Enterprise Strategy & Architecture
What the estate should look like in three years, what to build toward it first, and how to stop the next twelve projects pulling in different directions.
Independent technology advisory
I help CIOs and executive teams decide which technology investments to make, shape how they get delivered, and prove afterwards that they paid.
Position
Most organisations can build far more than they can sensibly decide to build. The constraint that matters is portfolio discipline: knowing what to fund, what to sequence behind it, and what to stop.
The gap between the business case at approval and the budget line twelve months later is where most technology value quietly disappears. Measuring it is unglamorous and almost always the highest-return work available.
I take no vendor referral fees, hold no implementation partnerships, and do not bid for the delivery work that follows an engagement. That is the only reason my recommendation is worth more than a system integrator's.
Offerings
Decide where the money goes. Change what needs changing. Prove it paid. Most clients start in one group and find they need the next.
What the estate should look like in three years, what to build toward it first, and how to stop the next twelve projects pulling in different directions.
Which AI investments are worth making, which pilots to stop, and how to govern what remains without stalling it.
Whether to move, what to move first, and what it will actually cost to run once you have.
Which applications to retire, which to rebuild, which to leave alone — and what the technical debt is really costing you each year.
How the technology organisation needs to be shaped, funded and governed to deliver what the strategy just committed to.
Whether the programme is delivering what was approved, and where the benefits went if it isn't.
What you are paying suppliers for, whether the rates and contracts still stand up, and where cost comes out without losing capability.
Lead offering, in detail
Every AI engagement opens by placing the organisation on the same five-band scale, scored against thirty-five criteria across seven dimensions. Select a band to see what it looks like from the inside.
What the first engagement does
Approach
Interviews, document review and a scored assessment against a fixed rubric. Every score is recorded with the evidence behind it, so a finding can be defended in the room when someone senior disagrees with it.
Initiatives scored on value, feasibility, data readiness and risk, then sequenced against shared dependencies. The output separates what to fund now from what is waiting on an enabler nobody has budgeted.
Total cost of ownership including run cost at scale, integration, evaluation and refresh — the costs most commonly left out, and the reason approved cases stop reconciling by month nine.
The deliverable is a set of decisions with named owners and dates. The document exists to support them, not to substitute for them.
Who you would be working with
The person you meet is the person who does the work. There is no engagement manager, no team of analysts learning your business at your expense, and no handover after the sales meeting.
«Two or three sentences of background: sectors, the kinds of decisions you have owned, and one specific thing you have done that a sceptical CFO would find reassuring. Keep it factual — no adjectives.»
Next step
Tell me what decision you are trying to make. If I am not the right person for it, I will say so and point you somewhere better — that costs me nothing and saves us both a month.
hello@sbnadvisory.co.uk