About Clear Base Group

Why we track for twelve months

Clear Base Group was founded to find out whether consulting advice actually holds.

Our people had all delivered reports that were praised and then quietly shelved. Nobody was dishonest and every recommendation was defensible. The engagement simply ended at the point where the interesting question began.

The profession is evaluated on documents. A well-argued report closes an engagement successfully regardless of what happens afterwards, and no standard contract requires anyone to find out.

Abandonment is predictable. The sponsor moves on, the capacity was never available, a dependency went unstated, or the change never became a named person's actual responsibility. Those four causes account for most of what we see.

So tracking is inside the fee. Three, six and twelve month reviews on every recommendation, with the status recorded honestly, and the aggregate abandonment rate published rather than kept internal.

How we are engaged

Fixed fees against scope, agreed before work starts. Never contingent on projected savings, which would give us an interest in the size of the forecast.

We do not bid to implement our own recommendations. A report proposing a large delivery contract for its author is worth very little.

Findings go to the whole board. Where the board and the executive hold different assumptions, both appear rather than being reconciled privately.

Tracking continues whether or not you renew. The twelve-month review happens even where the relationship has ended, because otherwise the data would only cover clients who were happy.