Evolution of a consulting business!

The last couple of months have been an Internet blur.  It started innocently enough when I decided to redesign the website for my consulting practice.  Initially, when I decided to strike out on my own, I wanted to focus on bringing an effective solution for measuring and managing multiple projects.   This practice is called 'project portfolio management' or PPM with several companies specializing in building enormously sophisticated software solutions (Clarity, Cognos, Microsoft, Planview and others).   The full-version of these solutions cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for licensing, training, integration and even more for customer customization.   It turns out I was able to build an in-house version of this capability at a fraction of the cost using Excel!  Although, doing PPM this way has a lot of limitations for larger companies, I figured it just might be what medium companies would be willing to pay for since the tool enables early visibility into problems with non-performing projects and potential to save millions.  Well, I figured wrong!

In a nutshell, it takes too much efforts to convince smaller companies the benefits of knowing the ROI of every project and if the market projections are on track because the pain is not yet great enough.  In a tough economy, these companies are too worried about shorter term survival than longer term capital planning and cost savings.

After blitzing through years of research, adding new arrows to my quiver, validating that they add value to my clients' operaions and discovering that the fire is still burning inside, I am re-launching the new website.  But before we get into the advance topics related to the business of high-tech product planning and marketing, it would be interesting to talk tactics of the website development next.