Those are the two professions that I can think of off the top of my head that
1. involve esoteric abstract knowledge
2. have been around for a while

You’d think that if there was a way to solve the ‘billing problem’ these professions might have found it.

All money (the whole of all the cash available today worldwide) is the future value of monetizeable labor (ml). This in turn is the product of human effort (he), skills (s), and tools (t). For this nifty equation:

ml = he (times) s (time) t

Note that there is no “time” element. It is assumed in the “human effort part”. Also, skill includes knowledge.

(skill is a multiplier, so unskilled but not impaired: skill = 1)
(tools is a multiplier, so untooled but not impaired: tools = 1)

Note that tools include material (such as ore, wheat, flour, paper, whatever) and actual tools (computers, hammers, image-editors, trucks and airplanes, etc)

Note that skills include physical and mental abilities, as well as knowledge.

Now, tools are bought my monetized labor, so this creates a recursive equation:

tools = ml = he (times) s (times) t

and eventually leads to

tools = ml = he (times) s

So ultimately tools can be reduced out of the equation.

Which means money is human effort multiplied by skill.

Now, human effort is the activity that performs an output.

Skill is something that applied to human labor allows the reduction of the amount of time used to complete the activity, and/or increase the quality of the output, or even allow the output to be created.

For example, someone with poor English composition skills would take a very long time to write a analysis paper on Virtualization in 2008, regardless of the amount of effort expended. Someone with great English composition skills would be produce that output in much less time. Someone with no knowledge of computers, regardless of English composition skills, might never be able to produce the output.

The hourly model assumes a fixed skill level, and measures output in amount of effort over time.

This model is flawed for information technology because skill varies widely and a very skilled person could produce with very little effort (time) what an average person might take weeks to do.

So you need to stop thinking of “hours” worked, but rather of units of output. Since in the information age, you cannot readily standardize on what a unit is (A quip? A paper? A blog comment? A remark in a call? A reference to your company in the WSJ? Attending a conference?) you end up having to lump these things into “What Analysts Do” (conveniently initialized as “WAD”) and applying an arbitrary measure such as hours for billing purposes.

I say create a new billing term such as Work Unit (WU). In your contract, instead of “number of hours included” put ” number of Analyst Work Units included” and use those up as you go in the month, then summarize:

Work Units expended from 9/1/2008 to 10/1/2008

Blogging presence: 400
Conference Calls : 1600
Report Preparation: 2800
Report Delivery: 900
Direct converstations with Company empplyees: 800
Twitter: 700
Facebook: 600
Friendster: 500
Digg: 250
Press Releases: 2500
etc: 900
etc: 400
etc: 40

Then, you review that with the client. If they want you to do more or less of each type of category, discuss strategy, tactics, and adjust.

Try to expend all “available work units per month”, or roll them over (to accumulate for big projects). Adjust monthly billing to client to reflect their usage.

Finally, don’t go crazy on the minute tracking. Ballpark it. The analyst needs to be fair, but who cares if 8 blog comments are worth 320 work units? Are then individual blog comments each worth 40 points? Not really. One might be long and insightful and worth 250, the other 7 might be simple me-toos.

Makes sense?

Basically, we sell services as though they are software. License plus maintenance. Where “license” is the solution (marketing plan, speaking engagement, security program management guidance, etc.), and for a year they can have us on tap to answer their questions via phone, e-mail, or even in person.

The idea i am thinking of is that once all of your working minutes are recorded into some system, how you bill them can be a seperate discussion, and you can decide with a client what works best for both parties.
For example for those clients that want or need the traditional hourly billing model, the data is extracted and presented that way, but for a client that has bought into the “flat-fee model”, they can see when and how you spent time for them (and this allows for things like conference time etc).

Hope this makes sense.

You always have the retainer model (use it or lose it), which I despise as much as hourly.

Fixed fee engagements put your and your clients’ interests at odds. Your incentive is to get done with least time spent and move on.

Hourly is a pain, but clients are assured they get what they pay for, which, arguably, is your time. Make re-upping easy, i.e. automatic built into the contract. They’ll just get an invoice when it happens. Kinda like toll tags. Put a provision in the contract that no more than X hours will be consumed in a month without prior approval.