2025 Katzscan Newsletters

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The staffing firm – consultant relationship. 

I acquire my some of my clients directly, some through referral, and some of my projects through staffing firms. I don’t mind the latter even though my hourly rate is less; I consider it part of the cost of doing business in the acquisition of income, or like having an agent if I was a movie star, that concept which makes me feel better. Work is work, and as long as I am busy, getting paid, and making money, I am overall a happy camper. 

When a staffing firm presents me with a project, the company needing help may or may not be a current customer of the staffing company. As the consulting talent – a term which I am not using as a narcissistic diva but rather as a statement of who I am as well as referencing the industry terminology – it very well be my experience, skills, and credentials that draws the company to consider selecting the staffing firm and interviewing me and/or other candidates. It is possibly the consulting talent that first distinguishes a staffing firm from their competitors. 

How we – the consulting talent – handle ourselves through the interview process is not just a reflection of ourselves, but is a representation of the staffing firm. Not once can I recollect has a recruiter ever sat in on an interview, but I think that they should. The consultant is therefore the representative of the staffing firm, making or breaking the relationship between the staffing firm and the current or prospective customer company. 

The performance of the consultant during the project is a reflection of both the consultant and the staffing firm. As much as it is important for the consultant to maintain professionalism for the sake of their own reputation and relationship with the staffing firm, the consultant’s performance can make or break the relationship between the customer company and the staffing firm, determining whether the staffing firm will have an opportunity to place other candidates with the customer company. 

This is significant responsibility for the consultant to uphold. And this is a significant responsibility for the staffing firm to recognize of their consultants. It therefore behooves the staffing firm to support their consultants throughout their project timeframe, and this includes ensuring that their consultants are paid on time. Staffing firms should never – ever – impose their collection problems upon their consultants, who have their own financial responsibilities to deal with, regardless of whether their consultants are engaged W2 or C2C. 

The staffing firm-consultant business model is a beneficial one. Staffing firms handle the role of customer acquisition and project billable hours collection and pay, while consultants can focus on the work that they enjoy doing. Consultants benefit staffing firms by providing unique talents, technical skills, and depth of experience that staffing firms can market to acquire new customers and promote to existing customers for new projects. (The majority of my projects are extended.) It is a win-win scenario if managed correctly and each understands their role and responsibility.  

Are your IT hiring practices the same as your medical help choices? 

So … after reading my newsletters for so long, you decide that I am a fascinating person and want to meet for lunch to chat about all sorts of interesting topics. We agree on a date, time, and location. You drive your car there and I take a ride share service, having left my car at my mechanic’s shop for routine maintenance. 

We review the menu and I make my lunch selection. You have a craving for clams casino. 

Our server advises that even though clams casino is not on the menu, the chef can make it, but our server does not recommend it, because it is not a menu item. You insist. The server calls the manager over who repeats that yes, the chef can make clams casino, but it is not a menu item, so the manager advises you to order something from the menu. You persist. The manager calls the chef over and the chef informs that the only can of clams in the pantry predates the whole Y2K episode and may not be fresh. You are resolute. 

We are served our respective lunches and after a few bits you tell me that you don’t feel well. (Um … it’s probably bad clams, but I’m not going to say it, at least not right then-and-there.) I inform you that I know exactly where medical help is located, and I ask you to give me to the keys to your vehicle so I can drive you straight there. 

You hesitate, and you ask me if I have ever driven your make and model of vehicle before. 

And so, I answer honestly: “Well … I have been driving for 45 years. I have driven both domestic and foreign vehicles, from sporty cars to sedans to small SUVs. I have driven manual and automatic transmissions. In fact, in 2018, I drove a left-handed manual transmission sedan from one coast of Ireland to the other and back, and up-and-down a mountain (true story). Inasmuch as I have not driven your exact make-and-model vehicle before, I’m sure that I can acclimate to it quickly and get you to the medical help you need safely.”  

