Consultancy

When things need sorting quickly and decisively, it's time to bring in the specialists...

Overview

Consultancy is a "catch all" service offered by Adaptavist that's been designed for customers who have struggled to solve business or system issues via other avenues or simply want problems attacked with extreme vigour by an expert.

The service focusses mainly on key Atlassian products such as Confluence, Crowd and JIRA as well as associated components such as networking, upgrades, change management, etc.

Why use our Consultancy service?

Our entire company revolves around Atlassian products. We provide a wide range of services such as Hosting, Support, Plugin Development, Theme Customisation and as a result we've gained years of experience that can be utilised to solve problems. We've been an Atlassian Partner since the very beginning and have extensive contacts within Atlassian and major partners such as Comala, CustomWare and Gliffy. We're very well connected in the developer world which also helps get tough problems solved quickly.

Our specialists are experts at debugging, profiling and diagnosis of a vast range of common problems and also issues that are unique to your organisation and it's particular use of Atlassian products. We pride ourselves on excelling and don't feel justified until we've solved the task in hand.

For example, in a recent contract there was a Single Sign On issue in Confluence when using a Microsoft Windows domain and Internet Explorer. Now, Windows is not our forte; however our specialist learnt the NTLM protocol overnight and managed to identify the source of the problem and provide sufficient information for the in-house IT team to roll out a solution throughout the company offices worldwide.

We don't always promise a resolution, but with that said, we've never failed yet!

There will be some cases where we'll identify one of our partners or competitors as being better suited for your specific needs - in such cases we introduce you to them directly and do not charge any commission.

What types of Consultancy do you offer?

We offer 3 distinct types of consultancy based on the types of skills required to deliver the service. You can choose to use just one or a mixture in any given project, but we'll need to know what your requirements are in advance to ensure the correct people are allocated to the project.

Systems Analysis, Technical Debugging and Development

This form of consultancy is designed to quickly track down complex technical problems then solve as many of them as possible within the allocated time and provide strategies for solving larger or longer-term issues.

Before using this service we recommend getting a [AI:Confluence Health Check] - just like getting your car serviced, it quickly identifies many common issues for a fixed price and advises how to solve them using your in-house resource wherever possible to keep costs down.

User Interface, Content Structuring, Application Usage

This form of consultancy is designed for customers who've customised their wiki (eg. with a custom theme, content templates, etc.) and then experienced issues with maintainability and stability of their wiki due to technical and/or application usage issues.

In many cases, the key objectives of this service are:

• Remove vendor lock-in to ensure the customer can more easily adapt their wiki and have freedom of choice over who they outsource work to
• Ensure theme-level customisations are maintainable by the customer or their contractors
• Simplify long-term maintenance of the platform, eg. make it easier to upgrade in order to benefit from bug fixes, new features, performance and security improvements
• Identify performance issues caused by frequently-accessed wiki content (eg. subtle changes to a space home page can drastically improve performance of the entire wiki)
• Help with using macros to get the desired layout and information on your wiki pages

If you're interested in this service, also check out our [AI:Confluence Health Check] and Theme Customisation services.

Business Strategy, Wiki Adoption, Change Management

If you are having problems with wiki adoption, or with resulting change management, we have experts that have worked at all levels in all types of organisations (public, defence, commercial, finance, etc.) to get you the best value out of your software deployment.

How much does it cost?

We charge £90 GBP per hour for specialist consultancy, with 8 hour days costing £720/day. The cost is per worker per hour.

The item code for this service is CONS

Customers in the UK are subject to VAT of 17.5%.

Remote Working

Wherever possible, we prefer to do the work remotely via remote access provided by the customer, alternatively a web-ex style desktop share can be used. We can provide a static IP range that we will come from.

By working remotely, there are no associated call out fees or expenses making them drastically cheaper - up to 50% less than the on-site equivalent.

As the majority of our employees live in the UK, remote working is often by far the best solution for customers outside the UK - assuming work is scheduled and agreed in advance, we don't mind staying up to the early hours of the morning to fit with your time zone.

On-site Visit

If you require an on-site visit we are happy to oblige, however there will be additional costs for travel, accommodation, sustenance and employee downtime – so it's more expensive.

We have a call out fee for on-site visits, based on how far in advance you formally accept the booking:

In the majority of cases a normal schedule will suffice, especially if you need to schedule your own IT staff to be available during our visit. Note: if our workload is above average and you feel that the criticality of your work should trump that of others, then the call out fee may be imposed for remote work.

Please bear in mind that the less notice you give us the higher the cost of expenses due to late booking of travel and accommodation - hotels, trains and planes all cost a lot more when booked at the last minute!

Major local events and school holidays around the time of the on-site visit can cause expenses to vary significantly. For example, over the past year or so we've encountered scenarios like these:

• The Chelsea Flower Show and Wimbledon resulted in a shortage of hotel rooms in London, so hotels doubled their prices;
• The Edinburgh Festival results in almost no hotel rooms being available and as a result prices more than double.
• The summer holiday period caused accommodation and travel prices to rise substantially.

We will always try to keep the costs we must pass onto you down, however you will know your local area better than us, so please bear that in mind when choosing your dates. We welcome any help you can give in providing suggestions for suitable accommodation and local travel advice.

Out of Hours / Overtime
There is a £250 charge for work carried out during weekends or on statutory public holidays (based on the country where the assigned workers live) which is used to reimburse staff who would otherwise be spending that time with their family and friends.

Cancellation
At the point of providing a quote, you will also be given the cancellation fee which will be invoiced for if you cancel after accepting the quote. This is to cover any expenses which are incurred from your withdrawal.

Invoicing

We will normally provide an invoice for the visit ahead of arrival, when at least 50% will need to have been paid first. This condition can be waived if we have a good pre-existing financial relationship with you.

The invoice will breakdown expenses, call out fee and the consultancy. It is not possible for us to break expenses down further on the invoice, nor can we provide receipts for your use (however we can informally justify the figures).

The entire invoice may be subject to VAT were applicable.