Consulting Services

As well as our design and development services, we can also help you with any other IT related needs. Where we can't satisfy them ourselves, we can offer advice, guidance and other services to help you get what you need elsewhere, helping you to get good quality and value. This can be particularly useful for small organisations, especially volunteer-led charities, where you might not have much expertise or experience in technology procurement.

The most common example of such help we can give you is procurement consultancy. This is a service you would use when you have an identified need, but are considering different options to fulfil it – or even if you don't know where to start! You might be unsure what supplied to use for a bespoke service, unsure which product to purchase, or unsure which cost-free solution to use; we can help with all these situations. For example:

• You're looking to start a major IT project, and need to choose a contractor. We will work with you to produce concrete requirements describing what you need, including technical details where appropriate, before you approach potential contractors. We could also continue to work with you once contractors have been approached, and help you assess the quotations offered and the background of those offering them.
• You want to set up a e-mail list for your users, volunteers or clients. Even if you don't know anything about such systems, we will help you to consider all of the offerings on the market; from third-party solutions, whether charged or free, to self-hosted mailing list products, we will analyse the benefits and costs of each option as applied to your business, and make a report and recommendation as to your future course of action.

Where you eventually choose a product that needs hosting, we may be happy to offer such services, but we usually will make all advice and recommendations without regards to such considerations. If you're paying us for advice, what we say will be based only on what's best for you. This includes any not-technical issues such as ethical concerns. In order to ensure our own objectivity, we will not consider ourselves as a service provider when giving advice.