Consulting  ·  Advisory

An honest read.
Plus what to do next.

Audits, fractional leadership, due diligence, vendor work. We get paid to tell you the truth, not to sell you the next licence.

Independent. Paid by you alone. Walks away when done.

23%

Median annual cost reduction

From the first audit, holding 12+ months

6 wks

Median audit-to-recoupment

First saving exceeds the audit fee

1

Party our advice answers to

The income flows from the client we serve

Where the gap shows up

Six pillars. Score them honestly. Move them.

Toggle the engagement format. Watch the curve shift. The gap is the work.

SECOPSDOCDRIAMFIN
Current state
Post-engagement

90-day program

Delivery engagement. The audit becomes a workplan. We rebuild the weakest three pillars and document everything for handover.

Security4 → 8
Operations3 → 8
Documentation2 → 9
Backups & DR3 → 9
Identity & Access4 → 8
Cost Discipline3 → 7

What the gap means in practice

Documentation

Goes from worst to best. Runbooks, ADRs, knowledge base, onboarding pack. Every change tracked in git from day one.

Backups & DR

Immutable, encrypted, multi-region. Restore drill at week 6. RTO and RPO signed off in writing.

Operations

CI/CD, observability, on-call rotation. Pages drop. Deploys get boring. Team stops dreading Mondays.

Toggle the engagement profile to see the curve shift

Inside a consulting day with us

Six lines of work.

“

STRATEGY

IT Strategy & Roadmap

Where the technology has to be in 12, 24, 36 months. Anchored to business goals, judged on outcomes.

“

AUDIT

Stack & Cost Audit

Every licence, every cloud bill, every contract reviewed. Typical first-pass savings: 15–30% on annual IT spend.

“

FRACTIONAL

Fractional CIO

Two to four days a month at exec level. Board reporting, vendor negotiation, hiring, governance.

“

DUE-DILIGENCE

Tech Due Diligence

Buying or being bought. We surface the surprises before the lawyers do.

“

VENDOR

Vendor & Procurement

RFP design, vendor shortlists, contract negotiation. We negotiate without commission. The deal is yours.

“

TRAINING

Team Mentoring

Pairing with your engineers. Code review, architecture reviews, post-mortem facilitation. Your team gets better.

How a consulting engagement is shaped

Four formats. One fits.

30-day audit

Fixed scope

Punch list with severities and quick wins

You suspect there are issues. You want them named and prioritised by someone independent.

90-day program

Delivery engagement

Top three pillars rebuilt, documented, handed over

You know the issues. You need execution capacity. You want the team mentored alongside the delivery.

Fractional CIO

2–4 days / month, ongoing

Board reporting, strategy, vendor work, hiring support

You need exec-level oversight before you can justify a full-time CIO. 6–12 month engagements typical.

Diligence sprint

2–3 weeks

Risk register, remediation cost estimate, deal-ready report

You're buying a tech-enabled business. You want surprises surfaced before the closing date.

Three calls where the honest read changed the outcome

Real engagements. Real saves.

Logistics group · 38% AWS savings

30-day audit

Mid-market freight company · 200 staff

What was on the table

Inherited AWS account with five years of accumulated cruft. Idle Reserved Instances, abandoned dev environments, oversized RDS, no tagging strategy.

Where it landed

Quarter-over-quarter spend down 38% after an 8-week audit. Zero functionality lost. Tagging strategy and budget alerts now prevent it growing back.

Retail acquisition · diligence saved the deal

Diligence sprint

PE firm acquiring a SA retailer

What was on the table

Seller's tech file claimed 'modern stack, clean handover.' Diligence found 14-year-old AS400, two unsupported PHP forks, and a single engineer holding the keys.

Where it landed

Deal restructured around remediation costs. 18% off the asking price plus a 6-month transition contract for the key engineer.

SaaS founder · CIO before the Series B

Fractional CIO

B2B SaaS · 11 engineers

What was on the table

Founder-led tech team. No CTO yet. Investors wanting maturity story before the next round. Three days a month for six months.

Where it landed

Board-ready governance pack, security audit closed, hiring plan executed, vendor consolidation. Series B closed at target multiple.

How a consulting engagement runs

Five movements. Then we leave.

01
Movement 01

Sit-down

First call. We listen, you talk. What's the question that brought you to us, what's stopping you, what does the board think about it.

02
Movement 02

Scope

We write the engagement on a single page. Outcome, scope, timeline, fee, every boundary spelled out. You sign before we touch your stack.

03
Movement 03

Investigate

Read the contracts, run the audits, sit with the team, talk to the vendors, walk the floor. We earn the right to give advice.

04
Movement 04

Recommend

One document. Findings, options, our recommended call, what each option costs and saves. You own the decision. We carry the rationale.

05
Movement 05

Walk away

At the end of the engagement, we leave. Notes, dashboards, contacts, decisions. You hire us back when it suits you.

A 30-minute call.
The honest read is free.

One call. We look at where you are, where you want to be, and what the gap costs you. The call is on us.