RE: RE: Professional Services

One suggestion I have is to negotiate a fixed price contract up
front.  CMS projects can quickly get expensive as there's a
million different directions in which they can be taken.  It's
very easy for a consultant to keep adding small, incremental 
features which can quickly double or triple the project's cost.


Given the budget you have is small, I would consider
either open source software or else a very widely used CMS package.  
Having an common, open system means you're not bound to the
consultants you hire.  If they're not meeting your expectations,
it's easier to replace them as it's not hard to find people who
know a widely used system like Zope and can pick up where the
first team left off.  Whereas, if your CMS is based on an
obscure, proprietary system you're much more closely tied to
your consultants.  Also, given your budget, I imagine your
team will be doing a fair amount of the work and maintenance 
itself, so you want a system that's easy to get up-to-speed
on.  You can buy an O'Reilly book on Zope; you can't on the
obscure system the consultants recommend.



dv
 

-----Original Message-----
Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 19:05:32 -0800 (PST)
From: Amal <amalsinghconsult-/[email protected]>
To: [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: [cms-list] Professional Services

Hello, 

We are small business looking for CMS solution.

What is the expected industry average (if any) for
professional services fees? A few consulting firms
gaves some idea but we would like to know what the
average % cost vs. total software license.
 
Our budget for entire CMS solution is $30,000-50,000
for license and consulting services combined so how
much should we expect to spend on consultants? There
is no need for data conversion or migration of any
sort, we'll just start using the new system and our
content will be created from scratch.

Any feedback appreciated. 

Thanks.
Amal Singh

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