Consulting
Where to start, and why — before anyone is asked to approve a budget.
When this fits
You have competing proposals and no independent way to judge them.
Something needs replacing and the real question is what to replace it with.
A regulator, an auditor or a customer has asked a question you cannot currently answer.
How we work within it
Assess against your estate, not a reference architecture
We read what is actually running, talk to the people who operate it daily, and write down the constraints nobody documents.
Options with their trade-offs, including the ones against us
Every recommendation names its alternatives and why they lost. Where a vendor we hold a commercial relationship with is involved, that is stated in the document making the recommendation.
A decision you can defend afterwards
The deliverable is a rationale your board can read, not a slide deck that needs its author present to make sense.
What you get it on
Consulting, across these domains
A delivery model is not a product. These are the technology domains we work in through it — start from the one your problem sits in.
Engagement and pricing model
Fixed-price for a defined assessment, or time-and-materials for open-ended advisory. The assessment is deliberately scoped small: it should be cheap enough that stopping after it is a real option.
What we commit to, and what we measure
Whether the decision held — measured by asking six months later, not at handover.
Whether the estimate matched the outcome, tracked across engagements rather than defended per engagement.
Time from engagement start to a decision you can act on.
Targets are set per engagement and written into the agreement. We do not publish a number here, because a service level that is not attached to a specific scope is not a commitment.
Questions we are asked
Will you recommend your own implementation services?
Sometimes, and you are never obliged to take them. An assessment that can only conclude "hire us for the next phase" is a sales document wearing an assessment's clothes, so the deliverable is written to be useful to whoever implements it.
How long does an assessment take?
Typically weeks rather than months, and the exact scope and duration are agreed before it starts. If it needs to be longer we say so up front rather than discovering it halfway.
What if you find the project should not go ahead?
We say so and explain why. Some engagements should stop at assessment, and saying so is part of the job — it is also considerably cheaper for you than finding out in production.
Do you need access to production systems?
Read access is usually enough, and we say exactly what we need and why before asking. An assessment built from documentation alone describes the system somebody intended to build.
Can you review work another supplier has proposed?
Yes, and it is a common reason to bring us in. We review it against your constraints rather than against how we would have done it.
Start with an assessment
The fastest way to a useful answer is a short, scoped look at what you already have.