As your condition continues to decline, you ponder my answer, and reply: “Norman, that all sounds well and good, but I think I’ll wait for someone who has driven my exact make and model of vehicle, even if it takes them longer to get me to medical help.” 

This hopefully humorous but perhaps poignantly not-so-funny scenario describes the typical hiring practice in Information Technology today. Business experiences, broad ranges of technical background, and soft-skill qualities are far too-often overlooked if not totally dismissed because the candidate lacks one, small, particular granular detail that only a Ctrl-F on a resume would find. Granted, sometimes that one skill is the one being sought after. But mostly, and despite numerous LinkedIn posts by recruiters and hiring managers (and executives), the hiring process remains broken in that the skills supposedly sought after are tossed aside in the earliest phases of the hiring process for a singular arcane requirement. 

If your IT or operations or supply chain projects are running over-budget and beyond their reasonable timeframes, or are not resulting in the solutions required, maybe it’s because you passed up on hiring the candidates who could have delivered you to the help you needed faster, even if they never had the experience with your exact make-and-model of systems or industry or business before. Ask yourself if you ever saw those candidates’ credentials because they failed to find their way through your broken hiring process. And with AI being applied more frequently to scan resumes, will sacrificing subjective understanding for objective parsing only perpetuate this problem? 

Article series announcement: Achieving the Perfect Order.

It is with great pleasure that I announce the publication of my 12-part article series on how to achieve the perfect order. If yours is a consumer product company selling to retailers or grocers, this article series is for you.  

The article series is published by Supply Chain Management Review and can be found at: https://www.scmr.com/article/norman-katz-article-series-outlines-the-steps-to-achieving-the-perfect-order 

Based on a February 2005 article titled “The Customer’s Bill of Rights” by Dr. Edward J. Marien of (at the time) the University of Wisconsin at Madison, (I still have my original paper copy of the article in my desk drawer), I have taken Dr. Marien’s eight rights (8Rs) and expanded upon them, bringing them up-to-date, and relating them not just for the B2B business model but also for B2C and D2C business models too. 

The concept of the “perfect order” has been tossed around within the retail industry for decades, ever since I first became involved in supply chain vendor compliance in 1993. But no one has ever defined what the “perfect order” explicitly meant, let alone how to achieve it, especially end-to-end. When I read Dr. Marien’s article, I instantly knew that he had laid the foundation for something more than just what one business should expect from another business as a customer-buyer purchasing from a seller-supplier. 

The main articles in the series are accompanied by Explainer articles that dive deeper into the topics, offering consultative-type advice and insights from my decades of experience helping consumer product companies strengthen their customer relationships, improve supply chain performance, gain a competitive edge, and reduce costly financial penalty chargebacks. 

In a commoditized world, execution is the real competitive edge. Consumers want products on store shelves and online availability. Supply chain disruption – regardless of whether by the retailer or grocer or by the vendor – results in lost consumer confidence, lost sales, and increased operational costs incurred by both the buyer and the seller.  

If yours is a consumer product company selling to retail or grocery, you will find this article series to be an informational and worthwhile read, with takeaways that will benefit your business and help to improve your supply chain performance. If yours is a retail or grocery company, you will find this article series to be an insightful and valuable read, with key points that will help to improve your vendor partnerships. 

Got questions or need help afterwards? As the expert who has authored the only book on the subject – Successful Supply Chain Vendor Compliance (Gower/Routledge, 2016) – I’m an email or a phone call away, and available to assist.   

Don’t get quished!

This month’s newsletter is a warning. 

It is not, however, a caution against a certain savory French tart made with an egg-custard filling and baked in a pastry crust. That would be a warning against getting quiched. And there’s nothing wrong with quiche, I happen to like it, I just wouldn’t want to get hit in the face with one. 

No. This warning is courtesy of AIM, the Association for Automatic Identification and Mobility (www.aimglobal.org), as we are cautioned against scanning QR codes that may be used to perpetrate fraud. Innocuous as they seem and ubiquitous as they have become, QR codes can be used to redirect users to lookalike websites representing scam websites that can be used to load harmful code on mobile devices or try and trick us to giving up sensitive information. 

