Question 1

How do we know which of the three services we need?

Accepted Answer

Strategy + Advisory is for when the decision matters more than the code: what to buy, what to fix first, what it costs you to leave things as they are. Design + Build is for when something has to get made and put into production. Support is for systems that already exist and need someone senior responsible for them. If you cannot tell which one you are looking at, describe the problem and we will tell you. Sometimes the honest answer is that you do not need any of the three yet.

Question 2

Do we have to buy advisory before you will build something?

Accepted Answer

No. The three are bought separately as often as together. Plenty of clients engage us for a website or for hosting and never buy a day of advisory. Others take a roadmap from us and hand it to their own team or an existing vendor. Advisory work does often lead to build work, but that is a pattern we have noticed rather than a condition we set.

Question 3

What does an engagement cost?

Accepted Answer

The figure depends on scope, so we do not publish rates. We can tell you the shape before you ask, and you get a written proposal with the number in it before any work starts. Advisory is either a fixed-scope piece of work with a defined deliverable, such as an audit, a vendor selection or a roadmap, or a monthly retainer with a minimum of one day a week. Build work opens with a paid discovery of fixed scope, so you see the plan and the number before committing to the build itself. Managed systems, hosting and support run on a single monthly fee.

Question 4

What kinds of organizations do you work with?

Accepted Answer

Most of our work is with nonprofits and social service organizations, and with founder-led companies that have grown past the point where ad hoc technology decisions hold. We have also worked in healthcare, financial services, education and professional services. The approach travels, because the technology and operational patterns are much the same and the domain detail is yours to supply. Regulated data comes up often enough that we plan for it from the start.

Question 5

Do you work with organizations outside Canada?

Accepted Answer

Yes. We are based in Canada and work with clients across North America and further afield. Most collaboration happens remotely and we are used to working across time zones.

Question 6

How do you handle confidentiality and intellectual property?

Accepted Answer

Confidentiality agreements are signed before an engagement begins, whichever service it is. Your business information, internal processes and anything proprietary stay yours. Where a build is involved, the contract states ownership explicitly, so it is not left to be worked out later.

Question 7

What is the first step?

Accepted Answer

Send the contact form and describe the situation. Someone on our team reads it and replies, and whoever replies has read what you wrote. There is nothing to sign to have a first conversation and no obligation at the end of one. If what you need is smaller than an engagement, or better served by someone else, we will say so instead of quoting for it.

Question 8

Can we hire you for one specific piece of work rather than an ongoing arrangement?

Accepted Answer

Yes. That is how a lot of advisory engagements start. A software audit, a vendor selection, a technology roadmap, a security and compliance review: each is fixed in scope with a deliverable you can act on whether or not you keep working with us. You do not have to take the retainer to get any of it.

Question 9

What does the retainer involve?

Accepted Answer

Standing senior judgment, month to month, with a minimum of one day a week. In practice that means regular check-ins with your leadership, reviewing architecture and platform decisions before they are made, managing vendor relationships, advising on security and compliance, mentoring developers, and being available to call before you sign something. It is the work a full-time technology executive would do, on a fraction of the schedule.

Question 10

Will you recommend a vendor that you would also be the one to implement?

Accepted Answer

We will tell you when the recommendation points away from us, and we have done it. Our assessment work is built to be acted on independently, including when acting on it means hiring someone else or doing nothing for now. Where we do have a stake in the answer, we tell you where our interest lies before we make the recommendation. We are also comfortable delivering any reasonable option, so there is no in-house platform the advice has to bend toward.

Question 11

Can you help with PHIPA and other compliance obligations?

Accepted Answer

Yes. A security and compliance review covers where sensitive data lives, who can reach it, and what PHIPA or your other obligations actually require of you. You get the gaps named and a remediation list in priority order. This is technical assessment work. It is not a legal opinion, and it is written so your counsel and your board can act on it.

Question 12

Can we take the roadmap and run it ourselves?

Accepted Answer

Yes. It is written to be handed over. The plan is prioritized, carries real estimates, and is tied to your budget and the capacity you actually have. Some clients hand it to their own team or an existing vendor. Others ask us to manage the execution. It has to work either way, so that is how it gets written.

Question 13

Can you work with the development team we already have?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and it is one of the most common arrangements. We embed with your team, run the technical processes, help evaluate tooling and architecture decisions, and set standards that outlast the engagement. We are not there to replace your developers.

Question 14

What happens when the engagement ends?

Accepted Answer

Before it wraps up, the things that live in someone's head get written down: architecture decisions and the reasoning behind them, vendor contacts, process guides, and anything still open. We also work through a transition period so your team, or whoever you hire next, can pick it up without a gap.

