Increasingly companies are using FourHats in preference to large, costly IT consultancies on major IT programmes. Our track record of delivering highly skilled professionals at a fair price means that our clients’ IT budgets go further.
FourHats is flexible in the commercial terms it provides its clients. We can operate with total transparency or provide fixed costs that known up front and guaranteed not to change?
For some clients, it’s key that they know how much they are paying and to whom. For these clients, we work much as a traditional agency. We agree a margin and we charge this for each resource. When we provide candidates, we also provide their rates and clients have to consider both the quality of the applicant and the rate of the applicant. Choosing the best candidate becomes a value-for-money decision - which applicant can perform the best for the fees they cost?
Where clients trust us to handle the commercials, a fixed price arrangement offers some great advantages. Clients define a role specification and agree with FourHats what would be a reasonable price for the role. Thereafter, FourHats will guarantee that all applicants presented to the client can be hired for that agreed price.
This approach is convenient for single hires, but really comes into its own for projects, programmes and even company-wide arrangements. It allows a project or programme manager to fix a rate card with FourHats at the start of the programme and thereafter know with certainty the exact cost of the resources on the programme.This allows for very accurate budgeting and cost projection as resourcing isn’t a variable element. It’s much like the rate card approach taken by the big consultancies, but without the big consultancy price-tag!
FourHats’ unique approach to programme resourcing meant we gained access to highly skilled professionals at a considerable saving to using traditional consultancies. As a result we were able to completely restructure our programme, bringing key knowledge in-house and saving 43% of the total programme budget.
Programme Manager Executive Director, Investment Bank