Our - and my - workload is quite respectable. The company has been growing at a much better than average rate and providing much above average returns all through the recession. In the consulting arena we are not even taking new clients since we have more work than we can handle and are booked far into the future. My point is that if you want to have a growing consultancy - as oppossed to a one person shop which is no problem if that is the business model - then you really need to shift focus from traditional IT consulting models. Our model is centered around software production which has much higher margins than consulting - which does not scale in the way that product sales can. It sounds like your model is working for you and that is good. Our trading busineess is also doing very well.
For those interested, here's a recent article on outsourcing: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5110628.html
A related article: Dell drops some tech calls to India By Ed Frauenheim CNET News.com November 24, 2003, 2:08 PM PT After receiving customer complaints, Dell has stopped sending U.S. technical support calls for two of its corporate computer lines to a Bangalore, India, call center. Calls from U.S. purchasers of Dell's OptiPlex desktop and Latitude notebook personal computers will be handled from existing facilities in the United States, a Dell spokesman said Monday. "Our customers weren't satisfied with the level of support they were getting" from the India operations, said Dell spokesman Jon Weisblatt. He declined to give details about the customer complaints. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103_2-5110933.html
Level 1 support sucks EVERYWHERE when you have a non-Level 1 problem and know it. Idiots in India can say "Sir, I think you'll need to re-install Windows" just as well as idiots in the US when something less extreme would take care of the problem if you could just get past the Level 1 people that are reading the EXACT SAME material on their website that you are reading! They should have an option on the automated answering system: "push 7 if you know where the on switch to your PC is so you can talk to someone who actually knows more than you do" On the other hand, about 6 years ago, I called someone at 4:30pm the Wednesday before Thanksgiving when my nothbook was having some serious issues (motherboard I think). I got a real person in the US who said "Well, it's out of warranty, but everyone left already and I'm about the only one to handle a stack of calls and it'll just be easier for me to give you an RMA for a free replacement of whatever's not working than take the time to try to figure out what's actually wrong. That's what they get for leaving me here like this". Needless to say, this made me one happy camper and they lived up to their word. The upside for Dell is they got a multiple repeat customer out of me along with numerous referals. Cash