Bespoke Development
Is bespoke software significantly more expensive than off-the-shelf solutions?
Initially, the upfront cost is higher, but the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is often lower in the long run. With off-the-shelf software, you pay perpetual subscription fees that usually increase as you add users or need advanced features. You are effectively “renting” the software. With bespoke development, you are “buying” the house. Once built, you do not pay per-seat license fees. For growing SMEs, there is often a clear break-even point where the cumulative cost of SaaS subscriptions exceeds the one-time cost of a custom build.
Does bespoke software require constant, expensive maintenance?
Software does need maintenance, but it is generally controllable and predictable. Bespoke software is leaner than commercial software because it doesn’t carry “bloatware” (features you don’t need but that still require updates). However, you will need to budget for an SLA (Service Level Agreement) or a maintenance retainer for security patches, server updates, and minor tweaks. Think of it like a car; it doesn’t need a new engine every month, but it does need an annual service and oil change to keep running smoothly.
What happens if we stop working with the agency? Do we lose our software?
This is a common fear, but with reputable agencies, the answer is no. Unlike SaaS, where stopping payment means losing access to your data and tools, bespoke development contracts usually assign the Intellectual Property (IP) rights to you upon payment. You own the code. If you decide to switch agencies or hire an in-house team later, you simply take the code repository with you. It is vital, however, to ensure the agency uses standard coding practices and documentation so a new team can easily take over.
Bespoke development involves creating custom software tailored specifically to your business’s unique requirements, rather than using mass-market “off-the-shelf” solutions.
For an SME, partnering with an agency for this service offers a distinct competitive advantage. Unlike generic software, which often forces you to adapt your operations to fit rigid tools, bespoke solutions are built to fit your workflows perfectly. You eliminate the frustration of paying for features you never use while gaining specific functionality that drives your efficiency.
The long-term value is significant. With bespoke software, you typically own the Intellectual Property (IP), eliminating indefinite subscription fees (SaaS costs) and vendor lock-in. It transforms technology from a monthly rental expense into a proprietary asset that increases your company’s valuation. An agency delivers this high-quality engineering without the overhead and distraction of managing an in-house development team.
CTO as a Service
How is a Fractional CTO different from hiring a Senior Developer or Project Manager?
While a Senior Developer focuses on writing code and a Project Manager focuses on timelines, a Fractional CTO focuses on business strategy.
SMEs often make the mistake of promoting a lead developer to a strategic role, only to find they lack the experience to align technology with business goals. A Fractional CTO bridges this gap. They don’t just build features; they answer critical questions like “Should we build this in-house or buy it?”, “Is this technology scalable for the next 5 years?”, and “How do we protect our IP?”. They provide the executive-level “Why” and “How” that technical staff often miss.
Is a Fractional CTO cost-effective compared to a full-time executive?
Yes, typically offering significant savings. A full-time CTO often commands a significant salary, possible equity, benefits, and bonuses.
In contrast, CTO as a Service operates on a retainer or hourly basis. For an SME that may only need high-level strategic guidance for 5 to 10 hours a week or a few days a month, the cost is a fraction of a full-time hire. You pay only for the expertise you consume, avoiding the overhead of an idle executive during slower periods. This model creates an immediate Return on Investment (ROI) by preventing costly technical mistakes (like choosing the wrong cloud provider or hiring the wrong agency) without the heavy fixed payroll cost.
What specific outcomes can I expect from a “part time” CTO?
Even with limited hours, a Fractional CTO delivers high impact, tanagable results. Common deliverables can be:
Technology Roadmap. 12 to 24 month plan aligning initiatives with revenue goals.
Technical Audit: A “health check” of your current software, security, and infrastructure to identify risks.
Vendor Selection & Management: Unbiased assessment of third-party agencies or software tools to ensure you aren’t being overcharged.
Hiring Frameworks: creating job descriptions and conducting technical interviews to ensure you hire high-quality permanent developers.
CTO as a Service provides Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) with executive-level technical leadership without the financial burden of a full-time hire. Also known as a Fractional CTO, this model grants you access to an experienced strategist on a flexible, part-time basis.
For growing businesses, the benefits are substantial. You gain expert guidance on high-stakes decisions such as defining a scalable technology roadmap, selecting the right software stack, and ensuring cybersecurity compliance while avoiding the six-figure salary and equity often required for a permanent Chief Technology Officer.
A Fractional CTO aligns your technology with your business goals, overseeing development teams and vendor relationships to ensure efficiency. Ultimately, this service allows SMEs to professionalize their tech strategy, mitigate risks, and innovate faster, paying only for the high-level expertise they need, exactly when they need it.
Scaleup Solutions
How do I know if my current IT setup is ready for scaling? Your system is likely ready for a Scale Up solution?
if you are experiencing performance issues that correlate with business success. Look for these red flags:
System Slowdown: Your website or application slows down during peak traffic hours or busy marketing campaigns.
