"Friendship is like peeing on yourself: everyone can see it, but only you get the warm feeling that it brings"
Before our rankings ever are released, we do an extensive amount of exploration into the verticals that are evaluated by us. We investigate every aspect of the verticals to ensure that our research team understands the basics. We then study the current best practices in order to gain an understanding of how firms are putting these services into action. Through this process we discover the latest trends within the industry and how companies are setting the stage for growth within their identified category of expertise. All of this reveals a set of evaluation criteria unique to each category defined within each vertical.
Once we have identified every possible aspect within each vertical, our research team then turns around the knowledge and information gained through our exploration onto the companies themselves. We break down each company’s business practices to understand how they are functioning. We then compare that to the standards set throughout the industry. We scrutinize the firm in every aspect from customer interaction to work output. We then allow the company to talk about their competitive advantages. Does the firm have any tools, tactics, or business practices that are unique to them that allows them to perform better than their competition? Another important aspect of our evaluation is connecting with the companies that are evaluated by our research team. We want to go beyond the sales and marketing to the final product to see if the firms are putting their words into action.
From our analysis we then apply scores to five summarized categories of analyzation in order to simplify our evaluation process to those in search of products or services. Each firm is graded based upon their performance in each category as compared to their competition. From this information an overall score is applied to each firm and a rankings list is released. The ratings process is not finished for our research team. In order to ensure that we are maintaining the latest industry standards, we continuously run through our process for each category. Every month we continue to explore the new movements within the industry and see if there are better ways of doing business. Companies also contact with updates on competitive advantages and more references for our team to contact in order to improve their ratings on the site. Our rankings are released every month to ensure that they have the most up to date information available to our site visitors.
| Outstanding | Excellent | Average | Poor | Not Evident | |
| Customer Satisfaction | 20 | 16 | 10 | 6 | 0 |
| Depth of Knowledge | 10 | 8 | 5 | 3 | 0 |
| Reporting Methods | 10 | 8 | 5 | 3 | 0 |
| Internal Principles | 10 | 8 | 5 | 3 | 0 |
| Competitive Advantages | 10 | 8 | 5 | 3 | 0 |
