An independent decision, evidenced and defensible
We do not resell licences, and no platform can buy its way onto your shortlist. Some vendor links on this site are affiliate links, disclosed as such, but the selection work is paid for by you - which is what leaves us free to say the cheapest option is adequate, or that you do not need us at all.
What goes wrong when the choice is made badly
A poor CRM decision rarely fails loudly. It fails as a slow accumulation of cost and frustration that nobody attributes to the original choice.
You end up on a bigger plan than you need, usually because of a feature that sold the demo and never got switched on. Add seats for people who log in twice a year and an annual increase nobody capped, and the bill keeps growing without anyone deciding it should.
People go through the motions. They update the CRM on a Friday because they have been told to, then run their actual week out of email and a spreadsheet. You are paying for something that records the work instead of helping anyone do it.
Two reports show two different figures and the meeting turns into an argument about which one is right. After that happens a few times, people stop bothering with the reports and go back to their own version of the numbers.
When the system will not do something, someone finds a way round it. A field used for the wrong thing, a spreadsheet on the side, a small integration built in a hurry. After a couple of years the whole setup is held together by bits nobody wants to touch.
If the choice was wrong you tend to find out about eighteen months in, and by then you are paying for two systems at once. New licences and setup on one side, the old one still running while the data is moved across and everyone is trained again.
You can lose half a year to demos, internal debate and a shortlist that keeps changing, and still end up with a decision nobody is confident defending. That is time your senior people were not spending on customers.
How the consultation works
Four sequential stages, typically two to three weeks end to end depending on how many stakeholders, how many processes and the level of functionality required.
No charge. We establish what you sell, how you sell it, what is failing now, and who has to live with the outcome. At the end of this call we tell you honestly whether a formal selection exercise is worth your money.
Structured interviews with the people who will use the system, not only the people buying it. Requirements are separated into must-have, valuable and cosmetic, then weighted and signed off by you before any vendor is considered. Most disagreements surface here, which is where they are cheapest to resolve.
The full market is screened against your weighted requirements, then a shortlist of three is scored in detail - functional fit, three-year total cost, implementation route, integration burden and exit cost. Scores are shown to you with their working, so you can challenge the judgement rather than accept it.
A written recommendation with the reasoning, the risks and the terms to insist on: uplift caps, exit and data-extraction clauses, realistic seat counts and a phased implementation scope. We sit in on the commercial conversations if you want us there.
What you receive
The benefits
Weeks rather than months, because the screening work is already done and the process does not stall in internal debate.
A shortlist with visible reasoning, which is what makes the decision defensible to a board or an investor.
Avoided over-specification, avoided over-buying of seats and tiers, and better contract terms than an unadvised buyer secures.
No licence reselling and no platform paying for placement. Affiliate links are disclosed where they exist, and implementation is a separate engagement you are free to take elsewhere.
Let's discuss the service and what it would cost
Fees depend on the number of stakeholders and the complexity of the process, so we quote after the discovery call rather than publish a price that would be wrong for most people. The first call is free and carries no obligation.