Book 30 minutesEvery engagement ends the same way: with the business more capable than it was, and less dependent on us than when we arrived. How it starts depends on how much certainty you already have.
The most expensive mistake in technology consulting is buying a large programme to answer a question a short piece of work would have settled. These are the four shapes we use, roughly in order of how much you already know.
For when the symptoms are clear and the cause is not. Margins are moving in the wrong direction, reporting takes too long, the ERP is blamed for everything, or an acquisition has left two of every system. We work through the systems, data and processes, talk to the people doing the work, and come back with a written diagnosis: what is happening, what it is costing in time or control, what should change first, and what should be deliberately left alone. It is scoped and priced before it starts, and it is designed to be useful even if you never engage us again.
An ongoing retained arrangement for businesses that need CIO-level judgement (architecture decisions, investment sequencing, supplier scrutiny, governance, board reporting) without carrying a full executive salary. Typically a regular cadence of time each month, with the business setting the agenda.
When the problem is already understood and what is needed is execution. Scope, deliverables, timeline and price are agreed before work starts, and they do not move without an explicit change to the agreement. The Margin Watch Sprint is one example: a fixed-scope engagement that examines where margin is leaking in a NetSuite business and returns a prioritised, evidenced list.
ERP implementation or rescue, integration architecture, a data foundation, post-acquisition systems integration. Structured in phases with a decision point at the end of each one, so the business can stop, change direction or continue on evidence rather than momentum.
A first call is a qualification conversation in both directions. You are working out whether we understand your business; we are working out whether we can actually help.
You do not need a technology brief, a requirements document or a shortlist. What helps is knowing what has changed commercially (growth, an acquisition, an investor, a margin that will not behave) and where the friction is showing up.
If the problem is being framed in a way that will lead to expensive work that does not fix it, we will say so on the call. That is more useful to you than a polite agreement followed by a proposal.
You get a short written note: what we heard, what we would do about it, and which engagement shape fits. If the answer is that you do not need us, or need someone else, that is what the note will say.
Professional services goes wrong in predictable ways. These are the positions we take to avoid them, and we will hold to them in writing.
Where the work is knowable in advance, it is quoted as a fixed scope for a fixed fee. Open-ended time-and-materials is reserved for genuinely exploratory work, and it is named as such rather than disguised as a project.
Scope changes on most programmes. When it does, it is discussed and agreed before the work happens, including the option of dropping something else rather than adding cost.
Documentation, configuration and decisions belong to you. Nothing is deliberately built in a way that requires us to maintain it. A retainer that continues because it is genuinely useful is a better business than one that continues because leaving is painful.
We build software through the software arm, and we still recommend against it when it is not the right answer. Where a third-party product or a process change beats anything we could sell you, that is the recommendation.
Being direct about this early saves both sides a difficult conversation later. Three things reliably determine whether technology work lands.
Not necessarily full time, but someone senior enough to settle a process disagreement between two departments, and available enough to do it within days rather than weeks. Most stalled programmes are stalled on an unmade decision, not on technology.
Real access to the data, and time with the people who actually run the process, not only the people who describe it. The gap between the documented process and the real one is usually where the problem lives.
Previous failed implementations, workarounds everyone relies on, the module that was bought and never used, the report the finance team does not trust. None of it is embarrassing, all of it is relevant, and finding it out late is expensive.
A successful engagement should be visible in the business six months later without anyone from Link-IT being in the room.
Internal people are involved in the work as it happens rather than trained on it at the end. Where a process is new, someone inside the business owns it before we step back.
What was built matters less in two years than why it was built that way, and what was rejected. Written decisions are what let the next person change something safely.
Most clients come back: for the next acquisition, the next system, the next stage. That works best when the last engagement ended cleanly rather than trailing off.
That is usually a sign the answer is discovery rather than a programme. Thirty minutes on a call is normally enough to tell.
