfully but at a lower cost than the vendor or a software consultancy organisation. Through our C.O.R.E. network, we maintain continuity of resource even when natural breaks are required within a project. Our C.O.R.E. network provides mentoring and support for our consultants ensuring they remain at the forefront of the technology of applications with which they work. This delivers true benefit to both clients and consultants alike.

Totalamber takes responsibility for the delivery of a project and through our vendor-independent status, we ensure we deliver in the best interests of the client or the project rather than the application vendors. This approach also ensures solutions utilising third-party components are successfully integrated and delivered with ongoing support, maintenance and enhancement of the solution provided, using the same resource, at a very much reduced cost from that of the vendor or software consultancy house.

Recruitment

Recruitment companies typically concentrate on people, duration of contract, location and remuneration. They tend to focus on individual skills-matching through CVs for a single project and therefore have difficulty in supporting longer term, multi-skill projects. Their costs tend to be lower because they do not actively manage projects, nor do they typically take responsibility for guaranteed delivery of a project. Through their focus on the individual, they do not normally have access to a team of specialist technical expertise and this therefore limits their ability to maintain continuity of service and resource throughout the duration of a project.

Software Consultancy House

Software Consultancy Houses are highly focused on supplying specialist services to niche markets. They are typically small companies with a few technical experts and have difficulty in providing the entire skill set required for a project and cannot normally deliver continuity of resource for longer duration projects. However, their expertise allows them to charge relatively high rates for services and their expertise can be invaluable to some organisations for specific projects. Longer term, they prove to be a costly overhead for an organisation who typically need to demonstrate effective return on investment during project delivery.

Vendors

Vendors of an application have unparalleled access to technology and expertise and are ideally suited for initial implementation of the application. However, they are typically biased towards their product, inexperienced in integration with third-party components. They can sometimes demand change in business process to support the configuration of the application rather than realign the application to support the project requirements. Their expertise is normally in great demand, however, demand combined with high overheads results in a high charge for services. Continuity of resource on a project is difficult to maintain, especially if the project requires a natural break – resource is reallocated to new clients and resumption of the project requires new expertise to be sourced and trained. Vendors typically disapprove of third-party service suppliers, preferring to maintain a monopolistic relationship with clients, however, this approach can be seen to be heavy-handed, biased and costly over time for the client.

Outsource – Systems Integrator

Whilst system integrators offer a wide skills and variety of services, they are often supporting market and partner needs and have little previous experience in the technical implementation and support of the application. They need to quickly build a focused team with all the synergistic specialist skills required by the project and typically outsource niche application skills to third-party organisations. Their costs can be relatively high due to the ownership of the project delivery contract and the requirement to support other functions of the project delivery.