Methodology · C.L.E.A.R.

The C.L.E.A.R. Methodology

Customer, Landscape, Evaluation, Adoption, Roadmap. Every SpearPoint engagement manages the full lifecycle through the same five phases, with a named deliverable at every one — whether the engagement is a single sourcing decision or a standing advisory relationship. It runs on SHELBY, our intelligence platform, with complete transparency.

Five phases. Click a step, or watch it walk itself.

Customer

Your business first. Goals, KPIs, constraints, and who actually has to be satisfied by the decision — captured before a single product enters the conversation. Business advisors before anything else.

Named deliverable

  • Customer Outcome Brief: the objectives and success criteria everyone signs
  • Stakeholder map and decision timeline

Landscape

What you own, what you pay, what's redundant, and where the market has moved. Contracts, invoices, and inventory pulled into one view, then set against current market research and live benchmarks.

Named deliverable

  • Landscape Report: full inventory, spend baseline, renewal calendar
  • Market read: what's changed and what it's worth

Evaluation

The entire market distilled to the two or three providers that genuinely fit, scored side by side against the criteria set in Customer. Vetted, engineered, benchmarked — the output of a system, not an opinion.

Named deliverable

  • Evaluation Scorecard: weighted comparison, scripted demos, benchmarked pricing
  • Recommendation with total cost, including exit costs

Adoption

Negotiate, contract, and implement with the advisor still at the table. Pricing, SLAs, term flexibility, and the go-live plan handled by someone who has done it many times — never handed off to a sales process.

Named deliverable

  • Adoption Plan: negotiated terms, named owners, dates, escalation path
  • Go-live oversight and sign-off

Roadmap

The relationship doesn't end at signature. Invoices reconciled to contracts, performance measured against SLAs, renewals planned before the auto-renew clause is — and the next decision already on the map.

Named deliverable

  • Technology Roadmap: quarterly review, renewal strategy 90 days ahead
  • Continuous monitoring through SHELBY

The deliverable at every step.

C

Customer

Your business first. Not the product, not the technology — your goals, your KPIs, what you are actually trying to do, and who has to be satisfied by the decision. Business advisors before anything else.

Deliverable: Customer Outcome Brief — objectives, success criteria, stakeholder map, decision timeline.

L

Landscape

What you own, what you pay, what's redundant, and where the market has moved. Contracts, invoices, and inventory pulled into one view, then set against current market research and live pricing benchmarks drawn from thousands of real engagements.

Deliverable: Landscape Report — full inventory, spend baseline, renewal calendar, market read.

E

Evaluation

The entire market distilled to the two or three providers that genuinely fit, scored side by side against the criteria set in Customer. Every option vetted, engineered, and benchmarked — the output of a system built to protect buyers, not an opinion.

Deliverable: Evaluation Scorecard — weighted comparison, scripted demos, benchmarked pricing, total cost including exit costs.

A

Adoption

Negotiate, contract, and implement with the advisor still at the table. Pricing, SLAs, term flexibility, and the go-live plan handled by someone who has done it many times — never handed off to a sales process.

Deliverable: Adoption Plan — negotiated terms, named owners, dates, escalation path, go-live sign-off.

R

Roadmap

The relationship doesn't end at signature. Invoices reconciled to contracts, performance measured against SLAs, renewals planned 90 days before the auto-renew clause — and the next decision already on the map.

Deliverable: Technology Roadmap — quarterly review, renewal strategy, continuous monitoring through SHELBY.

Powered by SHELBY

The intelligence platform behind every phase.

SHELBY is SpearPoint's system of record: every contract, rate, SLA, and renewal date, reconciled monthly against what you're actually billed, with advisor compensation fully disclosed. It's how the Roadmap phase runs continuously instead of once a year.

Where it shows up

One methodology, both sides of the house.

The advisory runs C.L.E.A.R. on every sourcing decision. Consulting runs it on strategy. Nested programs like SPEND Advantage are C.L.E.A.R. applied at scale to a specific use case. Same phases, same deliverables, same transparency.

See SHELBY → What we manage →