"The six questions you should ask any consulting or IT services provider"

Before you begin working with any consulting or IT services provider (including Astadia), you should get clear answers to these key questions. If a particular firm can't provide answers that make sense to you, think twice before you sign up with them.

Question #1: "Can you describe your typical client?"

Why you need to know:
You're looking for a firm that is used to working with companies which closely resemble your own. The closer the match, the more likely they are to readily understand and effectively deal with your issues and circumstances.

The Astadia answer:
Our client base is diverse, with nearly a third of our clients representing fortune 500 companies, a third mid-market companies and a third small and emerging businesses.  While seemingly diverse, these clients tend to have similar concerns when it comes to getting ROI from a CRM investment, implementing a SaaS strategy or improving their overall productivity.  Our clients are spread uniformly across a dozen industries

Question #2: "What is your specialty?"

Why you need to know:
Most firms, including Astadia, extend their capabilities and solution sets through partnerships. But all firms have core competencies - what they do best. You want to make sure you know what your provider's strengths and areas of focus are.

The Astadia answer:
We specialize in helping clients improve productivity across their sales, marketing, customer care and employee performance efforts with special focus on SaaS transformation.  While we have relationships with many firms, we have dedicated teams to focus on a core set of these where we have certifications or special access to resources. These partners include salesforce.com, Cornerstone OnDemand, Eloqua, Google, Workday, and Xactly.

Question #3: "How will you staff our engagement?"

Why you need to know:
It's rather common for services firms to bring in senior people to win your business, then turn things over to junior staff for implementation. You want a senior-level project manager who understands your business to drive the engagement and be accountable for all deliverables.

The Astadia answer:
Astadia considers a number of factors when selecting staff for your engagement, including subject matter expertise, personality and geographic proximity.  An engagement manager will be assigned to you based on these factors -- and this individual will be your single point of contact during the engagement and is responsible for your on-time, on-budget result.  Your engagement manager will also coordinate other Astadia specialists and resources that will contribute to your project.  Astadia boasts one of the largest pools of engagement professionals in the world for our key partners.

Question #4: "What's your track record for keeping to schedule?"

Why you need to know:
Virtually every client we know today is under enormous pressure to improve the bottom line and enhance its customers' experience. Still, many consulting and solutions firms treat their project schedules as if they were guidelines rather than commitments.

The Astadia answer:
When we agree to a project schedule, we stick to it. We utilize a change management process to manage changes in scope so that you are never caught surprised. If unforeseen challenges are encountered, we work openly and rationally to address the circumstances, communicating frequently and effectively with you. And when necessary, we often use our distributed team structure to increase our capacity.  Astadia has an excellent track record for on-time project delivery.

Question #5: "Do you typically stay within budget?"

Why you need to know:
The last thing you like to hear from your consulting or IT services firm is that something is outside the scope of work. Most firms try to run up the T&M tab or, with fixed price projects, bill you for anything that does not fall within their carefully crafted language in the Statement of Work, no matter how small the variation. It's important to know a firm's history for respecting your money.

The Astadia answer:
Experience tells us that something will change after the project starts. Addressing one requirement might trigger another…new ideas will arise (which is a good thing!). We take that reality into consideration at the start of the engagement and manage change accordingly. Very often we don't charge anything for scope changes or to address new requests if they don't actually impact resourcing in a significant way. In short, we respect our clients' money.  For any changes in budget or resources, we utilize a change management process.

Question #6: "What's the one reason, above all others, why we should work with you?"

Why you need to know:
This is a subtle way to discover what motivates the firms you're considering and what, if anything, makes one different from the others.

The Astadia answer:
Everything about us from our engagement process to our absolute focus on quality - is designed to help your organization make more money, more reliably. That's our passion.