Despite all the words from all the folks in the game and not in the game .. I know young consultants who went to the US and are making a fine living in the consultancy profession there - accounting, manufacturing other disciplines. One young lady specifically who did not want to leave as she was doing fine in the DR but felt she had to, specifically to broaden her skill set. She got hired by a large consultancy and is now doing great. There are more folks like her in the DR. Consultants that make the decision to leave and not those that have to leave or leave in desperation.
I wrote to four consultants today and made them aware of this thread. Not one of them was very keen to look at it. Good people are good anywhere, in any country.
Accounting is just a matter of getting used to standard practice. On the accounting side it would take about six months of on-the-job good mentoring. (I mean mentoring). It is not a question of learning the tool. The folks are experienced and they will learn the tool. It is a question of learning the business environment in order for the customer to have trust in the consultant and for the consultant to be able to display local knowledge. It is not a question of ability, it is a question of education and exposure to a different country and different rules with less 'bending' ability - with added a few additional rules. Recruit well, train well and you will have good consultants. Expose them to different business environments and you will have excellent consultants.
To recruit, you will have to steal from other consultancies. I would estimate that there are about 200 trained application consultants (large aps) and of this 100, approximately 50 technical in whichever language the app requires. Much consulting training in the DR is done on the job. Consultants spend their off time back in the office learning much more than what I ever saw in the US or other first world countries. There are 3 consultancies that you can steal from. Two of them deal in Microsoft Dynamics suites (Baan specifically) and one is still dealing with legacy products. There is only one consultant that deals with SAP and no consulting services for Oracle Apps - not even legacy Peoplesoft apps. Planner cannot help you. (Sorry Planner - I know you mean well but this is very specific).
There are a few folks that deal with open source suites but I do not know them and cannot talk about them.
But really, consider that if you're going to have to put in 6 months on the job to my estimation to acclimate consultants to another business climate, would you not do better in the US or Canada itself? A few of the with-it Canadian software companies are actively recruiting in the US as a few people there are out of work.
There are not many people on the board that understand the large consulting implementation sphere.