IT consultants trick customers out of billions

Consulting agencies use substandard integration solutions to force their customers into lifelong, costly dependencies. We need to put an end to this scam, says Mikael Boquist, CEO, iCore Solutions.

In a debate article on IDG.se, Sweden’s biggest news outlet in IT and business, iCore CEO Mikael Boquist argues that Swedish IT consultants deliberately trick customers when it comes to integration solutions. By hard-coding vital integrations between systems, they force customers to come back whenever they want to perform upgrades or introduce new systems in their infrastructure.

The biggest problem, Mikael argues, is that the consultants prey on the ignorance of companies, who need integration solutions but don’t know what their options are. The consultants often perform ‘quick-fixes’ over and over again, which results in a mess of rigid integrations – impossible to modify without large costs and many consultant hours. This ‘integration spaghetti’ is also a major obstacle to business development and innovation.

According to Mikael, there is a way that companies can end the unhealthy dependence on IT consultants: by using an integration platform which ties together the different systems. Done correctly, a platform will make it easy to add, upgrade or replace systems. Customers can keep up with a rapidly changing digital environment and respond quickly to changes in the market. They won’t be stuck in never-ending integration projects which cost time, money and frustration.

Read the entire article (in Swedish) here.

iCore Solutions offers software integration solutions for collecting, structuring and analyzing data to companies of all sizes and in more than 30 countries. Based in Sweden and with 50 employees, iCore Solutions was founded in 2000 and has offices in Stockholm, Göteborg (HQ) and London. www.icoresolutions.com