Results of Data Analysis

All the respondents acknowledged that their companies do use the assistance of consulting firms, but only in case when it is not possible to resolve an issue by themselves. One respondent made an additional note that his company uses services of consultants when they need to approve or disprove solution already available. However, companies prefer to resolve all the issues themselves, because traditional consulting involves a physical contact between client and consultant (sometimes participation in public tender), spending solid time on making concluding a complicated contract and resolving multiple bureaucratic issues, support and modification of working relationships, involvement of company-client’s employees, which some of the respondents claim to be not flexible, fast, and cheap.

Six interviews were conducted, to collect and analyze the opinion of the top managers on the consulting market and the idea of cloud consulting. The interviewer was interested in several main points of the managers’ opinions. Firstly, it was necessary to know if the company where the manager works is using any kind of consulting services. Secondly, the managers were asked about their opinion on cloud consulting – the type of service, when the core issue that is being solved is small and highly specialized. Thirdly, the interviewer assessed the managers and the companies’ attitude towards different online and cloud innovations. In the end, different terms of agreements and payment in this kind of situations were discussed.

Negative feedback

During the interviews, negative feedback was as well collected. Different difficulties in the processes were described as well as ideas that was unfavorable to our proposal. Some of the companies claimed that they used consulting services quite rarely. Trust is extremely important when it comes to consulting and lots of companies are concerned about the quality and understanding of the projects. Usage of consulting depends on the ability and desire of the company to invest in internal expertise, which is preferable. One interviewee actually denied the possibility of a small project to be outsourced due to the total control of internal processes and variety of resources. Apart from consulting, companies assess the behavior of the competitors.

As for the legal part, companies deal with lots of limitations that slow the processes. Using cloud services might be prohibited due to the security reasons. There could be different confidentiality issues. Some companies confirm the need for special licensing, which lead, however, to additional complications. Some of the payment methods cannot be used without contracts. Companies need to follow standards that are not flexible.

Moreover, the companies need to know the value of the product, and why they should use the platform instead of direct links. Some companies still do not have need for online applications, cloud or any digital complicated operations.

There were some general issues that put the respondents on their guard.

· There must be some guarantees. The guarantees that expert is a truly expert and that the client will pay at the right moment: after, in advance or in process. Moreover, in case if the solution for the project might “go wrong” then the consulting company needs to guarantee to fix it. The client also wants to enter into a contract with an entity, not individuals, to ensure that the work will be done. At the same time, the client also might want long relationships with the platform and be flexible with the opportunity to use the right expert in a right time and give them tasks. The client want to choose different form of collaboration.

· Data security. It is not allowed to share the information without confidentiality agreement with all contractors participated in the project (i.e. cloud consulting company and experts) and this, in turn, could be a serious obstacle.

· Risk avoidance. The clients do not want to face any problems with the unexpected inadequate quality of the completed task. The client does not want to work with any risks or wants to transfer all the risks to the platform.

· Juridical issues and obstacles –following long-lasting bureaucratic procedures, imperfection of state legislation in intellectual property rights and usage of electronic tools for business transactions (such as application of digital signature).

· Control. Companies prefer to have a high level of personal control over their confidential data and the working process, which might be little more difficult due to the fact that the cloud consulting company would be the only one participant that might be controlled to some extent. Experts would be unknown to the company-client, i.e. the client would be able to see experts’ profiles only, without direct contact with them.

There is also a substantial problem of the “consumerism” culture and perceptions that were formed during “prosperity years”. Clients expect to receive high-quality services fast and almost right away (“по щелчку пальцами”). To target multiple clients, various electronic platforms providing minor services occurred. Nowadays, the culture and perceptions are transforming towards willingness to participate in and use the more advanced platforms for more complex tasks.

To conclude, experts are ready and interested in using the cloud consulting services due to increase of outsourcing and freelance services in modern Russia. However, it might be very difficult to convince businesses and their lawyers to trust and work with cloud consulting company. In case of establishing cloud consulting services it would be quite difficult to do, because of low level of trust to indirectly contacted experts, and almost no understanding of the concept and benefits of cloud consulting for local businesses.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 373