In the world Big Nerd Ranch occupies, there are agencies and consultancies.

In general, agencies attract work geared towards brand, marketing, advertising and content. An agency might be a better fit if you need a digital brochure, or if your product is branding or marketing-oriented.

Consultancies, on the other hand, are more solutions-oriented and longer-term, with a strong focus on providing expert guidance. Big Nerd Ranch thinks of itself more like a consultancy: We deliver solutions by building products meant to deliver lasting value to our clients’ businesses. We provide our expertise in those realms as well.

And among agencies and consultancies, we stand apart. Here’s why:

• We do honest work.

  From sales to product development, we’re clear about what we do, what we don’t do, and why. Rather than pitching you spec work, we believe you want real, long-lasting solutions for your digital products. For this reason, we believe in the value of starting projects with discoveries and audits, rather than uninformed ideas. From there, we build with agility, where continuous learning and discovery lead to a product that really matters.

• We deliver long-lasting solutions.

  We design products with our clients’ business needs, their users and their devices at the forefront of our minds. And we develop it with an obsession towards quality and maintainability. We could build products designed for one-off purposes, but our expertise lies in creating sustainable solutions that truly meet an organization’s needs.

• Sales is a collaborative effort.

  Our business development team collaborates with engineers and project strategists throughout the sales process. We all have a voice in determining the viability of the business relationship. We’re not suddenly handed the work with a vague requirements doc and told to get to work.

• Our product teams are dedicated to the project.

  Our engineers aren’t split across multiple projects, anxiously tracking time between them. So our clients can rest assured that the project team is fully dedicated to the success of our client’s product.

• We’re opinionated.

  When clients sign a contract with us, they’re committing to seeing us as a partner—we’re experts who can guide them toward the best path. We build a lot of products for clients, teach the brightest engineers at the biggest tech companies, and write the definitive guides on software development. So we’re opinionated. And we’ll share our opinions because we want to see our clients succeed.

• We value close collaboration with our clients.

  We don’t like it when our clients disappear on us—at all. We’ll call them, ping them on Slack and email them again and again if we don’t regularly talk with them. When clients work with us, they’re a part of the team. And as much as we’ll learn from them about their business and their goals, they’ll learn from us about design and development values and best practices. We strongly believe that our clients will reap the rewards of this close collaboration.

One of our designers wrote about her transition from a large digital agency to Big Nerd Ranch. Reading it, you’ll get a front-row seat view of what we’re about–kindness, hard work and brilliance. And we’d love to bring you into the experience.