What is the purpose of Raven Intelligence?

Raven Intelligence is a free, online community to help Enterprise Software customers independently find their perfect Consulting partner.  Raven consolidates the options in a single place–across all major cloud software platforms. It helps customers who are in a software selection process search and engage the best partners. It gives Consultants a place to promote their certifications and cloud project success and find customers looking for what they do best.  While we work closely with software vendors, we have no affiliation, sponsorship or endorsement from them.

Why would I look at Raven vs. asking my software vendor to recommend a partner or using their website?

Raven is an independent 3rd party providing candid project reviews.  Raven also provides at-a-glance information about certifications, firm profile data and keeps all information standard and consistent.  It gives Consulting partners the ability to manage their own listing information and consistently tracks Key Performance Indicators that are not published by software vendors.  (See “What I Learned as a Ghost Shopper for HR Services“)

In addition, it provides a way for customers to endorse the work of their partner and share with others their tips for success.  Raven allows customers to see a more comprehensive list of options available, ask for references and get additional cost comparisons for project work. (See: “10 Questions You Should Ask a Potential Consulting Partner” for initial research findings.)

How does the Review Process work?

Read the complete Review Process FAQs here.

Why would I trust Raven?  How do you make money?  Is this pay-to-play?

Raven serves (3) distinct customers—cloud customers, consultants and software vendors. It supplies thought leadership, implementation best practices and an objective way to view partner information across platform, consistently.

Raven offers a paid subscription service that allows consulting firms to proactively seek customer endorsements through a vetted survey process, as well as purchase advertising space (similar to Glassdoor or Yelp!) for brand recognition.

At no time is survey data augmented, and all survey responses are thoroughly reviewed for authenticity via LinkedIn credentials.

My software vendor gave me 2-3 names of partners to contact?  Why wouldn’t I just use them?

Software vendors have partners they get comfortable using, and partners who pay to be recommended. The chosen few are always walked in to bid on projects, when there may be others just as qualified to do the work.  Many times, customers don’t know they have more options available–local, more cost-effective partners who can do the project work with high quality.  Today, there is little transparency in the process, and there may be better solutions available.

Customers may only get 1-2 bids on implementation, when casting a wider net would provide a more competitive environment.

I’m a consulting firm.  My reputation is my product.  Why would I open myself up to bad reviews?

With any community that invites reviews, a negative rating is a possibility. The good news is that negative reviews, when managed properly, can actually be an asset in sales and marketing efforts, and they can even improve services.  Even the best consultants have had an implementation go wrong, a project get delayed, or a cost overrun. All customers have to do is a Google search to see this.  68% of consumers trust reviews more when they see both positive and negative reviews. Having a few negative reviews humanizes your brand and signals to buyers that the reviews aren’t fake or being filtered.  We ensure all reviews maintain a level of professionalism before they are posted.

As a paid subscriber, you have the ability to comment on reviews (positive or negative) and ensure you are represented in the best possible way.  On the flipside, very little exists today that shows objective endorsements of your services. Guiding customers to review your work allows you an authentic, wide platform to communicate great work and attract more new customers as a result.

What are you Measuring?

Raven-certified reviews cover a variety of project success markets including:
On-Time/On-Budget Delivery, Project Scope, Team and overall NPS (Net Promoter Score) ratings.
See “What We Are Measuring and Why That Matters to you” for more information.

Why the name Raven?

When naming the company, now over 3 years ago, we thought a lot about the raven–one of the most intelligent animals in the animal kingdom.  Ravens have a keen sense of knowing who to trust and have a bird’s eye view of the world.  Similarly, our mission at Raven is to make it easy for software customers to make data-driven decisions about partners, with trustworthy intelligence extracted from customer reviews.  We’re helping to improve the implementation and services experience and create better transparency in the industry about project outcomes.

What are customers saying?

• “I wish I would have had Raven Intelligence 2 years ago when we started our project. We may have gone a different direction for implementation.”
  – CHRO & SuccessFactors customer

• We didn’t even know we had a choice in partner selection. We were so busy with the software evaluation we just went with the partner our software vendor gave us. Raven could have helped us get a better understanding of what we didn’t know.”
  – Project Manager & Workday customer

• “Raven would have made the search for independent customer references during our evaluation so much easier.”
  -HR Manager & Cornerstone customer

• “Raven will help us better provide proof points about project success from an objective point of view. We’ve already used some of the project stats generated with Raven’s reviews to secure new customers.”
  – Vice President, Sales, iHouse (Ultimate Software)