Advisory Services

Since 1992, more than 275 public- and investor-owned utilities, evolving energy companies, and city, county, and state governments have relied on TMG Consulting to guide them through the complex process identifying, prioritizing and procuring the right technologies and third party resources under the best possible terms.

As a solution agnostic consulting firm, we leverage proprietary, evolving methodologies and formulas for measuring options against business needs to expose the best possible course of action.

From situation assessment through procurement, TMG offers four valuable Advisory Services.

Enterprise Application Assessment/Planning

Procurement Services

Quality Assurance Oversight

Independent Verification & Validation (IVV)

Enterprise Application Assessment/Planning

TMG Consulting’s Application Planning Methodology evaluates systems from both a business and technical perspective to determine if they can meet the utility’s needs in the short- or long-term and measures current systems against product upgrades, custom extensions, and new products. Our Application Planning Methodology provides a proven, structured approach to analyzing key attributes of a utility’s enterprise systems, identifying areas of improvement, charting the path forward to achieve the associated improvements and benefits, and arriving at a comprehensive business plan. Our Application Planning Methodology has 9 key steps.

While these components seem fairly straightforward, the processes, tools and content that drive them are proprietary and complex. Nevertheless, they are executed by the TMG consultants who created them: utility industry professionals with an average of twenty-five years of application planning experience, with a clarity and precision that eliminates any possible ambiguity around the best course of action.

Procurement Services

TMG Consulting’s Procurement methodology follows sequential, logical steps and flows seamlessly from our Application Planning methodology.

Plan: TMG’s proven approach begins with the Planning step. We will work with our client to understand the goals, objectives, risks, and strengths of the organization and the intended scope and budget for the project.
Build: Based on the Planning phase, TMG will assemble the RFP for review and approval by the client prior to the next phase. In addition, we assist the utility with the evaluation criteria so that when vendor proposals are received, the utility’s team is prepared to evaluate them.
Publish: TMG will work with the utility to release the RFP and support related processes such as a pre-bid conference and responding to vendor questions.
Assess: TMG will lead the assessment of the responses received by working with the utility to 1) evaluate the functional responses, 2) facilitate scripted demonstrations, oral presentations, and reference checks, and 3) review in detail each bidder’s proposals prior to receiving a best and final offer (BAFO).
Negotiate: This last step includes statement of work and contract negotiations. This includes assisting the utility’s team as necessary in presenting the selected vendor and the plan to the utility’s management and achieving approval to proceed with the implementation.

Quality Assurance Oversight

TMG Consulting has provided Quality Assurance (QA) services for hundreds of utilities since 1992. It is customer-centric in its approach, ensuring that all elements of the plan and project are reasonable and match well with the customer’s internal capabilities. TMG’s staff is seasoned and uses its experience to find and communicate issues while they are still small and containable.

There are eight key methodology components to TMG’s highly successful QA program:

1. Project Viewpoint
2. Resource Monitoring
3. Project Plan
4. Project Activities
5. Program Management
6. Budget and Scope
7. Business and IT Readiness
8. Risk

TMG ensures that these areas are being managed appropriately by both internal and vendor project management, and report anomalies to leadership with risk assessments and recommendations.

Independent Verification & Validation (IVV)

Independent of the Organization

Did I build the thing right?

Did I build the right thing?

Should we trust what we developed?

DESIGN: Participation in common design workshops to challenge and validate that use cases and business requirements translate into functional designs that meet the client’s expectations.

BUILD: Independent QA verification checkpoints during the release/build process to identify issues and risks to the project schedule, scope deviations and financial performance.

TEST & OPERATE: Monitoring and validating test plans and results and alignment to the functionality expectations of users while aligning detailed deployment plans with impacted groups.

INITIATE

Identifying the objectives of the IV&V effort and gathering requirements for the targeted system. Here, stakeholders help develop and validate a requirements matrix.

DESIGN

Participation in common design workshops to challenge and validate that use cases and business requirements translate into functional designs that meet the client's expectations.

BUILD

Independent QA verification checkpoints during the release/build process to identify issues and risks to the project schedule, scope deviations and financial performance.

TEST & OPERATE

Monitoring and validating test plans and results and their alignment to the functionality expectations of users while aligning detailed deployment plans with impacted groups.