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PARAGON products are a combination of unique steps
and mechanisms that are customized for each client business initiative. Each single step
may be an end product itself. Examples of these are:
Phases:
The Voice-of-Market™ Process consists
of many unique business practices that are critical to success both prior to and during
investment into areas new to clients. The PARAGON
professional staff has many years of experience in the several dozen processes that will
be combined into each assignment exemplified by critical processes, such as: Stage-Gate,
Voice-of-Market™, Six Sigma, Discovery Based Learning, and Creative Problem Solving.
These and other critical best practices ensure innovation and differentiation, strategic
fit, and accurate forecasting.
Phases are the most utilized product by clients because they offer several different mechanisms
that both generate comprehensive information while providing steps for evaluation and focusing.
Phases allow PARAGON to apply Discovery Based Learning
processes to explore and identify important information affecting our clients beyond the
initial understanding of needs originally known. Phases also contain research by the PARAGON
staff to develop a high degree of information on targets chosen by the client. Stage-gate
meetings within and at the end of the Phase ensure the output meets all the client's needs.
Multiple Phases:
Multiple Phases deliver the greatest support to the client by
PARAGON when the client business initiative has any of the following attributes:
- A very early starting point with many stages required prior to commercialization.
- A very broad starting point in which many separate market, business, or technology targets
must be considered.
- The client has little in-house expertise in the area being considered and PARAGON
becomes the primary staff as a cost effective mechanism to pursue opportunities.
- The business initiative has major investment and other strategic importance.
Forums and Surveys:
Many client needs are focused and clear enough to allow their objectives to be attained
from PARAGON Voice-of-Market™ Forums or from
a PARAGON Survey. These are lower cost and extremely
effective mechanisms for obtaining necessary information and insights in an objective and
confidential manner.
One of the most popular and valuable individual products is the PARAGON
Voice-of-Market™ Forum. This consists of a panel of high level experts from within
the PARAGON Network™ whose expertise fits our
client's needs, who are brought together for a full day at a location not associated directly
with our client.
Steps prior to the Forum assure that PARAGON has
the required understanding of the situation and objectives of the client. PARAGON
will then recruit those individuals whose knowledge and experience is critical for success.
The client provides oversight and approval on: an overall recruitment strategy, the chosen
PARAGON Network™ attendees, the positioning
and preparation of the attendees prior to the Forum, and the agenda and mechanisms for the
session. The client observes the forum in "real-time" from an observation room
and provides guidance, feedback, and redirection with immediate results.
Module Packages:
Module packages are discounted, volume agreements that allow PARAGON
to provide support to an organization over a wide range of topics in many different business
and product areas that would require separate budgeting, scheduling, and focus. An example
of this would be to have PARAGON speced into a new
product development process that requires all projects to have Voice-of-Market™ Forums
at specified development stages.
These packages typically cover a year (or other designated time) and require client commitment
for a minimum number of "modules" comprised of the individual products listed
above. For example, a PARAGON Voice-of-Market™
Forum is one module and a phase is typically three modules.
The module packages are attractive to organizations with separate business, project, or
other specific accounting units that normally need to engage their individual activities
separately. By acquiring a module package, the organization has the ability to ensure that
issues considered important strategically are addressed by the tactical units and that the
collective leveraging of PARAGON benefits results
in an overall savings in consulting fees.
Studies:
Proprietary to the client market, competitive, business, channel, product, and technology
studies benefit from the insights and information gained from the PARAGON
Network™ that is not captured or a part of other consultant or internal studies.
Equity involvement:
PARAGON contracts with both corporations and venture
capital organizations with agreements based on equity positions, contingency fees, options,
and non-fee based arrangements as preferred or required by the client.
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