Amateur Hour - Anonymous employee XcelPros Employee Review

Hi There, Thank you for your review! Your advice is noted. Let me start with the methodology. It was around before the ‘kids’ (not something I would say, I prefer calling them youngsters) were ever hired. It was used at client engagements before any of you were even employees. Even before we had an in-house team of our own, when we only worked with 1099 consultants. Just because we engage everyone in expressing ideas and improvements doesn’t mean that kids built it. Secondly this is a combination of PMP, six sigma and years of implementation experience. I always recommend preparing for PMP and take the six sigma certification to avoid this sort of misunderstanding. If I remember I sent all hires a link to six sigma and highly recommended taking the training available along with certification. Most importantly it is a guideline or a starting point. Every client of ours has altered it to fit their style. So if there is a specific client you are talking about, it is a highly altered version of what we generally recommend and in which case we notify them of the risks of the alteration. The strength we have is the ability to handle a project in any situation even when teams change and structure changes. But luckily I have had a great set of dedicated people both employees or contractors who went through the implementation and go lives since the beginning of the company till date and have stepped up when needed. All internal resources once trained hands on are given the opportunity of being part of an implementation. I am hoping people have valued the experience. It may be hard for some people to come out of the cocoon but what I would say to that is it has to happen some day. You can’t hide behind a Glassdoor forever. My intention is to bring people onboard and build them into solution architects. What we focus on is better ways of doing everything, understand how to fill in the blanks when we may not have all the answers instantly. We sometimes have to operate with minimal information and do enough research and come to the table with more insights. (I thought that was your strength as that is an interview question). We try to understand how to work with each person’s strengths. End of the day this is just work that needs to be done once we commit to it. Let me next talk about the team size. I would categorize the delivery team 2 ways - 1) Our own internal organically grown team that we hire, train and groom and continue to do steadfastly with perseverance and constantly looking for the model power team that is aligned with us and is agile enough to change with the changing environment with an attitude of finding solutions ; 2)A set of 1099 consultants who work for us and who prefer it that way for various reasons and prefer being engaged as and when required. Once we bid for a project it is our responsibility to take it to completion be it with 1099 or W2 consultants. Till this day I carry the reputation of completing a project per the guidelines set by the customer. In some cases the guideline set by the customer is timeline, or budget in which case we ask them what all we can cut short, or scope, or change management and sometimes it is ‘do as I say’ in which case we always let them know ahead of time the risk of their approach. We accept all of the above as we are agile enough to handle it. If a consultant complains I would say consider a different profession because this is the nature of consulting. We always adapt to the customer. The consultants we have are in the following areas - Microsoft technologies, HADOOP, R developers, Python developers, Angular developers, Mongo DB, SAP technologies. I can provide client references as and when needed. We do leave it to the client how much PM work they need. Some clients say they need minimal PM work and let their internal people manage it. It all depends on the spend capacity of a client. Every $ our customer spends requires attention to detail and an ROI. That attention may sometimes look like ‘exaggeration’, which is needed. You probably were engaged on 1 or 2 clients and must have surely worked with the 1099 consultants both based out of US and UK, but there are quite a few referenceable large, medium and small companies that have our consultants that you don’t have a preview to. Most importantly if anyone you know is spreading a wrong word about who is allowed or not allowed on calls, have them come and see me and let me understand who made those statements, where, when and why. Once we figure that out let’s understand how much of this is fabricated and how much is an exaggeration. We are all in good terms with all. I always prefer a good rapport with everyone (we may all have our days) and I do give a direct reference from me and a recommendation no matter where they move on to. Despite your review we are here any day if you need help and only wish great things for you! Good luck!