Software Consulting in New Zealand

Buy a decision, not a document

The test for any consulting engagement is simple: what will you be able to decide at the end that you cannot decide now?

"Whether to build or buy, with numbers behind it." "Which of these three quotes is realistic." "Whether the system we are acquiring is worth what they are asking." Those are decisions. "A digital strategy" is not, and engagements that promise one tend to end in a well-formatted restatement of what you already knew.

Write the question down before you brief anyone. It is the single most effective way to make consulting money well spent.

The four things worth buying

A second opinion. You have quotes ranging from $40,000 to $180,000 and no way to judge them. A few days of independent review costs a fraction of the gap and often explains it entirely.

Discovery. You know the problem but not the shape of the solution. Done properly, this produces something three developers can quote from and return comparable numbers — which is worth far more than the document itself.

Due diligence. You are buying a business, a product or a codebase. What is actually there, what state it is in, who understands it, and what it will cost to keep running. This is where consulting most reliably pays for itself, because the findings change the price you pay.

Fractional leadership. You are spending real money on software and nobody in the business is senior enough to judge it. A day or two a week of experienced technical leadership costs less than a wrong hire and far less than a wrong build.

The conflict to name out loud

Most consultants also build. That brings genuine advantages — continuity, accountability, no handover gap — and one obvious problem: a firm that recommends a large custom build and then bids to deliver it was never neutral.

You have two honest options. Use someone who does not build, and accept that they will hand off. Or use someone who does, name the conflict at the start, and get a second opinion on the recommendation before you commit.

What you should not do is assume the advice is disinterested because it came with a fee attached. Ask directly: would you be quoting on this work?

Ask who actually does it

The most common disappointment in consulting is not bad advice. It is meeting an experienced principal during the sale and getting a junior for the delivery.

Ask who will do the work, how many days each person is on it, and how much of that is the person in front of you. Rates of $1,200 to $2,500 a day are normal for genuinely senior people in New Zealand; the same rate for someone two years out is not, and you will only find out afterwards if you did not ask.

What good output looks like

• Discovery: a scope with enough detail that three independent developers produce quotes within a sensible range of each other. If the quotes still vary 4x, the discovery did not do its job.
• Audit: findings ranked by risk, each with a rough cost to fix, so you can decide what to do this quarter and what to live with.
• Review: a recommendation with the reasoning shown, in language you can defend to a board.
• Due diligence: what you are buying, what is missing, key person risk, and the number you should adjust the offer by.

In every case: portable. If the deliverable is only usable by the firm that wrote it, you bought a sales document.

When not to buy consulting

If the project is small — under about $30,000 — the review can cost a meaningful share of the build. Ask two or three developers for their approach instead; the disagreements between them are free consulting.

If your brief is already clear and specific, discovery adds cost without adding certainty. And if you are looking for someone to confirm a decision you have already made, save the money: you will get the confirmation and none of the value.

The most useful question you can ask

Ask when they last told a client not to build something, and what happened.

Consultants who have never advised against a project have either been extraordinarily lucky in their clients or have never risked the fee. The answer tells you whether you are buying judgement or agreement.

Describe the decision you are facing

You do not need to specify the engagement. Describe the decision in front of you, what you have already been told, who disagrees, and what happens if you get it wrong. Consultants worth hiring will tell you whether you need them at all — and the ones who say the answer is a fortnight rather than a quarter are usually the ones to take seriously.