After 7 happy years with DNS 8.1, it looks like the time has come to upgrade.  I want to evaluate a relationship with the consultants that drive these forums.  I know (and respect) that there is a protocol against self-advertising, but it still would be helpful for me (and others, I assume) to hear any insights regarding:

1.  The process for or factors to consider when choosing a Dragon consultant?  The local guys that I work with for general computer issues probably can't spell Dragon, and I am confident that they come to this or other forums for the answers, anyway. 

2.   What is the business model for Dragon consultants?  How do they make money?  Does it include more than fee for service (i.e., hourly) and commission on product sales?

3.  How do consultants (in general) price for informational services specifically?  In retailing (as well as my legal practice, to a certain degree), some (smaller) vendors compete with "the big guys" by providing informational consulting as value-added, making their money off of the sale but without separately charging for the consulting.  How common is that in this niche?

4.  I saw the reference that product sales sustain this website.  Are there any other, non-obvious factors that I should know when initiating a relationship with a Dragon consultant?

If any of my questions cross the self-dealing prohibition, I apologize, and would be happy to continue offline.

Wayne

                       Welcome to the World’s Most Popular Speech Recognition Forum

Your biggest problem is that you're using DNS 8 which is not upgradable to Ver. 11. That means that you will have to purchase a full license because Nuance only permits you to go 2 versions back. Now onto your questions…

1. If you're looking for a local licensed NaturallySpeaking solutions provider, you might check the Nuance Certified Reseller/Trainer list.

2. Nearly all licensed DNS resellers make their living training rather than in direct sales. In the case of NaturallySpeaking Preferred/Premium, there is only a small profit margin. Training typically runs about $1000 per day but after about 3 hours of training it's hard to absorb any additional information. We implement an entirely different training approach. We start off by giving all of our customers a hard copy of our training guide so that you have the option of skipping the middleman completely. Approximately 99.9% of our customers never come back for advanced virtual on-site training but we don't take it personally Nothing beats physical one-on-one training but virtual on-site training has the advantage of running for as long or as little time as you want since there is no associated travel costs. We performed our 1st virtual on-site training in 1998 for a Colonel in Jerusalem during the days of dial-up. It was a little slow but it worked and it was a good deal less expensive than flying to Israel. Fortunately most end users now have the advantage of broadband.

3. Most vendors sell you training in four-hour increments at $125 an hour but those rates probably vary. When we were performing on-site, training in 2001, we were charging $1200 per day but we were also training other trainers and we usually incorporated our KnowBrainer command software which tended to significantly shorten the process because of the advantage of not having to learn as many commands. We now charge $3.33 per minute with a $20 minimum but for the most part, we usually only perform specialty work, like writing commands to automate repetitive workflow.

4. If you are referring to this website, part of our profits go to maintain this forum and for the development of KnowBrainer 2011 which we make free to the physically disabled. Although KnowBrainer sells fairly well, we actually take a small financial hit because we don't make quite enough to pay for the cost of development. In a little over a week, we will be going public with the new forum which has cost us somewhere in the vicinity of $30,000 out-of-pocket but we also have a fantastic job and think of our forum as our only advertising expenditure.

Most end users do well with a combination of our complimentary training guide, our included free telephone/e-mail/virtual on-site support and this forum without the expense of formal training. Our 1st recommendation would be to take the economical approach and see how far it gets you. You may be pleasantly surprised…

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