Pros
In 12 years of my career, I have NEVER worked with a better, more talented group of people from an IT perspective. I cannot say enough about the people I worked with...they made me and Avanade look like superstars in great client situations, and made project work look easy in difficult client situations. The peer-to-peer support group is AWWESOME. I have never been with an employer where the culture is so engrained in helping your peers on project work. Because others were so helpful, it made me want to always help and add my 2 cents in on practice, project, and business questions. I REALLY miss that aspect at my new/current employer. I was also really proud to be apart of the Avanade family, I represented and wore the Avanade brand as a badge of honor to the outside world; to this day, I still do.
Cons
The NA EBS group I was with was small compared to how some of the other divisions were set up. With that, you'd assume that you could have some good visibility with the director of the applicaiton group and Sr. Director of EBS. Now looking back on my experience, I do see that 'visibility' came to those that were apart of the 'in' crowd. With how we were so distributed across the country and how we were staffed on projects (many times without anyone else from the actual application group), each consultant was his own island...until needing support from others using the email group. There was no true way of getting into the 'in' crowd unless you were staffed on a large project that needed attending by the application Director. My CM and my director never got to know me or my true skill set because of the island. That was truely too bad for Avanade and for me. The other major con was the sales life cycle. I think the process used for sales and closing deals is a HUGE obstacle for shoring up what's in the pipeline...to the detriment of the consultants. The overall sales life cycle was/is way TOO long and overly complicated with checks and balances for most small and mid sized projects. My current employer snags deals left and right from Avanade because we are able to nimbly navigate concerns, SOWs, and contracts with prospective clients far more quickly than Avanade can respond.