Where to start
Someone senior on your side of the table.
Nothing is broken. But there is a decision in front of you, real money attached to it, and nobody in the business whose job it is to weigh it up independently.
Most owners are not short of people who will sell them something. They are short of one experienced person who has no stake in the answer. That is the role.
The situations people actually call about
Not categories — the real sentences owners say on the first call.
“We are opening another office and I do not know how we will all work together.”
Two locations, different internet, different staff, the same files needed in both. Add a third country and a time difference and it stops being an IT question and starts being a business one. I have linked offices across Hong Kong, the mainland, Singapore and further out — and the trap is almost never the technology, it is deciding who owns what and where the record lives.
“I want our files secure, and I do not really know if they are.”
You are fairly sure the backups run. You are not sure anyone has tested them. You do not know who can see the payroll folder, or which ex-employee still has a link. That can be established in a couple of days and usually fixed in a fortnight.
“Three vendors have quoted and I cannot compare them.”
They are quoting different things on purpose. I read all three, tell you what each one really includes, what it commits you to, and where the price goes up after year one.
“We are buying a business, or being bought.”
Two sets of systems, two ways of working, and a diligence process that will ask questions nobody has prepared for. What you need early is a clear picture of what you are actually acquiring, and a data room that does not embarrass you.
“The board has asked what we are doing about AI.”
And the honest answer is nothing coherent. What is needed is a short, costed position you can defend — including the parts where the right answer is not yet.
“We have outgrown how we run.”
The spreadsheets creak. Everything depends on two people. Growth has outpaced the way the place was set up, and nobody has had time to stop and redesign it.
“I am not sure our IT provider is doing a good job.”
They may be excellent. You have no way of telling, because judging them requires the expertise you hired them for. That is a very common and entirely reasonable reason to call.
I work with your IT people, not instead of them
This matters, so it is worth being direct about it. I am not here to replace your support company, your in-house person, or your outsourced provider.
Most Hong Kong SMEs already have someone doing the day-to-day — and often doing it perfectly well. What is missing is the layer above: somebody who can set the direction, judge whether the work is good, and represent your interests when a supplier is proposing something expensive.
What I do in that role
- Set the direction, so your providers are building toward something rather than reacting
- Review what is being proposed and what it should cost
- Translate — so you are never nodding along to something you do not follow
- Hold suppliers to what they quoted, in language they take seriously
- Spot the risks nobody is being paid to raise with you
Why local firms often struggle with this
Support firms are good at support. They are structured to keep things running, not to redesign how a business works or to say that a piece of work is not worth doing.
And a provider is rarely the right person to review their own recommendation. That is not a criticism of them — it is simply a different job, and it is the one I do.
Where your existing people are good, I will tell you so. That is worth hearing too.
What you get
-
A conversation, not a pitch
A short call to work out what you are actually deciding. Frequently different from the question you came in with.
-
An honest read on the options
What each one costs, what it commits you to, where it usually goes wrong, and what I would do in your position.
-
Something written down
A short document you can put in front of a partner or a board — the options, the recommendation, the reasoning, and the numbers. Not a hundred-page strategy deck.
-
A decision you can defend
And if the right answer is do nothing for six months, that is what it will say.
Why independent matters here
I hold partnerships with a small number of platforms and I disclose them. Where a partnership exists and it is relevant to your decision, I will tell you before I recommend anything, and I will tell you what the alternatives are.
What I will not do is bring you a recommendation with a reseller margin buried in it and call it advice.
Most of what I earn comes from doing the work afterwards, not from the introduction — which is exactly why I would rather tell you the truth at this stage than sell you the wrong thing and have to live with it.
Smaller questions
If your question is well defined and reasonably contained, it may not need a full engagement at all. The Smart Packages are fixed-scope, fixed-price pieces of work — clarity, sales, pipeline, productivity, delivery, presence and more — starting with a single diagnostic session.
Not sure what you are actually asking yet?
That is usually the most useful conversation of the lot. A quick call, no charge, no pitch.