Manual Bottlenecks: Your team spends too much time manually deploying updates or provisioning resources for new clients.
High Hosting Bills: Your cloud bills are spiralling out of control without a clear understanding of where the money is going (likely poor resource optimisation).
Delayed Feature Releases: It takes weeks to deploy new features because the deployment process is complex and prone to failure.
What is the difference between “scaling up” and “growing” your business, and how does the agency help?
Growth means achieving more results by spending proportionally more resources (e.g.spending £2 to earn £2).
Scaling means achieving significantly more results with proportionally less effort (e.g., spending £1 to earn £5). The agency’s role is to introduce leverage through technology. This is achieved by moving you to a secure, elastic Cloud Architecture (like AWS or Azure) and implementing Automation tools (like CI/CD pipelines) or AI to Automate processes & operations. These changes allow your business to handle 10x the traffic or customers without needing 10x the IT staff.
Will implementing scale-up solutions significantly increase our monthly operating costs?
Not necessarily. While there may be an initial investment in re-architecting your system, the goal of scaling is to achieve cost-efficiency over time. Agencies focus on “optimising the cloud bill.” They achieve this by:
Right-Sizing: Ensuring you only pay for the exact compute power you need, using features like serverless functions or auto-scaling.
Automation: Reducing human labour costs associated with manual deployment and maintenance.
Preventing Downtime: The cost of lost sales and reputation damage from a system crash during a peak season can far exceed the cost of proactive scale-up solutions.
IT Scale Up solutions ensure your technology infrastructure can gracefully handle rapid business growth without failure. An SME needs this service because systems designed for small user bases often cannot cope with sudden surges in customers, data volume, or transaction load.
An agency provides access to high-level Cloud Architecture and Performance Engineering expertise instantly. Services typically include: migrating infrastructure to scalable environments (like AWS or Azure), optimizing database performance, and automating deployment pipelines (CI/CD) to enable faster updates.
The primary benefit is stability and cost-efficiency. You prevent catastrophic system crashes during peak demand, safeguard the user experience, and avoid overspending by ensuring cloud resources are provisioned optimally. It transforms the crucial transition from startup to scale-up into a planned, risk-mitigated success.
IT Advisory
We already have an IT support company. Do we really need IT Advisory?
Yes, because they serve two completely different functions. Think of IT Support as your mechanics—they fix things when they break and keep the engine running (reactive). IT Advisory acts as your navigator—they plan the route to ensure you reach your destination safely and quickly (proactive). While your support team is busy resetting passwords and updating servers, an IT Advisor looks at the bigger picture: “Is our current software slowing down our staff?”, “Are we legally compliant with new data laws?”, and “How can we use AI to beat our competitors?”.
How do we measure the Return on Investment (ROI) of advice?
The ROI of IT Advisory is measured by cost avoidance and efficiency gains. SMEs often waste thousands on “shelfware” (software bought but never used), overpriced vendor contracts, or redundant tools. An advisor often pays for themselves simply by auditing your current spend and negotiating better deals with vendors. Furthermore, the cost of a bad strategic decision—like migrating to the wrong cloud provider or suffering a preventable data breach—can be catastrophic. An advisor mitigates these six-figure risks, providing a safety net that far outweighs their retainer fee.
Is this just for large corporations, or can small businesses benefit too?
It is arguably more critical for small businesses. Large corporations can absorb the cost of a failed IT project; an SME often cannot. However, hiring a full-time Chief Information Officer (CIO) to manage this strategy typically costs a sizeable amount, which is out of reach for most SMEs. IT Advisory provides a “Fractional CIO” model, giving you the same level of high-impact strategic leadership for a few days a month. This levels the playing field, allowing you to compete with larger rivals using enterprise-grade tech strategies on a small-business budget.
IT Advisory services go beyond day-to-day technical support to provide high-level strategic planning. While IT support fixes broken computers, IT Advisory fixes broken processes.
These services typically include digital transformation roadmaps, cybersecurity audits, software vendor selection, and compliance assessments (such as GDPR or ISO standards).
For an SME, using an agency for this guidance offers a critical advantage: an unbiased, expert perspective. Internal teams often lack the breadth of experience to know what “good” looks like across the wider industry. An advisory agency helps you avoid costly vendor lock-ins and ensures you invest only in technology that drives revenue.
Ultimately, IT Advisory turns technology from a confusing cost center into a competitive asset. You gain a clear, scalable plan for growth, mitigating security risks and ensuring your infrastructure can handle your future success without requiring a full-time Chief Information Officer.
Technical Audit
Will an audit upset or demotivate my internal development team?
This is the number one concern for business owners, but if positioned correctly, the answer is no. An audit should not be framed as “grading their homework” or a witch hunt. Instead, it should be presented as a tool to validate their hard work and highlight resource gaps. Developers often know where the issues are (e.g., “technical debt” or outdated libraries) but struggle to convince management to pause new feature development to fix them. An external audit provides the objective data needed to back up your team’s requests, often helping them get the budget or time they need to refactor code. It turns an emotional debate into a factual roadmap
When is the right time to commission a Technical Audit?
