Is it an overhead to add a Consulting Firm to my suppliers?
At Lighthouse, we believe the opposite, that it is a saving to use consulting firms prior to I.T. investments. Among other things, this is because we help the company to buy what it needs and not what is sold to them, because when vendors have more precise requirements they are able to make tighter quotes, and finally because at Lighthouse, we try to detect hidden costs prior to investment decisions. According to IDC, the I.T. services market represents 28% of the total in Latin America: in Lighthouse we help for the 72% left to have the best possible use. Finally, maybe this question is because your company is not hiring I.T. consulting, but in other areas of the company this is common: for example the VP of marketing works with outside advertising agencies rather than do everything internally.
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Why not continue to make the whole I.T.
decision
process internally?
It may happen that, unwittingly, in doing everything internally, I.T. area will eventually become a bottleneck in the company (or in the case of SMBs they lack the adequate personnel to do a self-assessment on a specific topic). Lighthouse, with its external focused service, relieves the CIO’s lack of time. The latter can make that an important issue not be analyzed with all the depth it deserves, or to postpone it thinking he/she will have more free time later. On the other hand, CIO can be a very "lonely" position, so that an outside opinion helps support decisions and take action, to bring the objectivity of an outside view, or even it serves as a "buffer" to the siege of vendors prior to major investments.
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Why Lighthouse and not an international consulting firm?
Four reasons may be mentioned. The first one is that all our consultants are senior, thereby avoiding the complaint that juniors are sent and we ended up "teaching” them. The second is that we do not offer packaged offerings, but that all our interventions are customized to what the customer exactly wants, without "additional”. The third is that a local consulting firm makes recommendations with their feet on the ground, with a standard of reasonableness. The fourth is that, comparatively, Lighthouse has competitive costs.
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Our I.T. issues are confidential, is it not risky
to hire
a Consulting Firm?
This doubt may emerge if the company does not use external I.T. consulting firms. But normally, you use external law or tax firms, which handle highly sensitive information for the business. Anyway, normally Lighthouse signs an NDA ("non-disclosure agreement") with the company before starting its work.
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Over time, will you end up becoming indispensable?
Lighthouse's philosophy is to produce knowledge transfer in all its interventions. We are interested in long term relationships where we are called back simply because you were satisfied with our previous work.
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