The independence policy
Effective October 2026. Six rules, each written to be checked against our conduct rather than admired.
One. Assessment work is never contingent on a product purchase. Fixed fee, defined scope, delivered on a date. The findings are the deliverable. No element of an assessment is discounted, bundled or waived on the condition that licensing is purchased through Qwalora, and no assessment fee is adjusted after the fact based on what the client bought.
Two. Disclosure precedes recommendation. Where a recommendation names a product Qwalora is able to resell, the report states that fact at the point of recommendation rather than in a schedule at the back. It names the vendor, states that Qwalora holds a reseller relationship for that product, and states that Qwalora will take no margin from this client on it.
Three. Twelve months, every report, in both directions. Qwalora takes no margin from a client on any product named in a report delivered to that client, during the engagement and for twelve months after the report issues. The period runs the other way as well: we will not deliver a report naming a product we sold that client inside the preceding twelve months without stating that sale in the report itself. Which product appeared in which report, and the date each period expires, is maintained as a written register rather than left to memory.
Four. Every recommendation is executable without us. A client may buy anywhere. We will supply the SKU list, the quantities, the licensing model and the configuration notes to any distributor or reseller the client prefers, at no charge, and the architecture does not degrade if the client uses them. A recommendation that only works if you buy it from us was never a recommendation.
Five. Margin is disclosed on request. A client who asks what Qwalora makes on a line gets the number for that line. Not a range, not a category average, the number.
Six. No tier, volume or standing claim. We will not characterize our position in any vendor program in terms we have not earned. Qwalora transacts at the entry point of the Pax8 program and holds no assigned tier. Our spend history is short because it began this month. When either fact changes, we will say what changed and when, and not before.
Then where does the margin come from
A fair question, and the answer is a narrower book than the industry norm.
It comes from clients who buy licensing from us without an advisory engagement attached, and from products we never named in a report. It does not come from the motion the industry runs on, which is an assessment that produces a recommendation and a purchase order in the same quarter, from the same firm, at a margin the client never sees.
We gave that up before we had it. The first two rules are worth nothing if the third one has an exception for the quarter we need the revenue.
Why this is published rather than filed
Two reasons, neither of them generous.
An undisclosed conflict is worth less than a disclosed one. A buyer who can see the shape of our incentive is able to weigh the advice against it and reach their own conclusion. A buyer who suspects an incentive they cannot measure has no instrument available to them except a blanket discount on everything we say. Disclosure is cheaper for us than that discount.
The second reason is narrower. Qwalora sells judgment. Judgment available for purchase by a vendor is not judgment, it is distribution wearing a consultant’s coat. The six rules above are the only thing holding the first clause of this sentence in place, which is why they are printed where a client can hold us to them.
If any engagement of ours departs from the six rules, the departure is a defect in our conduct and not an exception in the policy. Say so to us in writing and we will correct it.