On a warehouse project several years ago, I pushed back vehemently against the use of QR codes as barcode symbologies for warehouse bin location labels. Linear, 1D symbology was perfectly suited for these labels to represent the warehouse location, aisle, shelf, and bin. The introduction of the QR symbology for this purpose was unnecessary and compromised security. What if a QR code warehouse location label was substituted for a fraudulent QR code? Would warehouse scanners have blocked the site, or would warehouse scanners have potentially allowed malicious code to infect the handheld device in use and weave its way through the system? 

Inasmuch as there is a transition to 2D (two-dimensional) barcodes for retail items, we cannot let our guard down when it comes to security. One-dimensional barcodes remain safe and relevant for certain uses. 

AIM recommends a visual inspection of the QR code to help ensure validity and whether it has been tampered with, but even a barcode expert like myself would have difficulty in looking at a QR code and knowing if it was going to “quish” me or not. 

Other recommendations by AIM on this matter include: 

· Using a trusted scanning app.

· Verify the barcode’s source. 

· Enable the device’s security features. 

In what is called a “brushing” scam, a person receives a package that they did not order and with no return address identification. Upon opening the package, there is only a QR code to scan. But scanning the QR code will cause their phone to become infected with a virus. 

Risk management needs to remain a personal and professional priority. As 2D barcodes like QR codes continue to grow in popularity, we need to remain cautious about their source before we are so ready to scan them. As always, trust but verify, and make sure that you scan securely. 

For more information, download AIM’s QR Code Phishing Infographic at: https://www.aimglobal.org/product/qr-code-phishing-awareness-paper/ 

Katzscan: Your truly independent contractor.

An insightful article by John Kellenberger, General Counsel of Keystone Lines, in the February 2024 issue of Inbound Logistics magazine regarding the hot topic of independent contractor or employee. The issue centers around the March 11, 2024 change to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by the Department of Labor (DOL). 

According to Mr. Kellenberger, the new rule, or the change to the existing rule, muddies the waters in regards to how independent contractors are considered, potentially making them classified as employees. As stated in the article, this would be disruptive to many supply chain relationships that rely on independent contractors, such as those in logistics like brokers and motor carriers. 

When I began my life as an entrepreneur in January 1996 – amazing as I start my 29th year – I cannot say that I really knew what I was doing as a business owner, even as the owner of a company of one. Thankfully my longtime accountant, (“Aunt Shirley” – you know her if you are a reader of my newsletters – who also created my company name, and who sadly passed away in August 2024 just three weeks shy of what would have been her 96thbirthday), guided me well. But I was aware of two important beliefs which I continue to follow to this day.

The first is to always answer the question as to why someone would want to hire me. I continue to take educational courses as time allows. As a US national and international speaker (60+ presentations), online and print content writer (50+ articles), the author of two peer-reviewed journal articles, and the author of three business books with two published by a leading academic publisher, I think that, along with my extensive experience, I’ve established my credibility as an expert in my field. 

The second is that I set out to be a truly independent solution consultant. I am not a reseller of any products or services. I am not contractually bound to nudge a client company towards any particular software or hardware product. As a technical and functional expert, I advise my clients to the solutions that are in their best interest, not mine. 

My company is a Florida C-corporation, not an S or LLC. (I don’t think that LLCs existed when I started my business.) Shirley and I talked about how we wanted to set up the company, and I just wanted to do things as “business-like” as possible, and a C corporation made the most sense to me, and it still does. I carry my own health and liability insurance policies.  

So, when companies hire Katzscan, they are truly getting an independent contractor, in terms of both the business relationship and the perspective on the solution for the problem to be solved.  

I’m still a company of one, because I know that companies that hire Katzscan really want me, which remains a great compliment. In the age of AI fakes, I’ve staked out a solid reputation, so you can have confidence that when you are hiring me you are really, actually getting me. With a robust website and LinkedIn profile, you will already know a lot about me before we have our first conversation.