CONSULTANCY THAT PAYS FOR ITSELF

In this day and age where can you find a consultancy that will cost you nothing and get your product to market early?

With manufacturing officially in recession, cut backs and cost efficiency are the keys to survival. Fortunately this is also the time where sensible IT investment can help a company survive and be primed for success when conditions improve. Many IT companies aim to meet expectations, however Atrial is dedicated to exceeding these expectations - and as an example, delivered a product a quarter early with increased functionality. This achievement saved the client enough money to pay for Atrial's services many times over. Is this the kind of Atrial Solution that could help you in improving your operations?

With a need to streamline operations, increase productivity and minimise time to market, sensible IT strategies can help a company survive and be primed to excel when trading conditions improve. However, with statistics showing only about 16% of projects are completed on time and within budget, and about 30% of all projects are cancelled before they are finished, this may seem risky*. That is why Atrial’s dedication to being on time, within budget and to exceed your expectations is the key to their combined success.

This dedication is exemplified by the following case study, where the benefits to the client from the Atrial team were substantial:

• Delivery of the project a quarter early.
• Delivery of the project with substantially more functionality than originally specified.
• Financial risks were removed by the contract being fixed price.

Atrial was invited to tender for a software development project that would reside inside a networking device. An existing product was to be extended to support twice its capacity. This was the largest development project that the client has ever outsourced.

Atrial agreed to perform the work based on a fixed price contract, but only after an initial period of analysis to evaluate the task and an independent evaluation by the client.

A small team of experienced Atrial consultants spent about one month studying the existing code and the changes that would be required, and then worked with the customer to define the timescale.

Both Atrial and the client concluded a schedule, and a fixed price contract was agreed. The team was resourced from Atrial consultants with a client developer acting as technical authority, although an Atrial project manager held overall responsibility.

As the project developed, key decisions were made by the team which meant more functionality could be included in the product. In fact, functionality that had originally been excluded due to the pressures of time to market was added back in. The scope of the changes required was controlled to keep the impact to a minimum whilst maximising the results.

Atrial also took the unusual step of over-resourcing the team to ensure that the project was delivered, not only on time, but also ahead of schedule by a whole quarter.

Atrial provided a level of service that not only met but exceeded expectations. By delivering a quarter early, it enabled the client to get the development for "free", in addition the revenues expected in that first quarter is a significant multiple of Atrial’s fee.

Is this the kind of Solution that could help your operations.