Project Audit

Introduction

To accommodate repetitive Project Design & Modeling cooperation and improve our services towards you in terms of costs and efficiency SKIM introduces a consultancy bundle, the so called Project Audit.

Benefits

• greatly reduced hourly tariff (regular tariffs start at € 110 and go up to € 160)
• faster response: no need for separate proposal (and invoice)
• more transparent
• closer relationship between yourself and SKIM
• professional and experienced team of consultants and methodologists are at your disposal

Pricing

Compared to the ad hoc consultancy tariff, the hourly price of Project Audit is considerably lower. This is a cost incentive in the long run as the license would be paid in full on request. In case clients wish to discontinue the consultancy service they will be reimbursed partly (50% of residual value). There are no limiting conditions (such as a minimum number of hours requested per month/year) with respect to the use of hours, other than availability, and the license does not expire.

Costs for a 50 hour Project Audit license are € 5000 irrespective of how the available hours are spent (see definition for more details).

Definition

The Project Audit is defined as:

A license for all project consultancy beyond technical support .

The license includes 50 hours of project consultancy covering setup and design, programming, hosting, and analysis assistance. Hours are debited in 30 minute intervals; you can license either the company or yourself.

SKIM offers Project Auditing for anyone that wonders

• whether the design is adequate in answering the business question
• if the software capabilities are used in the most efficient and effective way with respect to resources and experiment design
• what the optimal trade-off is between respondent happiness and data quality (hint: sample and research aim dependent)
• how to enhance the experience from the respondents’ perspective
• about the simulation options enabled by the design
• how to create representative choice scenarios
• about the implications of different design considerations
• how to overcome technical design limitations
• how to communicate study decisions to the client
• how to program or field a (conjoint) questionnaire
• how to convert output to workable files for analysis
• how to get the most out of the Sawtooth Market Simulator
• how to design and implement an Excel-based simulator
• how to implement JavaScript or Perl
• about anything not explicitly mentioned but closely related to the above

To illustrate how the Project Audit works, the following (optional) steps provide a frame of reference.

• Communication: Defined as the step in which the client approaches SKIM and shares the project needs. SKIM informs client of estimated hours needed (if exceeding one hour).

• Understanding: Defined as the identification of relevant factors enabling solution-driven thinking and context placement.

• Implementation: Defined as the execution phase in which the request is practically dealt with.

• Reporting: Defined as the step in which agreed deliverables are sent and recommendations are made. License is debited by actual hours spent but will never exceed 20% of quoted hours without consent.

Client will be notified of debits to the Project Audit contract.

Technical Support

If your question matches one of the following phrases, your problem is probably covered by our Technical Support and as such we offer you the solution free of charge. This service is explicitly excluded from the Project Audit contract.

I experience troubles

• when installing the software (on my local drive)
• when importing my user ID file into the licensed software product
• with operating the software (technical malfunctions) and receive strange error messages