What we do / Technology direction
Ongoing technology advice.
Most owners end up making technology decisions on their own, with no way of knowing whether they are good ones. This is the alternative.
Ongoing, not a project. It usually starts after a first one.
# direction.md
cadence: "monthly"
horizon: "12 months"
renewals: tracked
decisions: logged
suppliers: reviewed
roadmap: agreed
owner: "the business"
The problem
Nobody can say what anything costs or when it renews.
Past a certain size the questions change. It stops being "can somebody fix this" and becomes "what should we be spending on, what should we stop paying for, and what is coming that we are not ready for."
Those questions often fall outside a day to day IT support contract. So they land on the owner, who has a business to run and no particular reason to know the answer.
What usually happens next is that nothing gets decided. Contracts renew because nobody noticed. Software gets bought twice. A supplier sells you something you did not need, and there was nobody in the room to say so.
What it is
Someone holding the whole picture.
- A monthly conversation. Not a ticket queue. What has changed, what is coming, and what needs deciding before it decides itself.
- Everything written down in one place. What you run, what it costs, who supplies it and when it renews. Most businesses have never had this.
- A plan for the year. What gets done, roughly when, and what it is likely to cost, so spending is a decision rather than a surprise.
- Someone in the room with your suppliers. On the quote, on the renewal, on the sales call. Asking the questions you should not have to know to ask.
- A straight answer when you need one. Between the monthly sessions, by phone or email, without a meeting having to be arranged first.
- Someone who will say no. Including to us. Often the right answer is to do nothing this year, and we will tell you when it is.
The business keeps ownership of everything. Accounts, contracts, domains, documentation. If the arrangement ends, nothing has to be untangled first.
This is advice and decisions, not hands on work. Anything that comes out of it, a migration or a new network say, is scoped and priced as its own project before it starts.
When it is not right
Three reasons to say no.
- You need day to day support. Somebody to ring when a laptop dies is an IT support contract, and a good one is worth having. It is a different thing and we will say so.
- You have one problem. If there is a single thing that needs sorting, that is a project. Pay for the project, not for an ongoing arrangement you do not need yet.
- Nothing can actually be decided. If decisions cannot get made, advice does not help. That is worth fixing first, and it is not a technology problem.
How it starts. Almost always after a first project. By then we know the business, the systems and how decisions actually get made in it, and you know whether you want us around. Taking it on cold means guessing on both sides, so we would rather not.
Deciding this on your own?
Tell us what is coming up that you are not sure about. That is usually the honest starting point.