Last year we released the first-ever ConsultantReady^TM Report. The report was a huge success and showed it was definitely worth the effort (lots of pizza and caffeinated beverages went into that effort).

After taking in all the feedback, we decided a committee was needed to centralize and openly discuss the structure and evaluation criteria for the 2010 report. Therefore, we are happy to announce the formation of our first CRO open committee, the 2010 ConsultantReady^TM Report Committee.

Just like last year, we intend to qualify our framework, evaluation criteria, and grading methodology with our consultant members. However this year, we will allow one representative from each manufacturer evaluated to participate with feedback to the manufacturer member(s) of the committee. Consultant members don’t worry…. you are still the ultimate authority in the committee!

An email invitation will go out to consultants and manufacturers who expressed an interest early on.
All other interested parties should contact Susanne Ruse, our Director of Committee Strategic Planning and Development at [email protected].

ConsultantRegistry.org
President, Greg Bernardo

ConsultantRegistry.Org released the first full release of the ConsultantReady™ Report today. The report is part of an initiative within ConsultantRegistry.Org and its member board to encourage effective communication by educating vendors on how to best communicate with consultants.  This report ranks 246 security manufacturers’ “readiness” and identifies tools useful to consultants.

In the preliminary report released in April 2009, 55 Vendors were previewed and 5% demonstrated scores of 50% or greater over industry average.  The current full report based on review of 246 vendors,  shows only 1.6% acheived scores 50% or greater.

To learn more about the ConsultantReady™ Initiative please visit http://www.consultantregistry.org/page/view/consultantready.  Confirmed Consultants and Vendors have access to the full report and confirmed Consultants have direct access to the realtime Online ConsultantReady™ Database.

ConsultantRegistry.Org is operated as a not for profit organization and uses its revenues to build membership and promote their members’ capabilities in the converging Security, IT and Communications markets. The organization operates on member subscriptions, sponsoring by vendors and service providers, and the generous free support from its member council.  CRO can be found at http://www.consultantregistry.org.

Last week ConsultantRegistry.Org achieved a major hurtle by breaking the 100 member mark. This week we achieved 135 members and a long list of new developments on our members site. Read the full article to learn all that has happened and what is next.

What we’ve added this week is:

• New Mobile Version for CRO News Blog – Point your iPhones at blog.consultantregistry.org
• Member’s Blog Added – Certified Consultants and Association Directors can moderate thier own blog on the inside of the site. All members can comment & post.
• Similar to our adopting an open source platform for the CRO News Blog, CRO has also this week adopted an open source forum which was integrated into the site Wednesday. There will be some additional tweaking to fully integrate the look and feel but it is substantially complete.
• Confirmed Consultants were polled to validate our initial grading scheme for the ConsultantReady Report. We in process of evaluating security vendors against the modified criteria to deliver our complete report in early May.
• All membership types were confirmed this week for members who signed up to take advantage of open enrollment. Free Open Enrollment continues until May 1st.

Additional Features Coming Soon

• Official First Release of ConsultantReady Report (Preliminary snapshot shown last month)
• ConsultantRegistry.Org Store
• More Project listings for our Consultant Members
• New “Widgets” Customizable User Interface (you select what and where everything is displayed on your home screen)
• Improved Consultants Search – Currently the Consultants Search screen allows you to differentiate between consultants and non-consultants, very soon you will be able to do granular searches by all member types.

Read more…

The ConsultantReady Report is a tool to educate vendors on the needs of consultants.

Yesterday, we let everyone know about ConsultantRegistry.Org’s trip to ISC West. I mentioned how the preliminary release of our new Consultant Ready report caught the vendors and the industry’s attention.

At the show, we met with several consultants, and the overwhelming opinion is that the report is a necessary and welcome tool. The vendors we met seemed to recognise the need, too. Not surprising… the ones doing a good job welcomed the recognition. We had a few wary looks from time to time though.

The report we released last week was just a preliminary look at the security industry. About 55 of the 250+ security vendors. As a preliminary report, it represented a baseline of questions and rating scheme.

Some vendors questioned the scores since we didn’t have a chance to release individual results yet. As promised…. the vendors we met at the show will receive their scores tomorrow. (Funny thing about Las Vegas…. it sometimes takes a weekend and several days to recover.)

Some vendors were concerned about proprietary information they want to share with consultants, but not the world. Several vendors identified support materials and services they would like recognized on the report. We put our heads together and came up with several ideas to help vendors manage access to proprietary information. CRO is all about solving problems and we have a problem with waiting.

To finish the ConsultantReady Security Industry report, we will poll our consultants and tweek our scoring practices to make sure they are on target. During ISC West, we also heard questions and recomendations about our grading scheme. We are working on that now and should have it out later this week with the consultants’ poll. After the poll, we will restart the evaluations for the whole group and deliver the report around the end of the month.

If you are a consultant, please visit www.consultantregistry.org and sign up for free until May 1st.

ConsultantRegistry.Org is back from a busy week at the ISC West trade show in Las Vegas promoting the organization to vendors. The intent of our trip was to generate awareness about CRO and to start generating advertising revenue for future CRO projects (until now CRO has been entirely funded by its principals). In short the trip was a huge success!

Read more…

95% of Security Product Vendors Miss the Consultant Target

Under a recent study performed by ConsultantRegistry.Org, 95% of security product vendors completely miss the consultant target.

Bid projects make up greater than 75% of large systems sales. Subject matter expert, systems architect, engineer, specifier, technology consultant…. It doesn’t matter what you call them, they all influence the system technologies that go into these bid projects.

As security product vendors develop their marketing plans and build their sales pitches, most of them completely miss one of the most important decision makers; the consultant.

Read more…