B://ASSESS20Digital Roadmaps
A plan you can
actually budget.
A digital roadmap sets out what changes, in what order, at what cost, across the next one to three years, with the dependencies made explicit. It is for organisations planning a budget cycle, a growth phase, or a system replacement.
THE PROBLEM
Without a roadmap, technology spend is a series of unrelated decisions that each looked reasonable in isolation.
The cost of leaving this alone is rarely one visible failure. It is the slow accumulation: the workaround that became the process, the thing only one person knows, the renewal nobody questioned.
Our starting point is always the same: establish what is actually true today, then decide what to change. Work scoped against an assumption tends to solve a problem you do not have.
- 01Nobody owns itIt sits with whoever touched it last, which is not the same as being managed.
- 02No current pictureWhat you have, what it costs, and who has access are all slightly out of date.
- 03Only handled when it breaksAttention arrives after the disruption rather than before it.
WHAT YOU GET
What the engagement covers
Scoped before it starts, so you know what is included and what is not.
- 01
Current state
What you run, what it costs, and what condition it is in, established rather than assumed.
- 02
Target state
Where the business is going and what that implies technically. The business direction comes first, which sounds obvious and frequently is not what happens.
- 03
Sequenced plan
What happens when, with dependencies explicit so the order is defensible rather than arbitrary.
- 04
Costed forecast
Capital and operating spend by quarter, in a form your finance team can lift straight into a budget.
HOW WE WORK
Scope, assess, report, support
Four stages with a written output at each one. You always know which stage you are in and what comes next.
- 01Week 1
Scope
We agree what is being examined and what a useful answer looks like, so the work is not open-ended.
- 02Weeks 2 – 3
Assess
Evidence gathered from your systems and your people, because the documented process and the real one rarely match.
- 03Week 4
Report
Findings written for a decision maker: what is true, what it means, and what we would do about it, ranked.
- 04As needed
Support
We can hand the report over and step back, or stay and deliver the remediation. Both are normal.
WHAT CHANGES
What you should expect
- Someone other than you owns it, with that written down.
- The current state is documented and stays documented.
- Cost is planned ahead rather than discovered at renewal.
- Decisions are made against evidence rather than assumption.
FAQ
Questions we get asked
01What is digital roadmaps?
A digital roadmap sets out what changes, in what order, at what cost, across the next one to three years, with the dependencies made explicit. It is for organisations planning a budget cycle, a growth phase, or a system replacement.
02How far ahead should an IT roadmap look?
Three years, with the first year costed in detail and the later years held more loosely. Anything beyond three years in technology is an assumption rather than a plan. The value is less in predicting year three accurately and more in seeing which decisions made this year quietly commit you to something in year two.
03How often should a roadmap be reviewed?
Quarterly, briefly. A roadmap reviewed annually is a document. Reviewed quarterly it is a decision-making tool, because it stays close enough to reality that people trust it when something unexpected comes up mid-year.
04How much should a business spend on IT each year?
Benchmarks exist, commonly somewhere between three and six percent of revenue depending on sector, and they are a starting point rather than an answer. A professional services firm and a manufacturer with the same revenue have very different needs. What matters more is that the spend is deliberate and forecast, rather than whatever the sum of this year’s emergencies turned out to be.
05We already know what we want to buy. Do we need a roadmap?
Possibly not, and we will say so. Where a roadmap earns its cost is when several changes interact, when a budget has to be defended to a board, or when the order of work genuinely matters because one project depends on another. If the answer is a single well-understood purchase, that is a quote rather than an engagement.
06Will you recommend your own services in the roadmap?
Where they genuinely fit, and we will say plainly that is what we are doing. The roadmap is a document you own and can hand to any provider, and plenty of our roadmap clients deliver parts of it with someone else or in house. A roadmap that only ever concludes you should buy more from the author is not worth what you paid for it.
07How much does digital roadmaps cost in New Zealand?
We quote after scoping rather than before. Anyone pricing this work without looking at your environment is guessing, and the guess is rarely in your favour. Scoping itself is quick, and we tell you what it costs before we start it.
08How long does it take to get started with digital roadmaps?
A first conversation takes about half an hour and costs nothing. Scoping is usually a week or two of our time depending on the size of the environment, and we agree the delivery dates with you before anything is booked in.
09Can you deliver digital roadmaps alongside our existing IT team or provider?
Yes, and it is common. We are happy to work as an extra pair of hands under your internal team, or alongside an incumbent provider on a defined piece of work. We will set out in writing where the responsibilities split, so nothing falls between us.
10Do we have to use Atlas for the work the report recommends?
No. This can be delivered as a standalone piece of work for an organisation we have never worked with before, or folded into a managed agreement if you already have one with us. Plenty of clients use us for one thing and keep everything else where it is.
11Do you work with organisations outside Auckland?
Our team is based in Auckland and we attend sites across the wider region. Most of this work is delivered remotely, so we support organisations throughout New Zealand, and we will say up front where being on site genuinely matters.
12Who does the assessment, and who presents the findings?
Named people, not a queue. You get a lead who knows your environment and stays with it, which is the difference between explaining your business once and explaining it every time you make contact.
13What do we actually receive at the end?
You keep the documentation regardless, and anything registered in your name stays in your name. Whether we stay involved is your call. Some clients take it in house from there, others move it onto an ongoing agreement with us. We would rather you left cleanly than stayed because leaving was difficult.
Start with a conversation.
Tell us what you are dealing with and we will tell you whether this is the right service for it, and what it would take.
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