Question 15

How is this different from a website builder like Squarespace or Wix?

Accepted Answer

Builders are good at what they are for, and if one is genuinely the right call for you we will say so. We come in when a site has to do more than publish pages: logins and gated content, single sign-on with the identity system you already use, roles and permissions, content shared across several sites or into an application, or a move off a platform you have outgrown.

Question 16

Will our non-technical team be able to update the site?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Editing is set up so routine changes need no developer, and we configure it around the people who will use it, not the people who built it. A typo, a new page or a swapped image should not have to wait in a queue.

Question 17

Do we have to move to a new content platform?

Accepted Answer

No, and often you should not. Sometimes the platform you are on is the right one and the problem is how it was set up. A different setup earns its keep when you publish to more than one place, run several brands, or expect your content operation to grow. For a single straightforward site, staying where you are, WordPress included, is frequently the better call.

Question 18

Can you migrate our existing site without losing search traffic?

Accepted Answer

Yes. We model the content you have, build a redirect map so existing links and rankings carry across, re-host the assets, and rehearse the cutover in a staging environment. Everything is verified there before production is touched.

Question 19

We have already bought a platform. Can you get it working properly?

Accepted Answer

Yes. That is implementation work on a platform you own: configuration around how your team actually works, data migrated off spreadsheets and older systems with the mess resolved on the way, integrations to the rest of your systems, and training aimed at the people who will use it daily.

Question 20

What if the platform we bought turns out to be the wrong fit?

Accepted Answer

We would rather say so during discovery than configure it anyway and let you find out a year later. Sometimes what looks like the wrong platform is a configuration problem. Sometimes it really is the wrong platform, and then you get an honest read on what switching would cost against what living with it would cost.

Question 21

Who owns the code and the data?

Accepted Answer

Your data is yours, without qualification. On code, the contract states it explicitly rather than leaving it implied. Our standard arrangement is that you own your configuration and your data while we own the underlying platform, and where full code ownership matters to you we can structure the deal that way.

Question 22

How long is a Managed SaaS contract, and what if we want to leave?

Accepted Answer

It starts at twelve months. That is the runway to rebuild, migrate and let the system settle before anyone can fairly judge whether it is working, and a shorter term would have you paying for the build and leaving before the part that pays it back. A fixed term and lock-in are different things. Your data stays yours throughout, and on the way out you get a full export in a standard format, documentation of your configuration, and a transition period to move to whoever comes next.

Question 23

How do you handle security and updates?

Accepted Answer

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, access is scoped so people reach only what their role needs, and security patches and dependency updates go out on a schedule, not when something breaks. Backups run continuously, and we test the restores instead of assuming them. If you carry a specific compliance obligation, tell us early and we will design to it instead of retrofitting it later.

Question 24

Can we ask for new features after launch?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Ongoing development is part of the monthly fee. We keep a roadmap you can see and prioritize it with you, so what ships on day one is where it starts.

Question 25

Will you support software you did not build?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Most of what we support is software somebody else wrote. We read what is there and tell you honestly what condition it is in before anyone quotes. Occasionally the answer is that it needs work before it can responsibly be supported at all, and we would rather say that up front than take it on and discover it later.

Question 26

What does handing over hosting and operations involve?

Accepted Answer

Deployments, monitoring, backups, patching and the on-call rotation move across in a handover you can watch happen, not one you hear about afterwards. You keep the applications, the servers and the cloud accounts. We run the operations behind them for a predictable monthly fee.

Question 27

Do our accounts and licences stay in our name?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Accounts and documentation stay in your name for the whole engagement. If you bring operations back in-house or move to another provider, there is nothing to untangle first.

Question 28

What happens when an integration between two systems breaks?

Accepted Answer

We monitor the connections between your systems, including the ones that fail quietly. Those are the expensive ones. A sync that stops overnight usually gets noticed weeks later during reconciliation, by which point the cleanup is larger than the fault was. We find those when they happen and repair them.

Question 29

Can you administer the platforms we run on day to day?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Access requests, configuration changes, new users, reports and the small things that pile up come to us, so they stop queuing behind whoever in your organization happens to know the system.

Question 30

How is Support different from Managed SaaS?

Accepted Answer

Managed SaaS means we rebuilt the system and we run it, with one fee covering both. Support means it already exists, possibly built by someone else entirely, and we take responsibility for keeping it running. From where you sit the running part looks much the same. The difference is who built what you are running.

Frequently Asked Questions

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