Fenwick operates differently to most other software and consulting firms. Traditional software firms have some combination of business development managers (salesmen), pre-sales support, business analysts, developers, testers, infrastructure support and post-implementation support personnel.
We operate with a much flatter structure and have few staff with designated roles. We encourage staff to take on different roles at different times, indeed most staff are expected to perform multiple roles. This gives us a lot of flexibility with our staff and allows our consultants autonomy to concentrate on meeting the needs of customers rather than simply doing a job.
Our consultants have autonomy to concentrate on meeting the needs of customers rather than simply doing a job.
We pride ourselves on our level of customer service which we believe exceeds that of our competitors.
High performance in this area comes at a price. Clients become used to fast turnaround even for non-urgent tasks and expect that we will always achieve these levels. And usually we do manage to achieve this for ongoing support. But where this sometimes comes back to bite us is when clients spring on us urgent projects which need the involvement of several consultants. No consulting firm keeps resources ‘on the bench’. It is vital for our viability that we keep our consultants busy, however, with advance warning we can usually rearrange our workload to satisfy clients with new projects, sometimes with tight deadlines.
We realise that our clients operate in a fast-moving, dynamic environment. We like to view the relationship between ourselves and our clients as a partnership. So if you do anticipate major changes to your business that could have ramifications for your information systems, give us a heads-up as soon as possible and we will factor this possibility into our resource scheduling.
