Services

IT consulting for non-technical decision makers

Someone has to translate vendor promises into business truth — ideally someone not selling you licences. Indicatively from €50 an hour.

Three quotes on the table cannot be compared on price: one includes the data migration, the second invoices it in year two, the third ignores it. IT consulting is exactly that work — bringing a technical decision onto criteria you can verify, inside a company with no IT director. Indicatively the hourly rate starts at €50, and the deliverables have prices of their own: a systems audit for an SME is €1,000–3,000 and a full requirement brief €800–2,500.

Because we are a Romanian engineering company rather than a strategy house, the advice comes from people who still build software weekly — and because consulting is a separate engagement, we are comfortable recommending solutions we will not be the ones to implement. We do not resell licences and we take no commission; in any selection we bid in, we withdraw in writing from the role of evaluator. Sessions run in English, remotely in your working hours, and on site where the stakes justify the travel.

Let’s talk about your project

Message us on WhatsApp or send an email — you talk directly to a developer.

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office@northdan.com · +40 752 070 247

What you get

Advice decoupled from implementation

Our recommendation does not depend on winning the build. If the right answer is off-the-shelf software or another vendor, that is what the report says.

Engineers, not slide decks

Reviews are done by people who write production code — they read the repository and the infrastructure, not just the vendor’s presentation.

A brief you can send to anyone

The same requirements and acceptance criteria go to as many suppliers as you like, which is what finally makes the quotes that come back comparable.

What stays yours from the engagement

The audit report, the evaluation grid, the requirement brief and the phased plan, in editable form, with nothing in them that ties you to us.

When companies call us in

Before signing a six-figure software contract, to review the architecture, the estimate and the commercial terms. After a project has gone wrong, to establish what is recoverable and what is not. During a build-or-buy decision where every vendor in the room has an obvious incentive. And when hiring a first senior engineer or a CTO, where interviewing well requires somebody able to assess the answers.

We keep consulting engagements formally separate from delivery work, and we say plainly when a recommendation would send the implementation elsewhere. That separation is the only thing that makes the advice worth paying for — a consultant who bids on the project he has just scoped is a salesperson with a better job title.

What it costs, indicatively

Individual sessions and the review of a single quote are billed indicatively from €50 an hour. A systems audit for an SME is €1,000–3,000, depending on how many systems and sites are in scope. A full requirement brief is €800–2,500. A security audit or penetration test is a different deliverable and starts at €1,500–3,000. Paid discovery ahead of a large project settles at 5–10% of the estimated value, and the deliverable stays with the client.

Frequently asked questions

Can you review an offer another agency sent us?

Yes — it is one of the engagements we are asked for most. We assess scope, architecture and price realism, compare quotes on total cost over three years, list the questions to ask and flag what has been left out of the price. The review is billed by the hour, from €50, so it stays proportionate to the decision.

What does a systems audit cover?

What runs today, what has reached end of support, where the data sits, who holds access, and key-person risk — delivered as a written report with the risks ordered by impact. A security audit or penetration test is a separate deliverable with its own scope and its own band, not part of this one.

Do you sign NDAs before seeing our systems?

Always, and under EU jurisdiction. Access is scoped, read-only where possible, and revoked at engagement end — we document exactly what was accessed.