bcom ICT provides independent IT consulting to Gold Coast businesses — technology roadmaps, budget planning, vendor selection, system reviews and second opinions. bcom ICT takes no commissions from hardware or software vendors, and consulting is charged at $198 + GST per hour. Call 07 3041 8993.
The four questions businesses bring us
Almost every consulting engagement starts as one of these.
"Is this quote reasonable?"
Someone has proposed a system, a migration or a replacement and you have no way to judge it. We read the quote, tell you what it's actually buying, and flag anything missing or padded. Often the cheapest hour you'll spend.
"What should we do first?"
You know several things need attention and can't fund all of them. We assess what would hurt most if it failed, what's cheap to fix, and what can genuinely wait — then sequence it.
"Do we replace this or keep it going?"
A server, a phone system, a fleet of laptops. We look at remaining life, what it's costing you in workarounds, and what replacement actually involves. Keeping it is frequently the right answer.
"What will IT cost us over the next three years?"
Businesses get caught out by capital expenditure nobody saw coming. A roadmap turns that into a budget line — what's coming out of support and when, and roughly what each item costs.
Why independence matters here
- No hardware or software commissions. A recommendation costs us nothing to make honestly.
- You can take the roadmap elsewhere. Some clients have us plan and someone else deliver. That's a legitimate outcome and we'll hand over cleanly.
- We'll say when the answer is 'do nothing'. Or that your current provider is right and the quote is fair.
- We'll say when we're the wrong fit. Some work needs a specialist or a bigger firm, and it's cheaper for everyone if we say so early.
Scoped first, so you're agreeing to a number
1. A conversation
Free. What's prompting the question, what's already been proposed, and what's constraining you — usually budget or timing.
2. A scope and an estimate
What we'd look at and roughly how many hours it takes, agreed before we start. Not an open meter.
3. The work
Reviewing systems, reading quotes, talking to your people, checking what's actually in use rather than what's assumed.
4. A written recommendation
Plain English, sequenced, with rough costs. Yours to act on, shop around with, or ignore.
What businesses actually come to us with
Six situations where an independent view tends to change the answer.
“We keep spending and nothing gets better”
Usually money going into symptoms. Each individual purchase was defensible and none of them addressed the thing actually causing the problems.
What we do Work out what is generating the recurring cost before authorising more spend. A business fixing the same category of problem three times a year has a design issue, not a bad-luck issue.
“Our provider and our software vendor blame each other”
Usually a genuine gap in responsibility rather than either party being unreasonable. Nobody owns the space between two suppliers.
What we do Establish the facts independently and assign the problem to whoever it belongs to. Most of these disputes resolve quickly once somebody with no stake in the answer looks at the evidence.
“We’re told we need to move to the cloud”
Usually advice that is sometimes right and sometimes a reflex. It suits some workloads well and some very poorly, and the answer depends on the specific business.
What we do Assess it against your actual applications, connection and cost profile. We have said no to this more than once, including where a business had already decided to proceed.
“Nobody can tell us what things cost”
Usually technology spend spread across several suppliers, subscriptions and capital purchases with no consolidated view.
What we do Build the whole picture in one place. Businesses are routinely surprised by the total, and the surprise is the useful part — it is the number that makes decisions possible.
“Everything depends on one person”
Usually knowledge that lives in somebody’s head. Often that person is capable and conscientious, which is precisely what has allowed the dependency to grow unnoticed.
What we do Document it and distribute it. This is not a comment on the individual — it is that a business should be able to survive a resignation, a holiday or an illness without a crisis.
“We don’t know what to do first”
Usually a list of everything that should be done, with no sequence and no sense of relative urgency. It usually produces paralysis.
What we do Order the work by risk and by what unblocks other things. A ranked list of six items is actionable in a way that an unranked list of thirty is not.
What independent advice looks like
Representative engagements, drawn from real work with identifying detail removed — we don’t name clients without written permission.
Advising a business not to move to the cloud
The situation
A manufacturer had been advised to move its main production system into the cloud and had largely accepted the recommendation. We were engaged to help plan the migration.
What we found
The system in question ran a machine control application with a hard latency requirement, connected directly to equipment on the factory floor. Moving it would have introduced network dependency into a process that could not tolerate any, at a running cost higher than the on-premises arrangement. Two other systems the business ran — email and file storage — were genuinely well suited to moving and were not part of the proposal.
What we did
Recommended against migrating the production system, and recommended migrating the two systems nobody had proposed moving. Set out the reasoning in writing so the directors could weigh it against the advice they already had.
The outcome
The production system stayed where it is and still runs. We were engaged to plan a migration and advised against most of it, which cost us the larger piece of work and is the reason the client still calls.
The same problem, three times a year, for four years
The situation
A business had replaced its server twice in four years and was being quoted for a third. Each replacement had been justified at the time, and the same symptoms returned within months.
What we found
The server had never been the problem. The building’s electrical supply was delivering frequent brief interruptions, and the server had no protection beyond a basic power board. Each new server had been damaged the same way as the last. A cheap uninterruptible power supply had been quoted twice and removed from the scope both times as an optional extra.
What we did
Recommended power conditioning and a properly sized uninterruptible supply before any hardware, and had the electrical supply investigated by a licensed electrician, who found a genuine fault in the building’s distribution.
The outcome
The existing server was repaired and has run since without incident. Two servers had been bought to solve an electrical problem, and the item that would have prevented all of it had been treated as an optional extra each time.
Questions Gold Coast businesses ask us
What does an IT consultant do for a small business?
An IT consultant works out what technology a business actually needs, in what order, and at what cost — independently of who supplies it. bcom ICT provides technology roadmaps, budget planning, vendor selection, system reviews and second opinions for Gold Coast businesses, charged at $198 + GST per hour with no hardware commissions. Call 07 3041 8993.
Are you independent, or do you sell what you recommend?
We take no commissions from hardware or software vendors, so a recommendation costs us nothing to make honestly. We do implement what we recommend if you want us to — but you can also take the roadmap and have someone else deliver it, and some clients do exactly that.
We already have an IT provider. Can you still help?
Yes, and second opinions are a legitimate reason to call. Sometimes the answer is that your provider is right and the quote is fair, which is genuinely useful to know. Sometimes it isn't. We'll tell you which without trying to win the account.
What does a technology roadmap actually contain?
Where your systems are now, what's ageing or coming out of support and when, what your business plans require of your IT over the next few years, and a sequenced list of what to do with rough costs against it. The point is to replace surprise capital expenditure with a budget line.
How much does IT consulting cost?
$198 + GST per hour ($217.80 inc GST). We scope the piece of work first and tell you roughly how many hours it will take, so you're agreeing to a number rather than an open meter.
Can you help us decide whether to replace a system?
That's one of the most common things we're asked. We'll look at what the existing system still does well, what it's costing you in workarounds, and what replacement genuinely involves — including the case for keeping it a few more years, which is often the right answer.
Related services
Got a decision you're stuck on?
The first conversation is free, and it's often enough to tell you whether you need the rest.