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Efterlev vs hiring a consultant

Stub for SPEC-38.12. Short version:

A FedRAMP consultant brings expertise, 3PAO relationships, and accountability — things a tool can't substitute for. The legacy starting price is $250K, with 12–18-month delivery cadence pre-20x; with 20x compressing the timeline, the cost-per-month rises but the total often holds.

Efterlev complements rather than replaces a consultant:

  • The scanner produces evidence the consultant would otherwise hand-collect over weeks of stakeholder interviews.
  • The Documentation Agent drafts attestations the consultant would otherwise write from scratch (and still review and revise).
  • The Remediation Agent proposes specific Terraform changes the consultant can pitch to engineering leadership.
  • The provenance chain gives the consultant a defensible answer when the 3PAO challenges a claim.

A SaaS company that has $250K to spend should hire a consultant AND use Efterlev — the tool reduces the work the consultant has to bill for. A SaaS company that doesn't have $250K can run Efterlev solo and engage a consultant only at the 3PAO-coordination phase, where their relationships matter most.

What we don't substitute for: the human judgment about what to attest to, what to defer, and how to negotiate scope with your authorizing official. That's consultant work; it stays consultant work.