While an audit is useful at any time, there are three critical “trigger points” where it provides maximum value:
Before Investment or Exit: If you are raising capital or selling the company, investors will conduct “Technical Due Diligence.” Conducting your own audit beforehand allows you to fix red flags before they devalue your company.
Before Scaling: If you plan to double your user base, you need to know if your infrastructure will crash under the load.
Before a Major Rewrite: If your team says, “The current code is unusable; we need to rewrite it from scratch,” an audit verifies if that is actually true or if the code can be salvaged and improved.
We have a specific platform (legacy or newly built) that is critical to us. How does a targeted audit help?
Focusing an audit on a single system allows for deep-dive Root Cause Analysis. Often, a system “works” on the surface but suffers from unexplained slowness, recurring bugs, or high hosting costs. A targeted audit lifts the hood to explain why. It moves beyond symptoms to check the structural engineering:
Validation: It confirms if your vendors actually built what they promised (and if the code is clean and documented).
Scalability: It assesses if the system can handle 10x your current user base, or if the database design will choke as you grow.
Remediation: It provides a prioritized “Fix List.” Instead of guessing why the system is crashing, your developers get a checklist of specific code blocks to refactor. It turns a vague frustration (e.g., “The system is slow”) into a precise engineering plan (e.g., “Optimize the search queries in the inventory module”).
Technical Audits serve as an independent “health check” for your business’s technology stack. They go beyond surface-level testing to evaluate the structural integrity of your software, including code quality, security vulnerabilities, database performance, and scalability.
For an SME, hiring an external agency is crucial for objectivity. Internal teams often suffer from “tunnel vision” or may be hesitant to critique their own legacy code. An agency brings unbiased expertise and industry-wide benchmarks to uncover hidden risks that your team might miss.
The benefits are immediate: you identify security gaps before a breach occurs, uncover performance bottlenecks that stifle growth, and gain concrete documentation often required by investors during due diligence. Ultimately, an audit transforms invisible technical risks into a prioritized, actionable roadmap for stability and speed.
Digital Transformation
Is Digital Transformation (DX) just about updating my technology, and where does AI fit in?
No, DX is a complete business strategy, not just a technology upgrade. While technology modernisation is foundational, DX focuses on three pillars: Technology, Process, and Culture. An agency helps you restructure workflows and build a data-driven culture.
AI (Artificial Intelligence) is the primary tool for achieving process transformation. It moves beyond standard automation (like Zapier) into intelligent automation, offering capabilities like:
Customer Experience: AI-powered chatbots that handle 80% of support queries.
Operational Efficiency: Machine learning models that forecast inventory demand or automate complex invoice processing.
Data Insights: Tools that analyse customer data to provide personalized sales recommendations.
As an SME, can we afford DX, and what is the typical Return on Investment (ROI)?
DX is necessary for SMEs to compete, and agencies structure it to be highly accessible and focused on quick ROI. You do not need to rewrite every system at once. Instead, agencies focus on phased, high-impact projects that target specific bottlenecks.
The ROI is measured in two ways:
Cost Reduction: Automating manual processes (e.g., finance and HR) drastically reduces labour costs and human error.
Revenue Growth: Improving customer experience and using data to personalise offerings leads directly to increased sales and higher customer retention rates. The agency ensures projects are tied directly to clear, measurable business objectives.
What is the greatest risk involved in a DX project, and how does an agency mitigate it?
The greatest risk is Resistance to Change (the cultural pillar) and the failure to align the new technology with your core business goals. Studies show that internal resistance is the leading cause of DX failure.
An agency mitigates this risk by:
Change Management: They work with your staff (not just your IT team) through focused training and communication to secure buy-in and address fears early.
Prioritisation: They ensure technology is only adopted if it solves a clear business problem, avoiding the trap of implementing “technology for technology’s sake.”
Objective Leadership: They provide unbiased oversight, ensuring the project stays on track and does not get derailed by internal politics or departmental rivalries.
Digital Transformation (DX) is a strategic overhaul that embeds technology into every area of your business, fundamentally changing how you operate and deliver value. If you are thinking AI, you need to think Digital Transformation
We help SMEs define and execute this shift, accelerating change beyond what internal teams can manage. Services included often cover technology, process, and culture:
Technology: Cloud migration, system modernisation, and implementing automation/AI to increase efficiency.
Process: Mapping new customer journeys and digitising workflows (e.g., paperless onboarding).
Culture: Training staff and fostering data-driven decision-making.
The key benefit is becoming a future-proof, competitive organisation. Agencies reduce implementation risk, provide objective best practices, have the knowledge and deliver immediate ROI by streamlining operations. This enables faster time-to-market, improved customer experience, and better resilience against industry disruption.