I n t eg ra t ion Prac t ice

How to Make BizTalk Practice More Profitable

Managing an integration practice is significantly different than managing integration projects

With it comes all the on-going challenges such as hiring, delivery, training, and transitioning between projects

Idea in Brief

Challenges

{ }1LOW LEVERAGE

•If your integration practice looks the following pyramid watch out

•This is essentially the problem of balancing the right number of finders, minders, and grinders (partners, managers, & staff/consultants) per project

{ }2PROJECT PIPELINE FRAGMENTATION

•BizTalk has become 15 years old & mature product and much hype around SOA (service-oriented architecture) has dwindled

•Thus, the maturity of the platform has resulted in a slow and fragmented pipeline of new projects

{ }3HIGH BENCH COST

Having to maintain BizTalk practice just to keep your foot in the door may result in the following scenarios

•Resources not billed 1500 hrs/ year/ consultant

•Difficulty in achieving 70% realization for each consultant’s maximum available time

{ }4SYSTEMATIC UNDER DELEGATION

No other habit harms a consulting practice profitability as much as the habit of high-priced

people performing lower-value tasks

It puts you (as a practice) at a competitive disadvantage. You may find it difficult to market

your firm as an efficiently staffed integration services firm

Solutions

{ }1PROJECT/ENGAGEMENT MANAGEMENT

Improving the net income per engagement through

•Properly staffing

•Rightshoring

•Insourcing vs. Outsourcing

{ }2CROSS-TRAINING & SKILL DEVELOPMENT

•Cross training also helps in achieving an important goal of target billing on average 1,500 hours/year/consultant

•Using experienced offshore partners to acquire BizTalk resources for 200-300 hours per year that will let you maintain a practice

{ }3BLENDED PRACTICE MODEL

•Establishing and maintaining close relationship with near shore and offshore partners to manage the infrequent workloads

•Local partners that have an established/new practice in BizTalk 

{ }4 EFFICIENT SCHEDULING OF PROJECTS

•Integration projects are difficult to manage

•You can pad your project’s schedules. This is to say that a 6 weeks project can be negotiated as a 10-12 weeks project

•This allows the practice lead to improving the realization of each resource on the team

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