The Voice-of-Market® Process consists of many unique business practices that are critical to success both prior to and during investment into areas new to clients. The PARAGON professional staff has many years of experience in the dozens of processes that are combined in each assignment exemplified by critical processes, such as: Stage-Gate, Voice-of-Market®, Six Sigma, Discovery Based Learning, and Creative Problem Solving. These and other critical best practices ensure innovation and differentiation, strategic fit, and accurate forecasting.

Phases are the most utilized product by clients because they offer several different mechanisms that both generate comprehensive information while providing steps for evaluation and focusing. Phases allow PARAGON to apply Discovery Based Learning processes to explore and identify important information affecting our clients beyond the initial understanding of needs originally known. Phases also contain research by the PARAGON staff to develop a high degree of information on targets chosen by the client. Stage-gate meetings within and at the end of the Phase ensure the output meets all the client's needs.

Multiple Phases deliver the greatest support to the client when the client business initiative has any of the following attributes:

• A very early starting point with many stages required prior to commercialization
• A very broad starting point in which many separate market, business, or technology targets must be considered.
• The client has little in-house expertise in the area being considered and PARAGON becomes the primary staff as a cost effective mechanism to pursue opportunities.
• The business initiative has major investment and other strategic importance.

Many client needs are focused and clear enough to allow their objectives to be attained from PARAGON Voice-of-Market® Forums or from a PARAGON Survey. These are lower cost and extremely effective mechanisms for obtaining necessary information and insights in an objective and confidential manner.

One of the most popular and valuable individual products is the PARAGON Voice-of-Market® Forum. This consists of a panel of high level experts from within the PARAGON Network™ whose expertise fits our client's needs, who are brought together for a full day at a location not associated directly with our client.

Steps prior to the Forum assure that PARAGON has the required understanding of the situation and objectives of the client. PARAGON will then recruit those individuals whose knowledge and experience is critical for success. The client provides oversight and approval on: an overall recruitment strategy, the chosen PARAGON Network™ attendees, the positioning and preparation of the attendees prior to the Forum, and the agenda and mechanisms for the session. The client observes the forum in "real-time" from an observation room and provides guidance, feedback, and redirection with immediate results.

Module packages are discounted, volume agreements that allow PARAGON to provide support to an organization over a wide range of topics in many different business and product areas that would require separate budgeting, scheduling, and focus. An example of this would be to have PARAGON specced into a new product development process that requires all projects to have Voice-of-Market® Forums at specified development stages.

These packages typically cover a year (or other designated time) and require client commitment for a minimum number of "modules" comprised of the individual products listed above. For example, a PARAGON Voice-of-Market® Forum is one module and a phase is typically three modules.

The module packages are attractive to organizations with separate business, project, or other specific accounting units that normally need to engage their individual activities separately. By acquiring a module package, the organization has the ability to ensure that issues considered important strategically are addressed by the tactical units and that the collective leveraging of PARAGON benefits results in an overall savings in consulting fees.

Proprietary to the client market, competitive, business, channel, product, and technology studies benefit from the insights and information gained from the PARAGON Network™ that is not captured or a part of other consultant or internal studies.

PARAGON contracts with both corporations and venture capital organizations with agreements based on equity positions, contingency fees, options, and non-fee based arrangements as preferred or required by the client.