IT Consulting & AdvisoryReview · Advise · Decide · Deliver

When is independent IT advice worth paying for?

When the decision is long, large or hard to unwind. Signing a multi-year software contract, replacing the system your operations run on, or committing to a platform your team will have to hire for are all decisions where a wrong call costs far more than the advice. So is a supplier quote you cannot fully read.

It is rarely worth it for a small change you can reverse next quarter. If the decision is already made and cheap to undo, spend the money on doing it. A good adviser will say so at the scoping stage, before any fee is agreed, which is also a useful test of whether the adviser is worth hiring.

How do you decide whether to build or buy software?

Start with the gap. List what the business needs, then check how much of it an off-the-shelf product covers without heavy customization. If the gap is small, buying is usually cheaper; if the gap sits in the work that sets you apart, building may be.

Then cost both routes over three years, not one. A bought product carries licence fees that grow with users, integration work and the vendor's roadmap deciding yours. A build carries development, hosting and a team to maintain it. The honest answer is often a mix: buy the commodity parts, build the part that is genuinely yours.

What do IT supplier quotes usually leave out?

The headline number in a proposal tends to cover the product and the build, and push the rest into assumptions or later invoices. Reading a quote properly means finding those assumptions and pricing them.

The items most often missing or understated are these. Each can move the real cost well past the figure on the cover page, and each is cheaper to negotiate before you sign than after.

• Moving and cleaning your existing data
• Training the people who will use the system
• Integrations with the tools you already run
• Price tiers that change as users or volumes grow
• Support terms, and what happens when you want to leave

Why cost IT options over three years instead of one?

Because year-one pricing is how poor decisions get approved. Many options look cheap in the first year: discounted licences, a low setup fee, a build that skips the parts that are expensive to maintain. The real cost shows up in renewals, growth in users, hosting, and the people needed to keep the system running.

A three-year view puts every option on the same footing. It includes migration, training and staffing, and it includes the cost of doing nothing, which is rarely zero but is often lower than people expect. The comparison that survives three years of costs is the one worth taking to a board.

Should an ageing system be replaced or extended?

Less often replaced than people expect. A system that irritates its users is frequently missing one capability, and adding it costs a fraction of a replacement, with none of the migration risk. The cost of change is routinely underestimated, especially the time staff spend learning something new.

Replacement becomes the right answer when the risks are structural: the vendor has ended support, security fixes are no longer issued, nobody can be found to maintain it, or the data is locked in a form the business can no longer use. A review should name which of these apply, and cost both routes before anyone commits.

What does an IT estate review need from you?

Less than most companies fear. Usually read-level access to the main systems, copies of the contracts and invoices, and time with the people who use the systems every day. An NDA is signed before any of it is shared, and the request is limited to what the question needs.

How long the review takes depends on how many systems are in scope and how quickly the contracts and invoices can be found; that timeline is agreed in writing before payment. The output is a prioritized list of what to fix, keep, cancel or replace, with the full report for the team and a short version for whoever approves the spend.