Engagements

What was asked for, and what was delivered.

Each entry is one engagement: what the client needed, who did the work and for how long, and what they received. Client names are withheld and expert profiles are de-identified.

IT services

Quote a cloud migration with numbers you can defend

A services firm bidding on-prem-to-public-cloud migrations needed effort and price at unit level — per server, per application — for three use cases: workload rehost with minor remediation, application redeploy with infrastructure-as-code and a CI/CD toolchain, and web-app re-platforming to an Azure-native stack.

Size an AI-enabled SIAM programme without guessing

A bidder had to size the implementation and the operate phase of a SIAM programme with AI tooling in the incident, request and change flow: team shape by tower, tooling, offshore mix, and how effort moves with each additional process or supplier in scope.

Find out what Gen AI changes about mainframe modernisation

A provider's standard mainframe modernisation plan was written before Gen AI tooling existed. It needed to know, honestly, where the tooling cuts effort — code understanding, test generation, documentation, data migration — and where it does not, and to revise its estimating rules and its customer-facing position accordingly.

Check whether your security managed-services rates are competitive

A services proposal needed defensible rate cards and scope norms for managed security services across three regions, and a proposal section that a buyer's security team would accept as standard — SOC, IAM, SIEM, managed encryption, application-security testing — with the sizing ratios behind each.

See where ER&D outsourcing is heading before committing

A services firm with an engineering play wanted to know which engineering areas — across automotive and transport, industrial products and consumer goods, semiconductors and telecom, and medical devices — will attract outside investment over the next three to five years, what drives that work out of house, and what a provider must build to win it.

Decide which product teams your India GCC should own end to end

An organisation building out its India global capability centre needed to know which product categories move to a product-led operating model, what triggers the shift, how ownership splits between headquarters and India, which team structures and governance work in distributed models, and which product roles and leadership pipelines are being built in India.

Size and source onsite IT support across a global site footprint

An enterprise with a large global footprint of sites needed to benchmark its onsite IT support — team size, the mix of employees, contractors and managed service, cost per user and process maturity — against market practice, and wanted a framework for staffing decisions at new sites.

See where Gen AI is actually cutting delivery effort at the big providers

A firm studying the market needed to know how the top IT service providers are embedding Gen AI and agentic AI into delivery: measured productivity gains by service line, how delivery pyramids and the onshore/offshore mix are changing, what is automated versus merely accelerated in application managed services, and where human validation stays mandatory.

Know how the big providers solution and price an application-modernisation deal

A firm needed to understand how two cohorts of providers — the established leaders and the challengers — solution, price and negotiate application-modernisation deals: buyer selection criteria and how AI has changed them, productivity accelerators, pyramid and shoring, outcome-based and gainshare models, contract flexibility, and the use of co-creation workshops.

Set the right pyramid and shoring mix for business-process delivery in Europe

A firm needed the shoring mix and the FTE pyramid for processes inside seven functions — F&A, HR, trust & safety, banking services, SCM, life sciences and digital inside sales — across Germany, France and Italy: what runs onshore, what nearshore, and how L1, L2 and L3 split for each.

Estimate a testing centre of excellence for a Guidewire implementation

A firm needed to understand how service providers estimate the effort to set up a testing centre of excellence covering end-to-end testing for a Guidewire InsuranceSuite implementation: the estimation basis, the team, the tooling and the ramp.

Benchmark application-development effort per story point and pod

A firm needed application-development benchmarks across skill sets: effort per story point for SAP ABAP, .NET full stack, C++ and MySQL work; year-on-year productivity improvement in multi-year engagements on Snowflake, Talend, AWS, MuleSoft and OutSystems; FTE size per pod; and how shoring and pyramids move year on year.

Set shoring and pyramids for data, BI and advanced-analytics implementations

A firm needed the typical onshore, offshore and nearshore split and the resource pyramids for implementing three modules — enterprise data management, BI and visualisation, advanced analytics — function by function, and how the pyramids vary across them.

