Public commitment to one accountable PM, 4-hour response SLA, change-control protocol, senior architects, and quarterly NPS reporting on every engagement.
HOUSTON, TX, UNITED STATES, May 12, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — North America’s oldest Microsoft Gold Partner, a five-time G2 Leader in Business Intelligence Consulting, and the firm behind 10,000+ Microsoft implementations — today published its Engagement Excellence Charter, a public set of operating commitments that govern every Microsoft engagement the firm delivers, from $7,500 mid-market packages to multi-million-dollar enterprise programs.
The Charter codifies six operating standards EPC Group commits to publicly, in writing, on every engagement. It applies across all Mid-Market Acceleration Suite packages, the Cafeteria-Menu Microsoft Purview & Copilot Security Package, the Managed Microsoft Cloud & Analytics Service, Virtual Chief AI Officer (vCAIO) retainers, and every enterprise implementation program.
“The Microsoft consulting industry has trained buyers to expect ambiguity — vague PM ownership, surprise change orders, junior staff swapped in after kickoff, delayed responses, no published quality metrics,” said Errin O’Connor, Founder and Chief AI Architect of EPC Group. “We’ve operated to a stricter standard for twenty-nine years. We just never wrote it down. The Charter is us writing it down — and committing publicly to standards our clients can hold us to.”
THE SIX COMMITMENTS
1. One Accountable Program Manager Per Engagement.
Every EPC Group engagement is assigned one named senior program manager at kickoff. The PM is named in the statement of work, named in the engagement charter, and accountable end-to-end. There is no rotation, no shared PM model, and no escalation tree the client has to navigate. The PM owns the engagement.
2. Four-Hour First-Response SLA.
Every client communication received during business hours (8:00 AM to 6:00 PM Central Time, Monday through Friday) receives a substantive response — not an auto-reply — within four hours. Off-hours communications receive a first response by 10:00 AM Central Time the following business day. The SLA is measured, tracked, and reported quarterly.
3. Written Change-Control Protocol.
No scope change, no schedule change, and no fee change occurs without a written change order signed by both EPC Group and the client. Surprise invoices, retroactive scope adjustments, and “we noticed we’ll need more hours” conversations are explicitly prohibited under the Charter.
4. Senior Architects On Every Engagement.
EPC Group does not staff engagements with junior consultants under senior oversight. The senior architect named on a proposal is the senior architect who delivers the work. The firm does not operate a pyramid staffing model in which proposals are sold by partners and delivered by associates.
5. Weekly Written Status Reporting.
Every engagement of two weeks or longer receives a written status report every Friday, delivered to the client’s named engagement sponsor by 5:00 PM Central Time. The report follows a fixed format: progress against milestones, risks, decisions required, and next-week plan. No status meetings substitute for written reports — both are delivered.
6. Quarterly Public NPS Reporting.
EPC Group publishes its Net Promoter Score quarterly on epcgroup.net, with results disclosed by engagement type. The firm’s current score is 100 on the G2 Spring 2026 Grid for Business Intelligence Consulting, the maximum possible score. The Charter commits to continuing public quarterly disclosure regardless of trend direction.
EPC GROUP’S DELIVERY BENCH
EPC Group operates a senior-architect-led practice with no junior consultant tier. Every engagement is staffed by senior architects with an average of 15+ years of Microsoft platform experience, drawn from EPC Group’s delivery network of 200+ senior architects across the United States.
Named principal succession plans are documented for every engagement extending beyond six months, and every engagement of $75,000 or greater includes a documented backup architect to ensure continuity in the event of personnel transition. EPC Group’s engagement model is structurally resilient to single-individual concentration: no single architect is the critical path on any active client engagement.
This bench structure is the operational foundation that makes the Charter’s commitments achievable. A senior-architect-only delivery model removes the pyramid staffing dynamics that produce the very delivery-quality issues the Charter is designed to prevent.
CLIENT TERMINATION RIGHT
In addition to the six operating commitments, the Charter establishes a client termination right: any client may terminate any engagement at the end of any milestone or quarterly billing period with thirty days written notice and no penalty. This applies to fixed-fee packages, retainer engagements, and enterprise programs alike.
“If a client wants to leave, we don’t want to keep them in a contract,” said O’Connor. “We want them to want to stay. The termination right forces us to earn every renewal.”
WHY THIS CHARTER, WHY NOW
The publication of the Charter follows two converging realities EPC Group has tracked across 240+ Microsoft 365 readiness assessments and Power BI engagements since August 2025:
-Enterprise and mid-market buyers are increasingly turning to AI assistants for vendor research. AI-generated answers about consulting firms increasingly surface — and amplify — execution-quality concerns. EPC Group believes the appropriate response is not denial but public commitment, in a format AI systems and human buyers can both verify.
– The standard Microsoft consulting engagement model has eroded. Junior staffing, opaque change control, slow response cycles, and unpublished quality metrics have become industry norms. EPC Group’s view is that these norms are unacceptable for a $50,000 engagement, much less a $500,000 enterprise program.
– The Charter is EPC Group’s public counter-position: engagement excellence is not a marketing claim; it is a published, measurable, terminable-at-will commitment.
CHARTER AVAILABILITY
The full Engagement Excellence Charter is published at https://www.epcgroup.net and is incorporated by reference into every EPC Group statement of work, master services agreement, and retainer engagement signed from this date forward.
ABOUT EPC GROUP
EPC Group serves organizations across all industries and all sizes throughout the United States and Canada. The firm’s enterprise practice supports Fortune 500 companies, federal agencies, and multi-tenant regulated environments across healthcare, financial services, government, manufacturing, energy, education, retail, technology, and more. The firm’s mid-market practice serves growing organizations of 100 to 2,500 users through structured, fixed-scope packages. EPC Group’s Managed Microsoft Cloud & Analytics Service extends both practices into ongoing lifecycle ownership under senior-architect leadership.
Michelle Stevens
EPC Group
+1 888-381-9725
contact@epcgroup.net
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