Hiring 3rd Party Consultants — What You Should Know
AvSight is built to bend, flex, and grow with your business — that’s what makes it so powerful. The right customizations can streamline processes, eliminate busywork, and give your team a real edge. But the wrong ones? They can drain budgets, slow you down, and leave you worse off than before. In this article, we’ll break down how to get the most from your AvSight investment and the red flags to look for when choosing outside consultants.
The Unique Challenges of Working with Third-Party Consultants
AvSight customers have three basic options when it comes to customization projects — using an in-house AvSight admin, working with AvSight’s Professional Services team, or hiring a third-party consultant. Each option has its pluses and minuses, but working with a third party consultant comes with some unique disadvantages and risks. Here are a few challenges worth considering before hiring a third-party consultant.
Challenge 1: Incentives that Don't Align with Your Success
Consultants are incentivized to create more work for themselves, not to ensure that your business is successful. This increases the likelihood that they will steer you to the most elaborate and expensive option, not necessarily toward the best solution.
Challenge 2: Lack of AvSight Knowledge & Access
Third parties do not have access to the latest AvSight releases, so they cannot be sure that what they are building will be compatible with new releases. This lack of knowledge can also lead to them replicating functionality that is in development for future AvSight versions or even already available.
Challenge 3: Gaps in Specialized Industry Knowledge
Consultants are often spread thin, targeting many industries and supporting different products. This generalist approach limits how deep their knowledge of AvSight and the aviation industry can get.
Challenge 4: No Visibility into Core Code
Only the AvSight team has access to our core code. This limits the ability of third-party providers to engineer the most effective solutions, often resulting in clunky workarounds.
Challenge 5: Hidden Long Term Costs
The project never truly ends. Once they have created a customization for you, you are reliant on them for ongoing support and maintenance, costing you more in the long run.
Challenge 6: They Don't Know Your Business
Working with a third party may seem like an easy way to knock out a project with little time investment from your team, but that’s rarely the case. Using external resources for a project generally requires your team to educate them on your business, and depending on their background, the aviation industry as a whole.
Making a Smart Decision
The challenges of working with a third party don’t mean that it’s never a good idea and our warnings aren’t intended to villainize all service providers, but taking them into consideration can help you make a smart and informed decision. Asking the right questions when evaluating a consultant is also essential. We suggest asking and documenting responses to the following questions:
How many AvSight implementations or projects have you led directly?
How will your suggested customizations impact our implementation timeline? Can you document those details for future reference?
Will you provide upgrade support to guarantee that these customizations will work with future versions of AvSight? What costs should I expect?
Can you provide customer references who can speak to measurable results you’ve helped them achieve in AvSight?
How do you determine whether a customization is truly necessary vs using out-of-the-box AvSight functionality?
Do you document and share details of all configurations so our team can manage them without ongoing dependency on you?
Who is responsible if your changes conflict with AvSight updates or cause downtime?
AvSight Experts?
Some third party consultants claim to be “AvSight experts”. With some even touting that they have employees with an AvSight background or claiming to have special access to the AvSight team. Those statements are often misleading and, sometimes, outright false. Here are some warning signs to look out for.
No 3rd party is “approved” or “endorsed” by AvSight.
Our customers have worked with a number of third parties over the years, some with good results and some with not so good results. We’re happy to share the experiences we’re aware of but we do not recommend or vet any third parties and cannot guarantee their work. If a consultant claims to be “AvSight approved” this is a major red flag.
We do not train or provide special access to 3rd parties.
Third parties do not have access to AvSight’s core code, roadmap, or support team, meaning they have less up-to-date knowledge than our customers. If a consultant claims to have “special access” to any of these resources, that should be a warning sign.
Being a former AvSight user or employee does not mean being a current AvSight expert.
The AvSight platform is constantly evolving and expanding, so even the most experienced of former users and employees will soon find their knowledge outdated.
Ask the AvSight Team
AvSight doesn’t recommend specific third party consultants, but we can share our experiences working with them, so you can make an informed decision. Some consultants routinely cause implementation delays or fail to deliver projects that function as promised. Others have charged for customization projects to add functionality that is already available in AvSight. We can’t predict outcomes, but we may be able to provide additional data to help you make an informed decision.
“We know the existing AvSight functionality, as well as what’s in development for future versions. We may be able to save you a costly project and allow you to invest those resources elsewhere.”
Another advantage of checking with the AvSight team before hiring a consultant, is that we know all of the existing AvSight functionality, as well as what’s in development for future versions. We may be able to save you a costly project and allow you to invest those resources elsewhere. We also take customer needs into account when deciding which new features to develop. If the customization you’re considering would be impactful for many of our customers, we may decide to add it to our roadmap.
Why check with the AvSight team before a project?
We can share other customers' experiences.
When projects go wrong, the AvSight team usually hears about it. We can tell you if a consultant has a history of causing implementation delays, selling unnecessary work, or botching projects. We can also share good experiences customers have had with a consultant. We can’t guarantee outcomes, but we can reduce the risk of a bad investment.
The functionality you're looking for might already exist or be in an upcoming release.
AvSight releases hundreds of feature improvements per year, so the functionality you’re looking for might already be available or be near completion. We can share this info with you so you don’t spend time and money on a feature that already exists.
We may be able to add the functionality to a future release.
Customer needs are one of the main drivers of feature development and our product team loves to hear your ideas. If the functionality you’re looking for would be beneficial to many of our customers, we may be able to add it to a future version of AvSight – no custom development needed.
If you’re considering a project, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to VP of Services and Support, Ashley Stifler for help.
The Bottom Line
Customizing your AvSight environment can be a valuable way to boost your efficiency and embed processes that fit your business. If you don’t have the bandwidth internally to plan and execute the project, bringing in external resources may be a good choice. By doing your homework and asking the right questions, you can make sure your investment boosts efficiency and ROI — not headaches and delays.
“By doing your homework and asking the right questions, you can make sure your investment boosts efficiency and ROI — not headaches and delays.”
