Frequently Asked Questions

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We typically start by signing a mutual non-disclosure agreement (MNDA). If you don’t have one, we can use ours. Then our technical sales team will work with you to scope out the project disciplines needed. Once we feel comfortable that we understand the types of talents you need to complete your project, sales turn it over to engineering. Engineering then does a deeper dive with you, to understand the project well enough to allow us to build your Statement of Work (SOW). We send to you the SoW for your review. Our goal is to make sure we are all in agreement on what we are quoting before we put a full proposal with quote together.

Once we are agreed on the project details, we create a formal proposal that includes the SOW, a detailed quotation, the signed MNDA, our Rate Sheet and our Terms and Conditions. We then get on a teleconference with you to review the package together. The final step is to send you the formal proposal package via DocuSign for your electronic signature. Once you sign off on the package, we await your purchase order to get started.

Each week, the Project Manager assigned to your project will hold a meeting with the team to get an update on schedule, scope and remaining effort per task. This information goes into our Professional Services Automation business tools. We create projections so that when we review status with you, not only do you get a snapshot of how things are going but you get to see our projected completion date against the plan and projected final cost against the plan. These forecasts allow us to pivot if necessary to stay on track, and also to keep you well informed as to how we are doing today and also how we expect to be doing tomorrow.

Once you send us your first purchase order, we will start work and invoice you according to the agreed upon terms.

We issue invoices twice a month, on the 15th and last day (or the preceding business days if those days fall on a weekend or holiday). Our standard and preferred terms are 15-day net with a 1% discount for 5-day net. We can work together with you on terms that are mutually acceptable.

The short answer is yes. The long answer is that most of what we do is custom design under a budgetary estimate. Custom designs usually involve assumptions and risks that are not fully understood at the time the estimate is created. If you want to do a fixed price contract, we sometimes can, but we will require a rigorous process including mitigation of risks, concept and feasibility studies to be performed before we can lock in a fixed price.

The short answer is WE WON’T! All our systems and processes consider the PO limit a brick wall that we cannot climb over. We call it our remaining PO cover. We fully understand that this is coming from your approved budget! We will give you an early warning as mentioned above if we are concerned about cost. We will put in place action plans to control the cost. But we will never exceed your PO limit unless you demand it!

We can hand build just about any board assembly prototype, but we typically use a quick-turn manufacturer for prototypes. We also have two contract manufacturing partners for production runs. Our partners cover the range of low or high volume and domestic or overseas production.