Solution and price managed services for private 4G networks

A firm needed the solutioning, effort-estimation and pricing approach for managing private 4G network solutions: the parameters that drive effort, how to define low, medium and high complexity by sites, technologies and devices, and the pricing models providers propose for run services.

Choose the commercial model for a consulting engagement — and know what it costs you

A firm needed to understand the commercial models prevalent in consulting across four service lines — strategy, business, M&A deal advisory and technology consulting: which models are used, their benefits, challenges and prerequisites, what drives the choice, and how the split has moved in the last 12–18 months.

Understand how virtual private cloud as a service is built, tiered and priced

A firm needed to understand the construct of virtual private cloud as a service: what VM and OS support includes on private cloud and on-prem (servers, blades, switches, hyperconverged infrastructure), the storage-as-a-service tiers and what separates them, the resource unit most commonly used and whether it is priced per VM or per vCPU and vRAM, and the pricing and solutioning trends of the last year.

Estimate the effort to set up and decommission data-centre racks

A firm needed the typical time to set up and decommission x86 racks for standard compute and storage, how cost and effort vary with architecture, local regulation and compliance level, the factors that drive estimates, and the roles and skills needed for the work.

Size managed security services — IAM, SIEM, encryption, application security

A firm needed the current shape of cybersecurity services: the offerings that form a standard catalogue, the prevailing sizing ratios — tickets managed per FTE — for IAM, SIEM and managed encryption, and the typical timeline and FTEs for SAST, DAST and MAST programmes on extra-large applications.

Understand the cyber incident-response market before you enter or buy

A firm needed to understand the cyber incident-response market: who conducts incident reviews and whether it is in-house or outsourced to forensics firms, what a review is expected to deliver, who the key providers are and their advantages, how fragmented and competitive the space is, which breaches go through review, what part of the value chain forensics firms control, and the outlook.

Frame a data-protection strategy and pick the platform on the right criteria

A firm needed to understand data management and protection platforms: the key challenges in protection, recovery and backup, the steps in framing a strategy, the considerations when selecting platforms, and the metrics used to measure success across archiving, records management, recovery, backup and protection of backups against ransomware.

Size the build and run of a data lake on Hadoop or cloud

A firm needed the solutioning and sizing of data operations covering build, run and manage of a Hadoop data lake and a cloud data-management system: typical scenarios, how to determine build and manage effort for simple, medium and complex cases, the tools and accelerators used, and how the target platform — Microsoft, AWS, Google, Snowflake — changes effort and sizing.

Estimate a greenfield Salesforce Industry Cloud implementation

A firm needed to understand a greenfield Salesforce implementation with a focus on customisation and configuration: definitions and examples of simple, medium and complex components in Industry Cloud, the person-hours for industry data-model setup, OmniScripts and other key components, and how those components affect timelines and success.

Size a standard SAP CPQ implementation before the vendor does

A firm needed the thumb rules for sizing a standard SAP CPQ implementation: how small, medium and large scenarios are defined — workflows, product catalogue, countries, integrations, data scope — how effort is estimated across man-days, duration and phases, and the typical team composition.

Size a Blue Yonder implementation by module and effort driver

A firm needed to understand Blue Yonder implementations in demand planning and warehouse management: the characteristics of small, medium and large scenarios — modules, employees, SKUs, integrations, regions — the typical effort drivers by module, and the team composition.

See how offshore leverage and risk pricing have moved in application outsourcing

A firm needed the outsourcing trends in application development: how offshore leverage has changed across agile development, standard development, maintenance and support, and testing; how shoring shifts by region, industry, service line and tech stack and what drives it; and how recent macro-economic turbulence changed the risk and contingency providers price in.

Size the integration layer of a greenfield CRM/ERP programme on MuleSoft

A firm running a greenfield CRM and ERP programme needed to understand what a MuleSoft implementation involves end to end: how integrations are scoped and built, what the platform does beyond APIs — API management, event streams, monitoring, reuse through a centre for enablement — and what a realistic team, timeline and effort look like for a programme with several dozen integrations.

