Contact Information

Our Business

Meritology is a boutique consultancy that uses innovative Business Value Modeling (BVM) techniques to solve hard problems where ordinary cash flow spreadsheets fall short.

We have particular expertise in modeling value and risk associated with information and information technology (IT), particularly information security, privacy, digital rights, and IP protection.

We provide consulting services to help companies solve specific BVM problems and to implement value management programs.
Cost: typical engagements range from $5,000 to $70,000. Because of our low overhead and agile service delivery model (i.e. partnerships with other specialty firms), we can produce high-value deliverables at a very affordable cost.

We provide training services to help companies build team skills and internal capabilities. Meritology's BVM training is designed to build consultant-level skills for project managers and change leaders.
Cost - training classes start at $1,000 for a half-day class for a team of 15 or less.

Finally, our Founder and Principal, Russell Cameron Thomas, writes and speaks on the topic of Business Value. By combining deep technical understanding, practical experience, a unique creative flair, and the latest animation/visualization tools, Mr. Thomas is able to dramatize the dynamics of business value in a way that capture audience attention and motivate action. Mr. Thomas is the ideal speaker if you need to bring your value proposition to life at a sales conference, off-site planning meeting, shareholder's meeting, industry conference, or academic symposium.

Our Mission

In a nutshell, our mission is to make value visible so you can improve performance, persuade customers, provide incentives to stakeholders, and to make better investment decisions.

The unfortunate reality is that most companies don't have business value models today or, if they have them, don't use them effectively. Why? Because of three core problems in BVM:

1. The price/performance problem: the alternative solutions often fall short or are too expensive:
   • Spreadsheets developed in-house—cheap but often grow out of control, have low functionality, are error prone, are hard to maintain, and are not very credible.
   • Packaged ROI software—affordable, but often too generic, too cumbersome to use, or not very compelling.
   • Full-custom ROI models—fits your application but it could be very expensive if you hire a top consulting firm or industry analyst (>$150K). Could cost much more if you have a complex application.
2. The sophistication problem: can the model adequately capture the dynamics of value? Many business value modeling problems are still not adequately solved by established methods. There is significant opportunity to address unmet needs by advancing the state of the art.
3. The presentation problem: how do you make the dynamics of value obvious and compelling to a wide audience? Too often, the presentations involve a blinding array of numbers, table, and charts, or even hand-waving generalizations. The more complex the siutation, the more difficult it is to present. There is a significant opportunity to advance the state-of-the-art in presentation to utilize the latest animation and visualization techniques from fields such as scientific visualization and video games.

Russell Cameron Thomas - Founder and Principal

Mr. Thomas is an has over 25 years high technology industry experience as an executive and consultant. He is a published author and a popular speaker and facilitator. He was a Senior Manager at BearingPoint (formerly KPMG Consulting) for 10 years. He led major operations improvement projects and was a thought leader in IT governance, knowledge management, enterprise value creation, and customer relationship management. At KPMG, he was Director of Research in Valuation Services where he pioneered methodologies for intellectual capital, real options, and business value dynamics. Mr. Thomas started his career at Hewlett-Packard where he held positions in engineering, manufacturing, and marketing.

As an author, he has been published in leading business publications such as Strategy & Leadership magazine. As a speaker, he has presented at major industry and academic conferences, including the Wharton Business School's "Conference on Business and Complexity" .

He graduated with honors from Worcester Polytechnic Institute with a BS in Electrical Engineering and Management. He is also a graduate of the Santa Fe Institute Summer School (the birthplace of Complexity Science).

Blog: "Value Made Visible"

Affiliates

Meritology collaborates with leading consultants and vendors to meet the needs of each client and each project.

	ClearPoint Metrics delivers advanced software solutions that enable organizations constantly measure, actively monitor, and effectively communicate the business impact and effectiveness of information security investments.
John Delaney	Mr. Delaney is a computer engineering consultant with expertise in reliability, supportability, performance, design automation, development lifecycle, and computer system architecture.
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) Center for Interdisciplinary Studies for Information Security	The Center performs academic research on information security decision-making, including both hard, technical requirements to soft, human factors: business considerations, risk assessments, economic feasibility, regulatory constraints, legislative restrictions, jurisdictional influences. The Center collaborates with a wide variety of parties in the private, public, financial, and academic sectors to determine the most pressing information security needs and most promising areas for further exploration.
Geer Risk Associates	Dr. Dan Geer is one of the world's leading experts in information security and risk management. His accomplishments include leading the team that developed Kerberos, founding the first known information security consulting firm on Wall Street, initiating several security conferences, and authoring numerous oft-cited security papers. He was President of the USENIX Association and is currently Vice President and Chief Scientist at Verdasys. http://www.verdasys.com/mt_geer.php
Fred Cohen & Associates	Fred Cohen & Associates has specialized in information protection since 1977 - http://all.net/. Management Analytics helps bring clarity to decisions by reducing sources of cognitive error in decision-making process. http://manalytic.com/
Korelogic Security	KoreLogic Security provides information security consulting services to Fortune 1000 companies through a team of experts with extensive, hands-on, security experience to help you best manage your information security risks. These assessments include mobile applications, web applications, infrastructure penetration tests, wireless security testing, and security program reviews.
	Pro-Tec Data provides consulting services to help companies protect confidential information and intellectual property — product plans, marketing strategies, business processes and technology innovations, both online and offline across your extended enterprise. Pro-Tec Data’s proven successful integrated solutions change the way people think and act about safeguarding company sensitive information and intellectual property.
	Risk Management Insights (RMI) is a consulting and software firm specializing in risk management applied to information security using their Factor Analysis of Information Risk ( FAIR™) methodology. FAIR helps companies understand and manage their information risk profile.
	The Santa Fe Group is a strategic consulting company serving financial institutions and other critical infrastructure companies. Their areas of expertise include Cybersecurity, Critical Infrastructure Protection, Fraud Reduction, Payments Strategies .
	ZOOM is a marketing consultancy for technology product and services companies. They help clients identify the single reason they win, which they call The Point That Matters.