Hi there,
One of our clients has asked us to provide an Oracle ERP
consultant for Financial module. However in a contract they are
insisting on adding an article stating, "If the perforamnce is not
satisfactory they an charge us penalty...... blah blah blah".
The consultant is a Functional consultant and he will work on AP/ GL/
FA etc. He will be supporting users also.

My question is, how the heck can we measure the candidate's
performance. I'd highly appreacite it if someone can guide me to a
SIMPLE performance matrice, which I can ask the client to fill out,
every week or so to measure the perforamance. PLEASE HELP. If you have
a better idea please dont hesitate to share. I am really looking for
some sort of Key Performance Indicator "Sheet" or something like that.

Thank you in advance.

"Proficien" <proficient@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1154897586.610535.181020@m79g2000cwm.googlegr oups.com...
> Hi there,
> One of our clients has asked us to provide an Oracle ERP
> consultant for Financial module. However in a contract they are
> insisting on adding an article stating, "If the perforamnce is not
> satisfactory they an charge us penalty...... blah blah blah".
> The consultant is a Functional consultant and he will work on AP/ GL/
> FA etc. He will be supporting users also.
>
> My question is, how the heck can we measure the candidate's
> performance. I'd highly appreacite it if someone can guide me to a
> SIMPLE performance matrice, which I can ask the client to fill out,
> every week or so to measure the perforamance. PLEASE HELP. If you have
> a better idea please dont hesitate to share. I am really looking for
> some sort of Key Performance Indicator "Sheet" or something like that.
>
> Thank you in advance.
>
It is a tricky one. In general don't specify the response time as never to
exceeded x amount of time. Instead phrase it the xyz transaction will not
exceeded x amount of time 95% of the time. This gives you a reasonable
measure. That is most of the time you are performing within limits, but if
something extraordinary happens as long as it is rare it shouldn't be a
problem. But it is a tough nut to crack because you have to identify all
the work flows and all the points where the database or program is being
asked to do something. At each of those points you need to specify how long
each step can take at a maximum. Lot of work.
Jim

Proficien wrote:
> Hi there,
> One of our clients has asked us to provide an Oracle ERP
> consultant for Financial module. However in a contract they are
> insisting on adding an article stating, "If the perforamnce is not
> satisfactory they an charge us penalty...... blah blah blah".
> The consultant is a Functional consultant and he will work on AP/ GL/
> FA etc. He will be supporting users also.
>
> My question is, how the heck can we measure the candidate's
> performance. I'd highly appreacite it if someone can guide me to a
> SIMPLE performance matrice, which I can ask the client to fill out,
> every week or so to measure the perforamance. PLEASE HELP. If you have
> a better idea please dont hesitate to share. I am really looking for
> some sort of Key Performance Indicator "Sheet" or something like that.
>
> Thank you in advance.

You need to define "satisfactory" and who is the determinant of whether
something is, or is not, satisfactory. My personal instinct would be to
forgo the money and tell the client to find someone else to beat up on.
--
Daniel A. Morgan
University of Washington
damorgan@x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)
Puget Sound Oracle Users Group
www.psoug.org

DA Morgan wrote:
> Proficien wrote:
>> Hi there,
>> One of our clients has asked us to provide an Oracle ERP
>> consultant for Financial module. However in a contract they are
>> insisting on adding an article stating, "If the perforamnce is not
>> satisfactory they an charge us penalty...... blah blah blah".
>> The consultant is a Functional consultant and he will work on AP/ GL/
>> FA etc. He will be supporting users also.
>>
>> My question is, how the heck can we measure the candidate's
>> performance. I'd highly appreacite it if someone can guide me to a
>> SIMPLE performance matrice, which I can ask the client to fill out,
>> every week or so to measure the perforamance. PLEASE HELP. If you have
>> a better idea please dont hesitate to share. I am really looking for
>> some sort of Key Performance Indicator "Sheet" or something like that.
>>
>> Thank you in advance.
>
> You need to define "satisfactory" and who is the determinant of whether
> something is, or is not, satisfactory. My personal instinct would be to
> forgo the money and tell the client to find someone else to beat up on.
my instinct would be to talk to the client to see if they can articulate
what satisfactory performance would look like. I imagine it would end up
looking like Jim's suggestion, but it seems to me that getting
satisfactory performance from an IT system or from an external
consultant is a reasonable requirement, one just needs to agree up front
what satisfactory performance is (and how much getting it) costs.

personally I'd take a dim view of a consultant who wasn't prepared to
measure the performance of systems they were supporting and a client who
didn't know what good performance was.



--

Niall Litchfield
Oracle DBA
http://www.orawin.info/services/