A typical VAR will, in addition to reselling clearString licenses, be providing services to help clients make the best use of the software. These services can in of themselves be highly profitable, and in revenue terms are likely to be much greater than the license sales themselves.

Consultancy

Businesses often have problems, but do not know the details of what a solution will entail. Business consultancies, from the global brands to local individuals, all serve to assist. Their role is to analyse the problem presented by the client business and propose a solution.

Often, the solution is not economically viable, as the cost of developing bespoke solutions is too high for the client.

• clearString, by its nature of being a no-code platform, massively reduces the cost of developing such solutions, making consultancy business more viable for a wider range of clients, ie reaching down the pyramid to the larger number of smaller businesses.

Traditionally, once the consultancy has completed the systems analysis and design process, the development of the solution is handed off (often outsourced and offshored), and the resultant system is, aside from being expensive, often late, badly implemented, and inflexible to the clients future needs.

• By contrast, clearString allows the same individuals involved in the systems analysis and design, who have met with and understand the client needs, to build the system themselves. The rapid development speed ensures this is a good use of their time, and the resultant solution is deliverable quicker, at lower cost, and is of a higher quality and is more flexible.
   
• Individuals involved do not need to learn coding, but can be trained in the system in just a few days (rather than the 10,000 hours typically needed to become an equivalently effective coder).

Team structure

An effective consultancy team would consist of an experienced project lead, and an assistant. Both are involved in the initial systems analysis and design process, and then the assistant takes on the bulk of the clearString configuration work, supervised by the project lead.

In larger consultancies with multiple project leads, further support can be shared amongst teams to provide functions such as graphic design, documentation and bulk data importing.

Bespoke site design and creation consultancy

As a companion service to providing clearString licensing, or as a standalone offer, this involves providing the client with a consultancy service to discover their needs, design a solution, and implement it as a bespoke solution using the clearString platform.

Note: free clearString development licenses are available to VARs. The client needs a chargeable license to the run live solution, but the development licenses are available at no cost.