Compare sovereign cloud offerings before a regulated workload moves

A regulated organisation needed to understand the sovereign cloud market before choosing a path: who buys sovereign cloud and why, how data residency, access controls, encryption and local frameworks such as GDPR and BSI shape the design and its trade-offs on scale and cost, and how hyperscaler sovereign offerings differ in practice from system-integrator stacks and fully national clouds.

Understand how a large bank runs its technology estate and sources its providers

A firm needed to understand the business and technology landscape at a typical large UK bank: digital, data and AI priorities over the next few years, the core technology stack and architecture approach — core banking, digital channels, cloud, data platforms, mainframe and hybrid-cloud integration — how the IT-services and technology-partner landscape is organised, how sourcing and vendor management work, and which challenges will shape the next round of decisions.

Hear how IGA, machine-identity and secrets-management tools behave in real deployments

A firm evaluating identity governance, machine identity management and secrets management platforms needed practitioner experience with the main products: how deployments went on-prem, hybrid and multi-cloud, where integrations broke, which features held up under enterprise scale, how vendor support behaved, and how the products compared on the things that matter after go-live.

See where data migration, modernisation and managed services are heading

A firm needed a current view of data migration, modernisation and data managed services: how demand and delivery are shifting, which source-to-target patterns dominate, how operating models are changing, what agentic AI and Gen AI are doing to the work, and how platforms and talent models are likely to evolve.

Know how SAP S/4HANA transformations are solutioned, accelerated and supported

A firm needed two things on SAP: how providers currently solution S/4HANA transformations — approaches, accelerators and what differentiates them — and how operational support differs between the private and public cloud editions: deployment and infrastructure responsibilities, the effort behind licence management and audit support, the advisory layer in cloud-standard operations, and how average effort per ticket varies by vertical for similar maintenance deals.

Benchmark application-management effort per ticket across application types and tiers

A firm needed effort and productivity benchmarks for application management services in the chemical and manufacturing industries: average effort per ticket for incidents, service requests and problems across custom, packaged, cloud, integration, analytics and plant applications; non-ticketing effort and the onshore, nearshore and offshore mix by support tier; the experience-level indicators actually used in governance; and the factors — outsourcing maturity, automation, knowledge management, AI — that explain the spread.

Understand how AI platform providers structure joint deals with service partners

A firm needed to understand how leading AI platform providers structure and package joint deals with service-provider partners: the distribution and engagement models — platform-led licensing, joint pitches, reseller and MSP-led arrangements — and how they vary by client segment; typical deal composition and pricing across licences, professional services and implementation, and how value is split; commercial risk-sharing and how economics shift with deal size and client type; and how joint go-to-market motions are evolving, with representative recent deals.

Find out why AI productivity gains in IT services fell short, and what is being changed

A firm needed to understand why the AI-driven productivity and cost expectations set in 2023–24 had not fully materialised by early 2026: where the gaps emerged across the software lifecycle, customer experience, finance, IT service management and talent; how the industry is recalibrating — revised estimates, extended timelines; what providers are changing in governance, workflows, talent models and operating mechanisms to make gains measurable and durable; and what that means for headcount, delivery models and pyramids.

Work out what Gen AI and agentic AI do to your SLAs and KPIs

A firm needed to understand how existing SLAs and KPIs are affected when Gen AI and agentic AI are deployed across infrastructure management, application management, consulting and BPO services: which measures become meaningless, which need redefining, what new indicators are emerging, and how contracts and governance are adapting.

Size a digital-twin implementation for a manufacturing plant

A firm needed to size a digital-twin implementation in manufacturing: what a typical effort estimate and team structure look like, and one or two representative scenarios with duration, phase timelines, resource loading, contract value and ramp-up and ramp-down plans, so that an engineering-services proposal could be checked against experience rather than vendor claims.

Price CloudOps as a percentage of spend and size PaaS managed services

A firm needed to understand the percentage-of-spend model in public cloud managed services — in which deal scenarios it is used, for which client sizes and sectors, and why it is preferred there — and the metrics, volumes, FTE productivity ratios and in-scope activities for managed PaaS services such as Azure Stream Analytics, AWS Kinesis and AWS Lambda.

