Tech Consulting Cycle

Our cyclical consulting process prioritizes relationship building and continual problem solving over one-off, short-lived consulting agreements driven by profit.

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The C3 Consulting Process

pre-implementation

Business Need Identification

When engaging any new client, building a strong understanding of the hurdles they’re facing is a critical first step. Experience has taught our advisors that each business is unique, so we work to understand your internal operations and identify pressing business needs in order to build a close, collaborative relationship. This includes:

Studying your internal culture
Talking with stakeholders to understand their needs
Review any current contracts, bills, or architecture

pre-implementation

Define Requirements

Once we understand the business challenges that need to be solved, we define the requirements and success criteria to weigh any possible solution against. During this stage, we also work closely with clients to define a scope of work, project timeline, and budget.

Pre-determined, objective success criteria make evaluating potential vendors simpler and ensure that their ability to meet your needs is the most important consideration — not how much they’re willing to pay your advisor in commissions or how big their marketing budget is.

pre-implementation

Solution Evaluation

This step is often the most challenging for leaders within an organization to manage themselves: with other pressing responsibilities on your plate, it’s difficult to dive deeply into solutions and evaluate them all objectively.

Equipped with the objective requirements and success criteria developed alongside our clients, our advisors perform a detailed market evaluation that looks beyond the biggest providers. We conduct a data-driven analysis of all possible vendors and their proposals to ensure you’re getting a solution that supports your growth goals.

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pre-implementation

Supplier Selection & Negotiation

Once the field of providers has been narrowed, the work of choosing a provider begins. From watching demos of potential solutions to analyzing the total cost of ownership and negotiating a final solution, C3 advisors continually provide input, support, and ensures you have all of the information needed to make your decision confidently.

Because we’re paid a flat fee by whichever vendor is selected, your budget is the only pricing consideration we have in mind while negotiating. Our first priority is ensuring you don’t need to undertake this process again because of a bad-fit selection.

Implementation Support

Implementation

Successful implementation can be complex and often requires navigating internal politics, escalating issues with providers when needed, and sunsetting legacy technology. C3’s dedicated project managers provide the level of detailed support you need to ensure your chosen solution sticks the first time.

Instead of working with provider’s project managers, who are often overloaded and rely on templated information and processes, you get a project manager who understands your needs and can quickly and effectively address any issues that crop up.

post-implementation

Ongoing Life Cycle Management

Tech stacks are often less like a log cabin and more like a tower of Jenga blocks, prone to collapse when one item falls out of place or is hit with an outside force. So while post-implementation support is an important piece of the C3 Consulting Cycle, it’s not the final piece.

Our relationships with clients often continue on past the initial project and transform into a true partnership. We can help you manage your technology practice more proactively, whether it’s identifying other potential issues with your tech stack or evaluating new trends in the technology space and helping you decide if you need to get on board.