The development of new technologies and products can be challenging, even for established organizations. An organization may be an industry leader but may have never developed their own products before and they will face many of the same challenges a new start-up will face such as:

• Do we hire and develop in house expertise? Or contract out the work?
• If we hire someone what qualifications do they need? How do we evaluate them?
• If it is outsourced how do we know the organization is qualified? Are they supplying all the required support material for the deliverables?
• What are reasonable time and cost estimates?
• If timelines are slipping and expenses increasing is it due to unforeseeable factors or other issues such as inadequate skills level?

When an organization requires skill sets that they are not familiar with it is easy to hire or contract someone who say they can do the job but in reality they cannot, or they can only do it by going through a long and expensive learning curve.  It is critical to be able to identify and source the resources capable of doing the job in a timely and satisfactory manner. Someone may charge $150 an hour yet be less expensive than someone charging $50 an hour who needs to learn the required skill sets or makes critical errors.

When a project is completed it is critical that you know you have received all the support documentation and technology that was developed. For example if you have a printed circuit board designed you need to confirm that you have received not only the gerber files to have the board made but the design files so that you can make modifications to the design in the future.

During the project it is important that proper paperwork such as time sheets, notebooks, test results etc. is maintained. Without this material you could miss out on substantial tax credits for your project.

Sometimes people end up “re-inventing the wheel”.  This can occur for many reasons:

• It is not realized that a solution already exists.
• The contractors do not have a solution in their collection of intellectual property but would like to. They may also feel they can make more money by providing a custom solution.
• They think they can do it better, faster or cheaper.

We can help you identify the proper resources, keep your project on time and budget and maximize the government funding you receive.