The Need

Developing on-demand applications is a fast moving field. It is difficult for organizations focused on their products, operations, sales, and customers to step back and look at their projects with a fresh viewpoint. Broad knowledge of emerging trends in user experience and technology is critical success and to keeping ahead of the competition.

The Solution

Scio's consulting services provide our clients with product and technical planning, assessments, and reviews based on our hands-on experience in the field. Engagements can range from early stage assistance for new products to technical approach assessments or spot code reviews. Our consultants bring a peer-based point of view along with their experience from a wide range of projects. Your project will benefit from the knowledge of a partner in the field with proven practices that go beyond the lofty, academic assistance often provided by global professional services firms.

Scio's Approach

The product lifecycle itself is the base for our consulting services. We bring together a set of practices and experience specific to each project, but there are some key areas of interest we address directly with targeted engagements:

Product Planning

• Planning for business models, operations, user experience, technical architecture, and infrastructure.
• Application of direct product experience, balanced to your product and market.
• Focused engagements that are specific to your needs and allow you to direct your resources to your core business needs.

Design Reviews

• Peer-level reviews of existing designs for user experience, technical architecture and infrastructure.
• Collaborative engagements that respect your team's domain expertise and leverage Scio's expertise in on-demand applications.
• Reviews that help you make critical decisions on priorities, costs, and the road map you are on to bring your product to market.

Technical Assessments

• Clear, specific assessments of technology, code, infrastructure, and the technical issues that often just need a "second set of eyes."
• Honest, upfront judgment on our ability to address your needs before you engage. If our skills do not match your needs, we’ll help find someone who can.

Operational Reviews

• Business process reviews to ensure your application is providing the best support possible for your critical "back office" operations.
• Integration reviews to help assess where links between your online data and supporting business applications could be stronger or provide better value for decision support.
• Customer support reviews to help judge the alignment of support with customer retention and product enhancement.

Release Management

• Reviews of your product development cycle with an eye to moving to the model customers expect in an on-demand world.
• Reviews of processes for waterfall and Agile-based product and technical development teams
• Understandings of current practices, customer expectations, integration needs, feature planning, and strategic product management in the on-demand world.
• Experience from many industries, customer types and product models for your consideration.