The honeymoon ended early. Instead of matching a consultant to the needs of a client, they routinely oversold consultant qualifications (for example, telling a client with an ERP issue that the consultant had 10 years of experience in that system when she may only have six months) and placed consultants in the first engagement that came along, regardless of the consultants skillset. This left the consultant having to perform as an expert in something (s)he may not know that well because that's the way the client was sold on the service.
Basically, their attitude was that they're #1 priority was not client service, but AVOIDING having to pay consultant salaries themselves. So they threw you onto the first engagement they could sell in order to transfer that burden to the client.
There seemed to be a primary kind of client they solicited. Their sales people would visit CPA firms or banks and insist they wanted to know about their clients who always had problems and were seldom in compliance. Those were the clients they sought out; as they put it: "the worst of the worst." They claimed they could go in, clean them, and eliminate all the problems these bankers or CPAs routinely had with them. These clients were often combative and resistant to change, systemic of why they were among the "worst of the worst." But as soon as the inevitable problems surfaced (usually led by the client's refusal to make changes that would ease their problems), NowCFO management would jump into crisis mode (over the fear of having to refund money) and after only a cursory investigation (if one was conducted at all) blame the consultant. I've been consulting for over a quarter century and not ONE complaint from a client until I worked for NowCFO. This left the consultants having to document every interaction and activity in order to be able to defend ourselves, not from the client but from our own company, when these problem clients complained about our not being able to work the miracles on which they were sold.
Aside from the "who's to blame" efforts, management was seldom visible, despite hearing routinely about how committed they were to their consultants. Most of what I heard whenever someone criticized their senior management was nothing but PR spin intended to show others a different scene than the consultant was experiencing. Actual "boots on the ground" experience was that their words did not align with their practice. They can SAY they're committed all they want, but their actions said they were chasing dollars, period.
The kicker for me was years after leaving this company, they were asked to verify employment for a mortgage for which we were applying and despite SIX separate attempts to get a call back from their HR or accounting department, no one responded. The mortgage lender sent four separate requests in the mail: all were ignored. No one answers the phone; no one returns voice mail. The same lack of resolve I experienced when I was an employee and a major reason I left. We eventually had to pretend to be a large potential client calling for a quote. Oh, THEN they called back in less than five minutes, at which point we had to switch gears and pretend to be an attorney who used that tactic to get their attention and now that we had them on the phone were prepared to serve them a lawsuit if they didn't respond to the employment verification. Only then did someone respond to the mortgage lenders request.
Others may have had a great experience with this company, but despite my comments likely being dismissed out of hand as "coming from a disgruntled ex-employee," my experience with them was far from positive. I've been lucky enough to consult for 25 years and love it. Having been around the consulting block many times over all those years, I've worked with dozens of firms and many hundreds of clients and while this wasn't the worst company in that field, they sure rank in the bottom 25%. Others may have had a positive experience, but mine was that senior management was quick to judge, sometimes abusive, usually rigid, and only interested in what made a buck.
