FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

How do you engage with clients on consulting projects?

We provide consulting services on a project and retainer basis. Most project assignments are delivered on a fixed price basis to complete a set of agreed upon objectives. Retainer engagements cover 6 month to 1 year contracts and are billed monthly. Retainers make sense for assignments such as CEO advisory or providing long-term support for marketing, development, project management or other organizations.

How large is a typical engagement?

We work on engagements of all sizes. At one extreme, we perform one day knowledge transfer assignments and at the other extreme we have retainer engagements that have continued over ten years. Most assignments involve one to three weeks of consulting effort delivered over a longer elapsed period (to accommodate our clients' scheduling constraints).

Are consulting engagements performed onsite?

It depends on the assignment. We have traveled to sites around the world to perform consulting services on site, but have also performed numerous engagements exclusively from over offices. Given our global client base, we've become particularly adept at using collaboration tools to work closely with distributed client teams without the need for travel. We also have clients that prefer to travel to our offices to avoid the interruptions and distractions of their place of work. Most engagements involve a mixture of onsite and offsite work.

How do you avoid conflicts of interest between clients?

Given the nature of our consulting, we understand the importance of confidentiality and our clients' competitive concerns. We avoid assignments which may result in real or perceived conflicts between clients. If we believe a prospective client may be problematic for an existing client, we will discuss the situation with our existing client before accepting the assignment. Thankfully, we have had very few instances of potential conflict since our founding.

How do you handle such a diverse set of consulting services?

While every project is different to some extent, they all rely on the same basic skill set of research, analytics, measurement and effective communications. These building blocks enable us to tackle assignments in new areas as successfully as we deliver our "tried and true" services.