>There's a reason major software vendors provide professional services. If their customers could reliably hire and (most importantly) retain experts on their own, they wouldn't need professional services.
This. As a tech person with decades of professional services experience in the tech space, I couldn't agree more.
Generally, there are three reasons why corporate entities hire professional services (this isn't limited to tech stuff either):
1. There's a specific need for design/implementation expertise where FTEs are either not readily available or are unnecessary once the implementation is complete;
2. The internal group in favor of a particular technology/implementation wants/needs validation from "experts" to get full buy-in from management;
3. Professional services are brought in to "validate" existing project plans/implementation details as a CYA against project failure (e.g., "the consultants told us this was the way to go. They were wrong, not us.") which (both bringing in consultants and project failure) happens a lot more often than you might think.
