One of the greatest strengths of Merit Solutions’ consulting team is its ability to successfully address a wide range of client needs. A close working relationship enables easy cross-communication and cooperation between consulting team members on an ongoing basis. The Merit Solutions consulting team utilizes the expertise of each individual team member to offer our clients the benefit of our combined experience and knowledge.

Applications of today are extremely complex and have many components with many interrelationships to other parts of the application. System hardware and server software/services can greatly impact an application’s ability to perform in a way to meet a client’s needs. Finalizing a solution configuration may require hardware and OS adjustments, various application configurations that must be set just right, data configuration, and business process creation. Often it is just outside the knowledge and capability of any single individual to know everything to provide the final solution. What makes the consultant and your relationship with Merit Solutions so valuable is the ability of our consultants to understand the extent of their knowledge, their limitations, and the knowledge/capabilities of their Merit Solutions consulting counterparts. You may not even know it is happening, but often our consultants call in reinforcements from other team members to reach the most effective solution.

Merit Solutions uses the following processes to enable this team backup system for our consultants. First, the consulting director maintains a skills and knowledge matrix of all consultants and technical staff at Merit Solutions and our partners. This matrix identifies the knowledge and capabilities of each person to address application and OS System areas. The individuals are ranked in each area as Not Applicable, Proficient, or Expert. Depending on the complexity of the need, the time criticalness, and staff availability, a Proficient or Expert resource will be called in to assist.

Second, Merit Solutions utilizes a range of communication tools between consultants and partners. Beyond standard phone, e-mail, and in-office communication exchanges, we utilize Microsoft Messenger technology to communicate with each other. This proves very effective for short, quick questions to set a consultant in the right direction to solve a client need. When issues become more complex, we utilize remote desktop and Terminal Server, and/or Net Meeting technologies to enable “hands-on” communications. On a limited basis and during critical times during an implementation, you may ask to have Microsoft Messenger access to various resources at Merit Solutions to expedite and simplify communication.

Merit Solutions is also continually building our own internal knowledge base of issues and their solutions. This enables us to save you time and expense by preventing the re-invention of solutions in the event a team member is on vacation or otherwise unavailable.

Finally, Merit Solutions conducts consulting cross-training. Think of this as a RAID-5 disk array. We at Merit Solutions try to cross-educate each other across the knowledge sets so that at any time a team member can be unplugged and the consulting “knowledge drive” will still be able to deliver. Additionally, when a new member is added to our team, that new member gets information “rebuilt” to them so they then become part of our “Consulting Array.”

Although you as a client may never see it in action or realize that it is happening, the net result of our consulting team’s strong interrelationship is that Merit’s customers are provided high-quality solutions delivered in a highly efficient manner.