5 signs of a hijacked client

The context rant

While doing my main line of work, I never shy away from doing some consultancy work for clients. And I mean no programming, I mean business operation consultancy. Though I am a application development consultant and application developer, I do have enough experience to identify when a company has issues with overhead in work. I mean premature optimization is what a lot of programmers are all about and sometimes the business side benefits from that very well.

For the topic at hand. I had this good friend nagging me for a long amount of time for a consult. He is a successful businessman and no one in their right mind would call his business a failure. It's a nice Anonymous LTD that manages to turn over a few million euros per year with 12 people. So I signed up. I do not consider charging my friends for any non technical work. Since I follow the ideology of having a lot of friends at the expense of quick income.

The "motherload"

So I started rather quickly on analyzing Anonymous LTD. The analysis part was quite fun and easy. I liked talking to people and they gladly shared all of the positives and negatives of their work. Some even had suggestions :) And that is where I started to suspect that something was wrong.

1. The employees are de facto subordinate non management staff.
   The sales people were "afraid"(read subordinate) of not the management, but to the accounting. Yeah, that is when I had the first WTF moment.
2. There is a department that everyone tries to please, and not the management.
   The sales and other employees felt that they were somehow more dependent on accounting rather then the strategical management. Remember, accounting is a support operation in non accounting related companies.
3. The management displays uncertainty and consults some department on business matters.(Legal and purely technical are different stories)
   Really, when I went on to ask why the hell was there no CEO in the company, my friend, the director called up head of accounting to ask!!!!
4. You present a solution that improves managerial oversight and operations visibility and it's shot down by management.
   I proposed a new reporting tool/function, that was integrated into the stock tracking and order system. The director and top sales manager said: "Wow! Great! We really want it!". And two days later, they cut out the functionality, because it had not enough financial data(the stock tracking and order system, was not suppose to have any financial info).
5. The management's position changes whenever the company gets new, non management level, people on board.
   I already had the contract secured and signed. The company that was suppose to perform the work was selected and already analyzing requirements. Great! I thought. Then a new person is hired into the sales team. The contract is cancelled, because of hudge requirements changes.

The company had an issue with their stock to quote to order to delivery operation. It is unreliable and overburdened by out of date data. They still don't have any automation of warehouse stock information. Why? Because the new head sales-person wants to see a dashboard with all the client's information orders, payment statuses, credit and in real time and the accounting do not want to let that information out of their hands.

That is what I call a hijacked company:
A company that is taken over by a nonessential department and weak, collaborating, management.
Be very, very careful, it's a trap of uncertainty.

Aftermath

I managed to push trough a CEO for the company, because the managing director was and is my friend and a little too soft. And last time I checked, he still keeps accounting at bay and the director is non managing.