Linchpin is a Confluence-based social intranet suite developed by us. We offer introductory Linchpin projects at a guaranteed fixed price, which includes all services from concept and design, to implementation and preparation for the launch, as well as including all necessary software licenses.
Some customers have asked about the possibility of the intranet project being billed by expense, for the software that they specifically wish to include, as well as paying for our services on an hourly basis.
Save the price of a service package
In the ecosystem of the Confluence developer Atlassian, all software costs are fixed and non-negotiable. This applied to both Confluence as well as the add-ons integrated within Linchpin. If you want to bill such a project according to the effort expended, you want to save on the services costs - which is naturally a legitimate wish.
In most of our Linchpin projects, we deliver significantly more in the fixed budget price than if we were to bill on our standard hourly rate. It would therefore be pointless to order a complete service package instead of purchasing Linchpin at the fixed price: You will almost certainly end up paying much more. A project on an hourly basis means that you will end up implementing some things yourself. That can certainly function well.
Implement project steps yourself
In our experience, smaller companies, particularly those with rich technical skills, can successfully implement some things themselves. This expertise is required when you want to complete an intranet project entirely by yourself and only need occasional support. Otherwise, the fixed price guarantee with all services included is much more attractive.
An important part of our services in an intranet project is the creation and customization of themes which follow our customer's corporate design guidelines. This is a must, but a rarely foreseen prerequisite for a successful intranet launch in the company. You should consider this service, especially if you don't have your own corporate design team in-house. This cost alone is somewhere between 5,000 and 20,000 Euros.
If you have more than 500 users, we strongly recommend the fixed price option, since the complexity of an intranet project increases significantly as this number scales upwards. Internal factors and groups become more important, strategic and corporate policy tasks have a larger role, and the conceptual, technological, and cultural issues increase. A successful (potentially worldwide) intranet relaunch needs an experienced service provider to support the large enterprise.
Prerequisites for implementation
I don't want to persuade everyone to take advantage of the fixed price. If you want to, of course you are welcome to purchase just the software licenses from us, and then completely implement your Linchpin intranet yourself.
To help you successfully complete your project, we are currently developing a detailed plan with examples, concepts, goals and templates for each step of a new intranet project, which we will make available online. Our own add-ons are documented in our Knowledge Base, and you can find documentation for third-party add-ons from their websites. We also offer detailed demonstration videos in our YouTube channel, often in English. Your intranet team should be familiar with all aspects of Confluence.
Our fixed price offer for Linchpin projects is not there to simply take money from your pocket - on the contrary, because we often provide much more value than is possible in a service package. The fixed price allows our customers to calculate their project costs accurately and reliably, and exclude the cost of unexpected problems as much as possible. In this way, we can all focus on completing the project with a successful intranet launch.
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Further information
Linchpin: Social Intranet with Confluence
Standardization of intranet project: Live from our Hackathon
A Linchpin Intranet example: DER Touristik
Differentiating between Confluence and Linchpin: Why you need Linchpin for your intranet
Specialist articles on intranets by Frank Hamm on our blog