Crown’s Value Proposition: The Software First “Hybrid” Advantage

Unlike its competitors, Crown is not a typical firm. Rather, Crown’s value is demonstrated through its software offerings. Crown frequently uses engagements in order to leverage and grow their technology solutions.

Traditional IT consulting firms follow a prescriptive approach to client engagements. The process involves a detailed assessment of a particular client need and the creation of a customized solution to meet that need. The consulting firm will follow a series of steps in its process: conduct a strategy analysis, identify an appropriate technology solution, and implement that solution to meet the client’s need. This process is repeated over and over for each new client with little modification to the overall process or project timeline. The value of a traditional consulting firm is based on their understanding and application of “best practices”, or lessons learned from previous engagements, to solve a current client need; not necessarily in the process utilized.

By following this process, a traditional consulting firm is able to expand its knowledge base of best practices and create unique solutions for its clients. The consulting firm leaves the project with additional knowledge on how to solve a problem, but often leaves behind the customized technology solution that made the project a success. Because a traditional consulting firm is compensated on a time and materials basis, the firm is incented to create longer project timelines with customized solutions for each client.

For traditional firms, this model meets their financial goals:
· Keep billable hours as high as possible
· Avoid software that will eliminate the need for human capital
· Grow bigger, but not more efficient

Crown’s model rejects the traditional prescriptive methodology. Rather than only provide the next client the benefits of learned strategies, Crown also provides the customer with enhanced software solutions from each previous, and future, engagement. In this way, Crown can deliver the same technology solution adopted at one client site to another client without having to repeat the entire project timeline.

For Crown, this model meets their goals:
· Create a highly utilized, knowledgeable staff that can streamline the project
· Provide customized software solutions built on best practices
· Capture more market share and grow
· Establish reputation as the low-cost provider due to lower price and higher efficiency

Further, the client is able to own and maintain those best practices, and software, after the project has ended. Crown will continue to update its software solutions through future client engagements, providing updates to previous clients who own earlier versions of the same or similar software. Crown, in that respect, is able to continually service clients long after the engagement is over.

Crown’s Software First model provides several benefits to its customers:
· Rapid, skilled implementation of customized solutions
· An in-house software solution with ownership rights
· Benefit of previous product enhancements based on best practices
· Benefit of future product enhancements based on best practices
· Half the cost of the competition and twice the value

In addition to benefiting its customer base, Crown’s software model differentiates it from its competitors in the following ways:
· Continuously growing intellectual property
· Research & development is funded by the clients since it is developed on a case-by-case basis on the client site
· Software updates have created a new channel of recurring maintenance revenue year over year
· Crown’s software replaces manual processes
· Ability to take on more engagements and grow to include more software offerings
· Brand development and increasing ability to serve repeat customers
· Overall lower cost of ownership

By the efficient nature of this model, Crown continues to thrive despite the current economic downturn. When IT professionals are encouraged to seek low cost alternatives, they rely on an organization able to consolidate software solutions and provide the highest ROI possible.

Note: Thanks to Crown Managing Partner, Richard Hearn, for the text in this post.