How it works
What it is like to hire a one-principal practice.
The questions a mid-market buyer has to ask before signing with an independent, answered here instead of on the third call. What it costs, what gets signed, who holds the code, what keeps a competitor out of the room, and what happens to the work when the engagement ends.
- Front door
- A fixed-fee diagnostic. The fee is agreed before it starts.
- Pricing
- Monthly retainer for ongoing work. Fixed scope and fixed price for projects. Never hourly.
- Capacity
- One principal, two or three engagements at a time.
How an engagement starts
Three steps, and the second one is paid.
Nothing here requires a discovery phase billed as strategy. The diagnostic is short, scoped, and priced before it begins, and it ends with a document rather than a proposal.
- 01
A call
Fifteen minutes, no deck, no preparation. Enough to hear what is actually breaking, who it is breaking for, and whether this practice is the right thing to point at it. If it is not, that gets said on the call.
- 02
The diagnostic
A short paid engagement with a fixed fee, agreed before it starts. It produces an inventory of what is actually running, the problem named in one sentence with the cost of leaving it alone attached, a buy versus build recommendation with a cost model behind it, and a sequenced roadmap in the order the constraints allow.
- 03
Whatever the diagnosis concluded
Sometimes that is a build. Sometimes it is buy that product, and here is who should install it. Sometimes it is do nothing this year, because the thing that looks like a software problem is a process problem and buying software would make it more expensive. The finding is written down and it belongs to the client, to take to any builder, including a cheaper one.
The diagnostic is a door, not a gate. Where the problem is already understood, a build or a reporting engagement can be bought on its own. The four practice areas are a sequence when a business needs the whole sequence, and a menu when it does not.
Engagement shapes
Three ways to buy, all priced up front.
No hourly billing, in any of the three. Hourly rates put the builder and the buyer on opposite sides of every efficiency, and an independent practice cannot afford that argument.
Front door
The diagnostic
Fixed fee, agreed before it starts
A scoped piece of work with a written deliverable at the end. Buyable on its own, and it ends cleanly. Nothing about it obligates the next phase.
Ongoing
The retainer
Monthly, agreed before anything starts
The technology seat for an operator too small to justify a full-time executive in it: strategy and roadmap, vendor and system-of-record decisions, oversight of integrations, data and reporting, and building what the roadmap calls for.
Project
Fixed scope, fixed price
Never hourly
A defined build with the number agreed before anything starts. The scope document names the deliverables, the price and the dates. Scope changes get repriced in writing rather than absorbed quietly and billed later.
Published numbers
$2,000 to $10,000
Most dashboard projects
Depending on data complexity, number of sources, and how much modeling the data needs before it can be trusted.
2 to 4 weeks
Simple internal tools
A single process pulled out of a spreadsheet and given a real interface, a database, and permissions.
6 to 12 weeks
Full platforms
Integrations, authentication, and workflows that cross more than one system. Larger builds are quoted as fixed scope, with the timeline in the same document as the price.
These are on the page on purpose. A practice that will not put a range in writing is asking for a call to find out the budget first, and then pricing the budget instead of the work.
Independence
Nothing on this site is being resold.
No software is resold here. No referral fees, no reseller margin, no implementation commissions from any vendor. The recommendation is the only thing being paid for, and it is yours to take to whoever builds it.
Why it matters on a buy versus build call
An integrator that sells implementation hours has a structural reason to find that a business needs implementation hours. A reseller has a reason to find that the answer is the product it resells. Here the fee is identical whether the recommendation is build the software, buy it, or leave the process alone, which is the only condition under which the recommendation is worth reading.
Where the scope ends
The recommendation is the deliverable. Where a decision needs deep product-specific configuration knowledge, an SAP module configuration or a Dynamics implementation program, that gets said out loud and a specialist gets brought in. This practice does not staff ERP implementations and does not take the fee for pretending to.
Confidentiality and conflicts
The sharpest question about this practice, answered in full.
An independent who works inside one operator and consults for others has to be explicit about where the walls are. Here they are, in writing, before anyone has to ask for them.
- The employment position, stated first
- The principal holds a full-time technology role at a freight forwarder, Dedola Global Logistics. That is disclosed here rather than discovered later, because a buyer is entitled to know it before the first conversation, not after.
- No direct competitors
- No engagement is taken with a direct competitor of that employer. Where a prospect is close to the line, the line gets named on the first call, before anything confidential is shared in either direction.
