Fixed-Cost Consulting Products | Platform Associates

Platform Associates provides a number of fixed-cost consulting products. These products are intended to give primarily new clients a way to engage with us for specific, short-term strategic projects at a predictable cost.

In general, our fixed-cost products focus on strategic consulting. (We also perform software development services for clients on a time/materials basis, as well as fixed-cost software development, the cost of which varies according to what you want to accomplish.)

Here are some examples of what we can accomplish in a fixed-cost consulting engagement:

Community Strategy. In the Community Strategy engagement we devote our extensive experience in the creation and management of online communities and social networks to your business, synthesizing the objectives of your business with the intentions of your customers to intelligently facilitate the flow of information, promote two-way feedback, and promote engagement.
Platform Strategy. Opening up your business to third parties has a number of technical and business implications. In the Platform Strategy engagement we work through these together to ensure that the platform you're developing is in alignment with your business, that the technical implementation will be compelling to third parties, and that you avoid any of the many "gotchas" that implementing a platform product can entail.
Developer Experience Tune-Up. Intended for online businesses that have already started the process of opening their technology to third parties, the Developer Experience Tune-Up analyzes an existing third-party developer experience and provides specific recommendations for optimization. We can focus on developer content, optimizing developer adoption, analytics and metrics, and the incorporation of new platform products to an existing line.
Platform Marketing. There are unique challenges to marketing a technology platform to developers and partners; in many cases, the tools of the traditional marketer are ineffective when marketing a platform product. In a Platform Marketing engagement, we can develop a plan for increasing awareness and adoption of your platform using traditional and nontraditional techniques.

These consulting engagements typically begin with a meeting to transfer information, set goals and align expectations. The engagement concludes with a meeting in which we present our recommendations and advice to your team; we typically also provide written recommendations (including screen shots, mockups, etc., as necessary) as part of our deliverable.

At the conclusion of our engagement, we are happy to work further with you to implement our recommendations, or we can step back and serve in an advisory capacity while your team works on tactical implementation (at your option).

All our fixed-cost consulting engagements take approximately one week to complete. The cost is US$2,500.