How I Saved My Company $100k

Using JavaScript, I was able to cut costs massively on an app my company wanted to develop.

Introduction

Consultants are expensive.

Whether it is for finance, strategic planning, or full-stack development, consultants consistently charge in the hundreds of dollars per hour across industries in the USA.

This is not to take away from consultants, they are typically worth the money.

Consultants are able to charge more because of their specialized expertise and ability to provide tailored solutions to clients.

When it comes to a company’s needs, a consultant isn’t always the solution due to the price tag that comes along with it.

This is where employees can take advantage of opportunities to provide value, increase team and personal ROI, and potentially compete with consultants.

The Economics Of Employees Undercutting Consultants

One of the key benefits of employees with coding skills undercutting consultants is the potential cost savings for the company.

As mentioned earlier in this blog, consultants can be expensive, charging hundreds of dollars per hour for their specialized expertise.

In some cases, hiring a consultant may be necessary, but in others, an employee with the right skills may be able to provide a comparable solution at a lower cost.

From an economic standpoint, this makes sense.

The supply and demand for specialized technology expertise, such as coding skills, can influence the equilibrium point where companies decide whether to rely on in-house resources or hire consultants.

Consultants charge a premium for their services because they are in high demand and have specialized expertise that can be difficult to find in-house.

However, an employee with coding skills can often provide a comparable solution with lower overhead costs, since they are already on the company’s payroll and don’t need to be paid additional consulting fees.

In addition to cost savings, there are other potential benefits to having employees with coding skills take on responsibility for technology projects.

For example, by keeping more of the work in-house, companies may be able to develop institutional knowledge and expertise around their technology needs.

This can help ensure that solutions are tailored to the specific needs of the business and can be maintained and updated easily over time.

Of course, there are also risks associated with relying too heavily on in-house employees for technology projects.

If employees are not adequately trained or do not have the necessary expertise, they may end up creating solutions that are ineffective or that require costly rework.

Additionally, relying too heavily on in-house resources can lead to burnout and turnover if employees are stretched too thin.

How I Undercut The Consultants

My company needed a website developed, bad.

This website would be a big lift and a lot of work for a team, let alone an individual.

The website would contain multiple educational assessments for HR leaders and companies to complete.

During the assessment process and after, the user will be prompted with resources such as best practices, videos, etc.

This website is a great investment for my company, due to the data we will be collecting from individuals on their company.

For the user, they will be able to save the resources most valuable to them and apply the best practices and resources we provide them to their work lives.

The website needed to be able to capture leads for our CRM, promote our company/region positively, and have built-in resources along with the assessments.

For the full website, web consultants were coming back with quotes north of $100,000.

I knew this would be a great opportunity for me to provide a massive value add, so I whipped up a quick design using just HTML and CSS and walked right into my boss’s office declaring:

“I can do this for way cheaper.”

With a positive attitude and a sample landing page created to build trust in my knowledge, my boss was ecstatic and decided I would be trusted to build this website out.

For the next few months, I decided on frameworks, languages, and technology while realizing I was going to need to learn some JavaScript fast.

I built the website in about 4 months by myself, teaching myself a lot of JavaScript along the way.

I choose SurveyJS to build out the assessments using a React framework, with some JQuery sprinkled throughout for navigation and styling effects. The website connects to a php + SQL backend. The styling was done using HTML + CSS.

Understanding The Business > Coding Skills

While hard coding skills are certainly valuable in web development, understanding business use cases is often the most important skill.

In my example given above, I was able to provide a massive value add by creating a website that met the specific needs of my company at a much lower cost than hiring web consultants.

It’s important to recognize that coding skills are just a tool to help solve business problems.

Without a clear understanding of what the business needs, even the most skilled developer may end up creating something that doesn’t actually address the underlying issues.

By focusing on business use cases, employees can provide value to their organizations by identifying areas where technology can help solve problems, and then leveraging their coding skills to create solutions that are tailored to the specific needs of the business.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that hard coding skills aren’t important — they certainly are. But they’re just one piece of the puzzle.

In order to truly excel as a developer, it’s important to have a strong understanding of the business context in which you’re working, and to be able to communicate effectively with stakeholders in order to ensure that the solutions you’re building are aligned with their needs and goals.

In a situation like this, whether we use Python, php, or JavaScript to create the website, it doesn’t matter to the stakeholders or end user, it simply needs to achieve the goals of the company at a lower cost.

Conclusion and Summary

• Consultants can be expensive due to their specialized expertise and tailored solutions.

• In-house employees with coding/marketing/writing/etc. skills may be able to provide comparable solutions at lower costs.

• Employees with hard skills, especially technical ones, can help companies develop institutional knowledge and expertise around their technology needs.

• Relying too heavily on in-house resources can lead to burnout and turnover if employees are stretched too thin.

• Ultimately, the decision of whether to rely on in-house resources or hire consultants will depend on the specific needs of the business, the complexity of the project, and the availability of specialized expertise.

• Understanding the economics behind employee undercutting consultants can help companies make informed decisions about how to allocate their resources and get the most value for their investment.

In today’s fast-paced business environment, technology is increasingly becoming a critical component of success.

However, it’s important to recognize that technology is just a tool — it’s only valuable if it’s being used to solve real business problems.

A hammer without nails is not a tool, just a blunt object.

My understanding of the business helped save my company money, while coding was just the tool used for achieving it.

Nick

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