Can we buy just the assessment?

Yes, and plenty do. Fixed price, two to four weeks, written independently. You can act on it with us, with your existing vendor, or with someone else entirely.

How are you actually vendor-agnostic?

We take no commission, referral fee or reseller margin from any platform. Recommending you keep what you have earns us exactly what recommending a replacement does.

Will you recommend your own services?

Where they fit, and we'll say when they don't. The assessment states plainly which parts we'd be a poor choice for and who else to approach.

What if we already know what we want to buy?

Then the useful engagement is usually a short sanity check rather than a full evaluation — an outside read on the requirements and the contract before you sign.

AliveCommerce / What we do / Knowledge and process

Digital transformation consulting

Most transformation programmes fail before anyone writes code, in the decisions made about what to buy and in what order. We take no commission from any vendor, which is the only position from which platform advice is worth paying for.

EngagementProject or fixed-term retainer

Typical length3 weeks to 6 months

CommissionsNone, from anyone

Talk to us about this What drives the cost

Fixed budgetAgreed before work starts. Scope flexes, the number doesn’t.

No vendor pays usNo commissions, referral fees or markup. Ever.

You own everythingCode, documentation, credentials — throughout, not at the end.

Nearly 20 years2,000+ projects for 500+ organizations, from SOHO to Fortune 1000.

What's included.

Scoped and priced up front. Exclusions written as explicitly as inclusions.

Current-state assessment

What you run, what it costs, where it overlaps and what's exposed. Usually the first time anyone has seen it on one page.

Roadmapping and sequencing

What to do, in what order, and what to deliberately not do yet. Sequencing is where most of the value is.

Platform evaluation and selection

Requirements built from your process rather than a vendor's feature list, then scored against real candidates.

Sourcing and procurement support

RFP preparation, vendor questioning, contract review from a technical rather than legal angle.

Viability and business case

An honest number and an honest risk picture, including the case for doing nothing.

Vendor and platform transition management

Running the change when you've decided, including managing an incumbent who would rather you didn't.

How we approach it.

In this order, because doing them out of order is how these go wrong.

Understand what's actually running

Systems, processes, costs, contracts and the workarounds people have built. Observation rather than interviews where it matters.

Separate symptoms from causes

Most stated problems are downstream of two or three structural ones. Fixing symptoms individually means fixing the same cause repeatedly.

Put options on the table with numbers

Including the option to change nothing. Each with a cost, a risk and a reason it might be wrong.

Hand over something you can act on

Written, yours, usable with us or with anyone else. Plenty of clients take the assessment and stop there for a year.

Assessment

2 to 4 weeks

Fixed price, standalone, yours to take elsewhere

Full roadmap

6 to 12 weeks

Where several layers are in play

Most common trigger

A failed project

Or an acquisition, or a platform decision nobody wants to own

Not sure this is what you need?

Tell us what's actually happening and we'll say which part of this applies — or that a different approach fits better, or that you don't need us yet. That last answer is more common than you'd expect.

Get a straight answer Or call 416-639-5876, weekdays 8:30–5:30 ET

What we work with.

Chosen on fit. We take no commission or referral fee from any of them.

ERP evaluationCRM evaluationProcess mappingTCO modellingVendor RFPContract reviewChange managementPortfolio rationalisation

If this shouldn't be a project.

Some of this work never really ends. When that's true, we'll say so rather than selling you a project that restarts in three years.

Continuous ownership

Champion1 Foundation

When the advisory work never really ends — a live roadmap, reviewed quarterly, with the engineering capacity attached to act on it.

See Foundation

Onsite process work

LiquidIQ

When the assessment needs people on your floor rather than in a meeting room, which it often does.

See LiquidIQ

Straight answers.

Start the Conversation.

No qualification questionnaire. No nurture sequence. A person reads it and replies within a business day — and tells you plainly if we're not the right fit.

01A person reads itNot a scoring model. It goes to whoever would actually do the work.

02A reply within a business dayUsually a question or two rather than a calendar link.

03A conversation, not a pitchTwenty to ninety minutes. No deck, no slides.

04Then, only if it's warrantedA scope or assessment with a price attached before any work starts.

Prefer to talk first? 416-639-5876 · [email protected]

About digital transformation consulting

Three fields. We'll ask the rest on the call.

Related.

Articles are matched by tag; services, capabilities and programs are curated.

Tell us what's breaking.

We'll tell you roughly what this costs, how long it takes, and whether it's worth doing at all — including when the honest answer is that you don't need us.

Start the Conversation

Knowledge and process

Applications and data

Customer and web

Browse by symptom instead

The structure

Continuous ownership

Before you commit

Start with one problem

Priority sectors

Also

Or by situation

Not sure you fit?

Reading

Most read

Proof

Nobody owns the application layer