Live and Learn-working with recruiters

I have worked with recruiters over the past 20 years. As with any, there are good and bad.

I'm recently frustrated to understand more about their markup for project resources. A company may be paying $125 an hour, paying the person doing the work $25-$40 an hour. And, there's also enough margin to be able to provide a cut to other people in the middle.

It's a bit of a scam for companies and I hoped the access to information on the Internet would eliminate this...and it has to some degree.

Lesson for employers-know who you work with and try to cut out the middle men!

Advocate's Edge

From McGovern & Greene LLP

http://www.mcgoverngreene.com/advoedges/AE_pdfs/AE_sep-oct10.pdf

Verizon Palm Pre Plus spell check

I recently upgraded from a Blackberry 9630 to a Palm Pre Plus with Verizon. It took me several searches to find it-but the Pre doesn't have a good spell checker installed, which is unbelievable!

I finally found a great auto correct app that works similar to the Blackberry.
http://forums.precentral.net/homebrew-apps/193362-autocorrect-edit-7-28-a.html

Balancing services

Our services continue to grow at DGA. We're pleased to work with some very high caliber companies and CFO's and we expand through our marketing and networking efforts.

The risk services and process improvement business is our core and we will focus on strengthening our team and our service offerings.

Since the first quarter of the calendar year has been traditionally slow for our services, we're planning to begin a tax practice later this year-offering CPA quality tax preparation service at reasonable prices.

Our new website will launch in the next few weeks: TaxDan.com

Small companies and 404 compliance

With financial and regulatory reform underway, companies with market cap under $75 million won't need their auditors to sign off on the internal controls as part of SOx 404. However, management must still comply with meeting the requirements of their assertion as to the adequacy of ICFR.

And that means, that the public accounting firms need to cut their fees for SOx 404 assistance or let more agile and focused professionals and smaller firms do the work. CFO's are coming to realize they can save a lot of money on fees.

I recently talked with a CFO who is now paying less than 1/3 of what he paid last year-for virtually the same work!!

Pushing rates down for consulting firms

A colleague of mine recently asked me how I'm doing in business on my own. I said I'm doing okay and continue to build client base. I asked how he's doing and his response: great, except guys like you are pushing our rates down.

I find this to be a jab of frustration from the larger consulting firms. I don't have the overhead that the larger firms do, and provide a better level of service, at a fair price. The larger firms became accustomed to higher rates in the wake of SOx 404 and now they struggle to maintain compensation structures that don't fit the economy.

Here's my take: the model of the Big 4 and consulting firms is broken and it's time to make changes to fix this. Outsourcing work to India or the Philippines will reduce costs, but risk increases in trying to manage quality of service.

Seriously-is any partner's time worth upwards of $400-$700 on your engagements? I think not!

Consultants and their fees...

I ran across an article in CFO Magazine, June 2010 that I found to be on point. See http://cfo.com/article.cfm/14499509/2/c_14499796. 

There's no question in my mind that the larger firms are struggling with their fee structures in light of the overhead they have and the hangover from SOx 404 fees. So, a logical option is to staff projects with less qualified professionals-'NO YOU SAY'?  Yes-that will be inevitable. And in my experience, many of the best people have already left the firms and moved to industry or other roles.

Keep on keeping on...