Thoughtful, Knowledgeable, Cost-Effective
I’m Dan Mazella. Welcome to the Farragut Advisory Services LLC website and to my blog! We hope you check back here often to learn more about our company and to discover information that is helpful to your business. I will be writing most of the blog posts but we will also be featuring entries from experts in many aspects of doing business with the Government, as well as experts in the life sciences, information technology and public policy. Since the business environment in which we all work is global and is made up of forces that often operate across national boundaries as well as over periods of time, the focus of blog entries will range from a wide view of big picture-type trends to a narrow magnification of technical, but important, matters. This blog is one part of Farragut Advisory Services’ effort to engage with and assist our community and so we encourage our readers to use the Helpful Links page and other pages as a timesaving resource to locate and easily access information from others in the community.
If you’re reading this blog post, hopefully you’ve learned at least a little bit about our company and possibly about me. The topic of discussion for our blog post is “What do we stand for at Farragut Advisory Services?” At our core, we provide thoughtful, knowledgeable and cost-effective advice that helps our clients achieve their objectives. We have chosen to highlight these three descriptive terms as identifiers of Farragut Advisory Services because the terms thoughtful, knowledgeable and cost-effective reflect who we are as a company and describe the way in which we do business.
Thoughtful. At Farragut Advisory Services, what we mean when we say we provide thoughtful advice is that, for example, after assessing an issue for a client or proposing a solution, we start by bearing in mind the client’s objectives or goals to be achieved and (based upon our experience), then identify the optimal path (among alternative paths), evaluate ramifications and outcomes, and recommend a plan of action. This approach can be accomplished in a ten minute phone call in response to a “what should I do?” question or through a formal governance plan for a multi-million dollar project, depending on the level of complexity and the circumstances. The result for our clients of this thoughtful approach is that there is no wasted time or effort in getting to effective solutions. While our approach, upon reading, may seem to be forehead-slappingly obvious, it is different from others I’ve seen where clients pay large sums to obtain a consultant’s canned “methodology” but received precious little assistance tailored to that client.
Knowledgeable. To paraphrase James Madison, we believe that in the context of doing business with the Government, “knowledge is power.” An important component of our approach in providing knowledgeable advice (and in our success on behalf of clients) has been the body of knowledge and intuitive understanding developed through years of training in the Federal Acquisition Regulations (“FAR”). Such knowledge is critically important because the FAR and other rules form the structure of how an organization does business with the Government. When I began working in the “contracting” aspect of Government procurement as an 1102 Contracts Specialist beginning in 1989, I was fortunate to have received three hundred and sixty (360) hours of training in the FAR and DFAR. This body of knowledge and understanding in its application is a distinct advantage for Farragut Advisory Services. As one former colleague, an experienced commercial law attorney, once summarized: “whoever knows the FAR best, wins.”
Cost Effective. Every organization that considers whether to hire a consulting company must make a determination at the outset of an engagement that doing so will be Cost Effective. Our view is that the concepts of thoughtful, knowledgeable and cost-effective are interdependent: when Farragut Advisory Services and our clients are working together and guided by our proven approach to developing and maintaining Government business, our experience is that the value of the results will exceed the cost. We would direct the reader to the Representative Matters pages elsewhere on this website for examples of our track record for generating revenue and saving money for our clients – all of which greatly in excess of our cost at the time.
We sincerely hope that this first blog post has helped you learn about Farragut Advisory Services LLC and about our approach to working with our clients. Please come back and visit this website and subscribe to this blog – we want to engage with our community and provide useful information. Please also visit and follow the Farragut Advisory Services LLC company pages on Linked In and Facebook and obtain updates from me on Twitter (#danmazella).