I have some experience with this. My old company did a bespoke type project for a 40,000 person company with a small footprint of developers.
- 30,000 people means they have deep pockets.
- 14 days is how many man hours? You can do one of two things: 1. Charge by fixed pricing (which may put you in the hole if it goes past 14 days...humans are terrible at planning things so this is not always the right choice) 2. Charge by hour with the assumption of "Time and Materials" basis. [1] Remember - companies like this WILL come back to you when something doesn't look right.
- If you want to charge support you could consider this possibility: Hire up a junior guy who's only job is to support the system. Spend time ramping him up while you are actually supporting the customer. Charge the customer what the cost of that junior person requires (and maybe a very small margin). This is a great starting point for then being able to build out a future practice. Some may argue to make a larger profit margin here, but you could get push-back on price from the customer.
- Think about bundling hosting and support as a whole entity. Nota bene - For a 30,000 person type company you will face major IT challenges. Many large companies require strict security regulations. In many cases they will require to go through loads and loads of lawyers and IT people. Big client customers will always require crazy security things like this: http://mediatemple.net/company/technology.php
Feel free to ping me on email (in my profile) if you want more info.
This is great thanks! We may well take you up on this. Once we have done our reading and taken on board all your comments we will go back to them with our proposal. Fingers crossed!
- 30,000 people means they have deep pockets.
- 14 days is how many man hours? You can do one of two things: 1. Charge by fixed pricing (which may put you in the hole if it goes past 14 days...humans are terrible at planning things so this is not always the right choice) 2. Charge by hour with the assumption of "Time and Materials" basis. [1] Remember - companies like this WILL come back to you when something doesn't look right.
- If you want to charge support you could consider this possibility: Hire up a junior guy who's only job is to support the system. Spend time ramping him up while you are actually supporting the customer. Charge the customer what the cost of that junior person requires (and maybe a very small margin). This is a great starting point for then being able to build out a future practice. Some may argue to make a larger profit margin here, but you could get push-back on price from the customer.
- Think about bundling hosting and support as a whole entity. Nota bene - For a 30,000 person type company you will face major IT challenges. Many large companies require strict security regulations. In many cases they will require to go through loads and loads of lawyers and IT people. Big client customers will always require crazy security things like this: http://mediatemple.net/company/technology.php
Feel free to ping me on email (in my profile) if you want more info.
[1] - http://b.lesseverything.com/2009/5/7/be-wary-of-time-and-mat...