Estimate the effort and team to containerise an application estate on cloud

A firm needed the solution aspects of containerising applications to cloud: the scenarios in which an application is considered containerised, the phases and phase-wise activities, how small, medium and large containerisation efforts differ, and the general rules for effort estimation and the resource pyramid for the work.

Estimate greenfield and brownfield ETL platform work by complexity

A firm needed to size ETL platform work: the common scenarios for greenfield implementation and brownfield modernisation, what defines a simple, medium and complex greenfield scenario, the phases and phase-wise activities, and broad end-to-end effort and timeline for low, medium and high complexity.

Quantify the synergies of an integrated ADM and infrastructure-operations deal

A firm needed to quantify the solution efficiencies and synergies in an integrated managed-services engagement covering application development and maintenance and infrastructure operations: transition efficiencies compared with standalone deals, roles that can be removed or cross-leveraged, L2 and L3 synergies when one provider runs both, and the additional efficiency of a DevOps delivery model over traditional delivery in the integrated case.

Understand how low-code platforms are packaged and priced

A firm needed to understand low-code platforms in detail: the attributes that define one, the service offerings and commercial units — per user, per application, per environment — whether pricing varies by geography, procurement route, functionality and hosting model, and how prices had moved over the previous twelve to eighteen months.

Size database managed services by resource unit, productivity and pyramid

A firm needed to size managed services for database run support: the typical management activities per resource unit — SQL Server components such as the engine, analysis, reporting and integration services, Azure MySQL and others — the FTE productivity ranges assumed per unit, and the L1 to L4 pyramid mix for a US enterprise client with full offshoring and 24x7 support.

Size a standard ServiceNow implementation and its solution plan

A firm needed to size a standard ServiceNow implementation for an enterprise with existing tools: how to build the solution plan — effort in man-days, locations, team — from the main parameters, how modules group by complexity and size, and how the solution changes in resource mix and FTE need when criteria beyond the base scenario are added.

Size support for Microsoft 365 E5 and check the pricing trend

A firm needed to understand the components of a Microsoft 365 E5 licence, the sizing ratio — average FTE productivity — for supporting each component, the average number of tickets per user per component, and the general pricing trends seen in the market for M365 support.

Design experience-level agreements for a digital-workplace engagement

A firm needed to understand how experience-level agreements are ideated and implemented in digital-workplace engagements: how the XLA conversation starts with enterprise clients, how the XLA framework is built — metric identification, selection, prioritisation and weighting — how XLAs are measured, best practice and pitfalls, and what efficiency levers — year-on-year productivity, automation, low code — are built into such engagements and how they differ between second-generation and later-generation outsourcing deals.

Healthcare

Build a tender response that answers the clinical case

A device maker's tender responses read like brochures. It needed them rewritten to match how hospital evaluation committees actually score — clinical workflow, biomedical maintenance, drug-library governance, training — before a live tender closed.

Price a diagnostics lab rollout against what the market pays

A diagnostics operator planning new labs across several Indian cities needed a pricing schedule by test family and city tier, a rollout sequence it could defend to its board, and a staffing template per lab.

Understand how US hospitals actually buy infection prevention

A manufacturer needed to understand which infection-prevention products win in US hospitals across hospital types, who decides, what triggers a switch, and how its brand stood against incumbents.

Choose a biologics contract manufacturer on evidence

A pharma company needed to select a contract manufacturer for a biologic: which CDMOs could do the work, how to compare them on capacity, quality history, tech transfer and cost, and what to ask in the audit.

Financial services

Size mobile money across five African markets

A company weighing mobile-money entry in five African markets needed market size and structure, the regulatory position in each, what incumbents do well and badly, and a synthesis it could take to its board.

Automotive

Verify an Indian forging supplier before you commit

An OEM sourcing team needed a forging supplier in India audited — capability, capacity, quality systems — and its quoted cost benchmarked against what the process should cost, before awarding a multi-year contract.

Education

Model the engineering entrance coaching market

An investor needed a market model for engineering-entrance coaching in India: structure by city tier and format, fee bands and unit economics per centre, and an investment view it could put in front of its committee.