- A non-disclosure agreement by default
- An NDA is signed before anything sensitive changes hands, on the client's paper if the client has paper. It is the normal starting point, not a concession granted on request.
- Client data stays in client systems
- The work happens inside the client's own environment. Operational data is not copied to a personal machine, a personal cloud account, or a third-party tool for convenience.
- Least privilege, read-only where possible
- Access is scoped to the systems the work actually touches, and stays read-only wherever the work allows it. Write access gets requested when a specific piece of work requires it, and it gets requested explicitly.
- Nothing becomes a case study without permission
- No client name, logo, or result appears anywhere on this site or in a pitch without written permission. The proof published here is internal work at the employer, labeled as internal work at the employer.
Continuity
What happens to the work without the principal.
The honest answer to that question is not a bigger team. A team can lose the one person who understood the system just as easily. The answer is that the work is built to be picked up, and the handover conditions exist on day one rather than on the last day.
It starts in the client's account
Code lives in the client's own repository and data lives in the client's own cloud tenant, from day one. Nothing gets migrated over at the end of an engagement, because nothing was ever parked somewhere else.
Documentation and a runbook are deliverables
How it is deployed, what it depends on, what breaks it, and what to do at two in the morning. Written as part of the work and priced into it, not offered as a parting favor.
Ordinary tools, so the next hire is an ordinary hire
Builds use widely staffed technology rather than anything exotic. Replacing the person should be a normal job posting, not a rescue project.
Another engineer can pick this up because of how it is stored, staffed, and documented. That is a design requirement carried through the build, not a reassurance offered at the end of it.
Capacity
Two or three engagements at a time.
This is a one-principal practice and the roster is capped by policy at two or three engagements. The number is a limit rather than a status report, and it does not move because a good opportunity turns up in a busy quarter.
The person on the first call is the person doing the work. There is no bench, no junior team introduced after signing, and no subcontractor quietly holding the build. Where the work needs a specialist this practice does not staff, that gets named in the recommendation and the specialist is hired openly.
When capacity is not there, the answer is a date or a referral. It is never a slower version of the same engagement sold at full price.
Working together
What procurement is going to ask for.
Buying from an independent means a shorter paper trail than buying from a firm, which is an advantage right up until someone in accounting has a checklist. Here is the honest state of that checklist.
- How it starts
- A call, then a short written scope naming the deliverables, the fee, and the dates. Work begins after that document is agreed, and not before.
- What gets signed
- A non-disclosure agreement, and the scope document itself. Where a client has its own contract and its own terms, those are the ones used. There is no house paperwork that has to win.
- What gets handled on the call
- Entity and tax paperwork, payment terms, insurance requirements, security review, vendor onboarding. Requirements vary by buyer, so they get answered directly and specifically rather than promised on a web page. Anything that cannot be met gets said before a signature, not after one.
Frequently asked
The rest of it.
What does this cost?
Ongoing work is a monthly retainer. Projects are fixed scope, fixed price, never hourly, and the number is agreed before anything starts. Most dashboard projects run $2,000 to $10,000 depending on data complexity, sources, and modeling. The diagnostic that opens most engagements is a fixed fee, also agreed before it starts.
How fast can something turn around?
Faster than a firm on one narrow replacement, and honestly slower than that on anything real. A working prototype for a single broken process can come together in days. Full adoption takes longer: the internal quoting platform behind this practice had a prototype standing after one weekend and took about three months to reach full adoption. Simple internal tools run two to four weeks. Full platforms with integrations, authentication, and complex workflows run six to twelve weeks. Whatever the number is, it is known and written down before the work starts.
What is needed to get started?
A call and an honest look at whatever is running today, messy data and all. No deck, no preparation, no cleaning things up first. The mess is the diagnostic material, and hiding it only means paying to rediscover it later.
Does a full-time role conflict with an engagement?
The principal holds a full-time technology role at a freight forwarder, disclosed up front. No engagement is taken with a direct competitor of that employer. A non-disclosure agreement is signed by default, client data stays in client systems, and access stays read-only wherever the work allows. The capacity limit of two or three engagements at a time exists for the same reason.
What happens if this is not the right fit?
It gets said, on the call, with a pointer somewhere better: a product that already solves it, a specialist for the parts this practice does not staff, or nothing at all. A diagnostic that concludes do nothing is a valid result and gets delivered as one.
Start with the call, not the contract.
Fifteen minutes is enough to say what is broken and hear whether this is the right practice to point at it. If it is not, the call ends with a name that is a better fit. Replies come inside one business day.