The Advisory Council - Advisory Services

Advisory Services
TAC provides enterprise-wide access to a vetted network of hundreds of experts, practitioners and thought leaders with extensive, unbiased, real-world success credentials in every aspect of IT strategy, leadership, management, operations and implementation. Available on demand, advice delivered to TAC clients is actionable, unbiased, contextual and confidential.

The SmartGrid - Ensures an enterprise vision

Personal Advisory Reports (PARs): Personalized, in-context, written answers to your specific questions. These are normally under 1000 words in length, and are in direct response to the specific question. Standard response time for PARs is three-to-five business days.

Expert Phone Consultations: Telephone consultations are available with any of the TAC Experts. Telephone consultations are typically less than 30 minutes, but are unmetered may run as long as needed.

SmartTips™: TAC Thought Leaders and Experts address today’s hot issues in technology through more generalized research notes, providing topical information that is applicable to more than one client.

Webinars: TAC Thought Leaders and Experts present semi-monthly web-based seminars around various technology and business topics facing IT managers.

When the Finance and Legal teams have questions, they turn to CPAs and outside counsel for expert guidance.

How often have your sat in meetings with the Finance team trying to figure out if a purchase can be capitalized or needs to be expensed? The Accounting team would never take the risk of making a material mistake with the balance sheet without first seeking some expert guidance — and neither would the Legal team either. To answer those questions, the CFO and Legal teams retain external professional firms to help their groups work through the variety of difficult issues.

Who does the IT group have to turn to?

IT groups have always had research houses and consultants to turn to. When research firms first appeared more than 30 years ago, System/370 mainframes ruled IT, and Digital Equipment�s VAX was the hot new thing. Research houses have stuck to the same model of pumping out generic �consumer report� style analysis in a race to create the world’s most complete IT encyclopedia. Consulting firms continue to work to imbed themselves into clients to maximize billable projects.

Increasingly, organizations are turning to TAC�s Expert Decision Support Network for the experience-based professional advice that Finance and Legal have had for years.

How the Network Provides Advice

Access to TAC�s Expert Decision Support Network is secured through an annual retainer. Clients get to chose how and when to engage our Experts� advice, and request delivery in a manner that best suits their issue.

As an enterprise-wide solution, anyone on the IT team, from Architects to Vendor Management, can access the network. Since there are no distribution restrictions, TAC advice may be shared with whomever you want in your organization.

Accessing the Expert Decision Support Network

Anyone authorized by the client�s organization can receive access to TAC�s Expert Decision Support Network. The TAC portal contains access to the archives of webinars and SmartTips�, and clients utilize the portal to request advice in the form of Personal Advisory Reports or Expert Phone Consultations. When they present their issue to the Expert Decision Support Network, clients specify the topic, the business goal they are trying to achieve, articulate what constraints exist, and can upload any relevant document.

Every TAC client is assigned a Personal Advisor to ensure quality and act as an interface between the Client and the Experts. Personal Advisors moderate all Expert Phone Calls and review Personal Advisory Reports before posting the document to the user�s individual portal.

TAC SmartGrid� Methodology

IT organizations are being hit with questions from an increasingly tech-savvy user base, management team and boardroom. Our clients recognize that no amount of spending will provide them with all the in-house expertise to answer every question. TAC�s SmartGrid� methodology was developed to focus the experts broadly on the business drivers, and not solely on technology features and functions. This helps IT organizations make better decisions.

A Bit More about Our Experts...

Over the past few decades, computer use has expanded to all corners of the enterprise; broadening the scope of information technology (IT). This expanding scope of IT has coincided with an increase in the complexity of the systems which enterprises deploy and maintain, resulting in increased specialization among the people required to support an enterprise�s technology. To classify IT�s ever increasing specialization, The Advisory Council created a taxonomy covering all IT practice areas.

When we created the taxonomy, we identified 939 distinct IT practice areas, and grouped them into five general categories: software, hardware, networking & telecommunications, services, and management. The pie chart shown below represents the distribution of the 939 identified subject areas among those five categories.

When we enroll Experts in our Decision Support Network, we identify the IT subject areas covered by each Expert. Throughout this web site, we utilize this pie chart to identify the associated taxonomy grouping and the underlying IT subject area number to highlight the breadth of our Expert Decision Support Network’s ability to address virtually any issue facing your IT organization.

The list below provides an overview of the various taxonomy areas.

Application Development
Application Integration & Middleware
Benchmarking
Business Intelligence
Business Planning & Analysis
Business Process Management
Compensation, Skills & Workforce Management
Consumer Technologies
Customer Relationship Management
Data Management & Integration
Emerging Trends & Technologies
Enterprise Architecture
Enterprise Strategy & Business Development
ERP & Supply Chain Optimization
High-Performance Workplace
IT Asset Management
IT Infrastructure & Operations
IT Management
IT Services

IT Strategy
IT Valuation
ITIL Strategy & Implementation
Mobile & Wireless
Networking & Communications Equipment
Networking & Communications Services
Open Source
Outsourcing
PCs, Laptops & Handheld Devices
Performance Management
Program Management Offices
Regulatory Compliance
Risk Management
Security & Privacy
Servers & Storage
Social Networking
Vendor Management
Vendor & Technology Selection
Web Services

To view actual success stories TAC achieved with our clients, please see the Results page. To view recent client inquiry subjects, please see the Recent Inquiries page.

For more information about The Advisory Council, please contact us online or call us at +1 781 791 9582.

About The Advisory Council

Founded in 2002, The Advisory Council (TAC) brings its unique Expertise-as-a-Service^® (EaaS™), the next logical step in the XaaS revolution, to the enterprise. The EaaS solution-delivery model gives clients access to TAC’s wide array of services, tools and workshops designed to help CIOs and IT managers reduce costs, improve productivity, and increase the status of IT in the boardroom. The EaaS mission is to provide first-hand, actionable information, advice, and expertise in the context of your specific IT organization. The TAC Expert Network provides clients on-demand access to one of the world’s largest vetted networks of practicing IT experts. With hundreds of CIOs, authors, patent holders, thought leaders, and independent consultants, TAC delivers the right answer to your question in the right context, “right now.”