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Strategic Consulting

Alternative Technologies provides strategic consulting services to consumers, vendors, corporate management, and venture capitalists, including business and technology audits. These services may take several forms:

strategic management services - Leading business managers are faced with tremendous challenges. On the one hand, they must compete in a world of that is increasingly real-time and information-centric. On the ohter hand, they are constrained a heritage of business processes, regulations, accounting practices, legacy infrastructure, and unforgiving daily commitments. Alternative Technologies provides an objective analysis of these problems, relying on decades of experience to develop innovative but practical strategic solutions. By analyzing existing your existing assets, we are often able to propose cost-effective, short time-to-market, and highly competitive new products or services. We help executives identify core competencies, opportunities, and risks, so they can focus the use of their companies assets, acquire new assets, or divest of less than optimal assets. We have contributed to executive teams in the role of CTO Pro Tem, while helping to identify a permanent CTO, CIO, or other technology managment.

strategic marketing services - Vendors sometimes develop good products, but have a limited view of how to deliver the product to the consumer most effectively. Proper market positioning and focus on competitive features are necessary for success. Alternative Technologies helps vendors with the development of strategic marketing plans, or can evaluate existing plans. We have considerable experience establishing new product categories in the marketplace. We have helped develop advertisements that deliver a competitive and informative message, written numerous white papers that establish and explain market positioning and the technology, and given seminar tours that educate while providing new prospects.

strategic relationships - Over the last twenty years, Alternative Technologies has been instrumental in identifying and even arranging strategic relationships among a number of high technology companies. Often two vendors can benefit from integrating and co-marketing their products. This is particularly beneficial when a product is new and intended to be used with other products. Alternative Technologies has been instrumental in identifying, evaluating, and structuring relationships, whether as mergers and acquisitions, strategic partnerships, technology partnerships, or licensing of IP and products. Young companies often benefit from partnerships with existing consulting firms, rather than attempting to build their own consulting organizations.

strategic planning and review - Companies often need help developing a strategy for the acquisition, implementation, and use of technologies such as BPMS, EAI, and DBMS products. Such plans may span periods of six months to five years. Issues such as the identification of strategic technology, evaluation of it's cost and benefit, staffing issues (requirements, evaluations, and recommendations), education, and integration of the technology into the existing environment are usually addressed.

technology audits - Alternative Technologies offers the developers of new technologies an independent evaluation of the technology. Venture capitalists use our services before deciding rather or not to invest in a new company. Similarly, corporate management may wish to obtain a technology audit prior to committing corporate resources (such as staff or budget) to an effort. Technical managers may also benefit from an independent evaluation of their efforts as a tool for maintaining focus and meeting commitments to management.

product evaluations - Today's leading technologies, such as EAI-, BPMS-, and DBMS-related products, have become extremely complex and much depends on the selection of the best product for the requirements. The reasons for success or failure are often subtle, depending on a combination of product capabilities, how the product is used, vendor support, and in-house commitment. Consumers rarely have the opportunity to develop in-house expertise required to perform an in-depth evaluation such products prior to purchase. Access to vendor technical information is usually limited, or is biased by sales and marketing agendas. Access to and interpretation of relevant consumer experiences with the products is likewise difficult to obtain. Alternative Technologies helps the consumer make the best choice to meet their short-term and long-term needs.

design and development practice audits - Failure to establish efficient design and development practices for projects involving leading technologies is a frequently overlooked cause of cost-overruns, applications that "almost work," and scheduling delays. Managers, prospective partners, and prospective investors (such as venture capitalists) benefit from Alternative Technologies' design and development audits. An audit will reveal strengths and weaknesses of the process, identify overlooked staffing needs, evaluate of the ability to deliver, and recommend improvements.