By Today I had my first onsite meeting as an Independent Consultant with a client/prospect. Most of you know that I semi-retired at the end of June this year. I was feeling overwhelmed with stress and undervalued by my former employer. I don’t want to write anymore about those times. One of the skills I’ve been working on is not dwelling on problems….so fast forward to today, 4 1/2 months later.
I’m refreshed and rejuvenated. I’m not questioning my worth and what I bring to the table. I have a ton of knowledge about what I call the RMIS matrix – I know what rules can be bent and broken and what will hamstring your success.
The meeting went well. I had to check myself from saying ‘we’ in reference to the software…because that is now ‘they’ for me. The client is frustrated. They’ve been given what they wanted, but not what they need. I don’t know that they appreciated me telling them that, but honesty is the best policy. I could build you an amazingly complex system, but if you can’t get analytics out of it, then is it really that great of a system? Noodle that for a bit. In my last few years as a solution architect I focused on analytical needs first in the hopes of avoiding a beautiful database with no reporting ability.
The K.I.S.S. philosophy is definitely a must. To be fair, there are some conglomerates and business set ups that prevent a simple model…This client falls into that category.
And so I move into ‘is the juice worth the squeeze?’ mode. My next steps are to dig into their setup and put together some recommendations of any easy short term steps to alleviate some pressure and mid to long term steps for analytics.
I can’t wait to see what I figure out! It’s good to be back!
I couldn’t find a picture of me on a horse, so I dug deep into the scrapbooks for this picture of me about to go on a carriage ride through Salzburg Austria!
