Hire a senior engineer for the project.
Not the relationship.
For Phoenix businesses with a specific IT problem to solve. M&A integration, M365 tenant migration, network refresh, office build, system selection. Fixed-fee project engagements with a deliverable at the end. No monthly retainer. No ongoing commitment. When the project is done, the engagement is done.
Need ongoing strategic IT leadership? See vCIO. Need someone to actually run your IT day-to-day? See Managed IT. IT Consulting is for the specific project in between.
You don’t need a vendor. You need a project landed.
Four real scenarios where fixed-fee project consulting beats both DIY and a long-term MSP relationship.
M&A IT due diligence
You’re buying or selling a business. Someone has to look at the target’s tech stack, identify integration costs, flag cyber-insurance gaps, and estimate the post-close IT budget. Two-to-four week sprint, fixed fee, deliverable doc your bankers and legal can use.
Migration planning (M365, server, cloud)
You’re moving from Google Workspace to M365, from on-prem servers to Azure, from one M365 tenant to another (post-M&A). Designed migration plan with cutover dates, rollback strategy, user communication plan. We can also execute, or hand the plan to your IT team.
Office moves, opens, and closes
New office in Scottsdale, closing the Mesa branch, opening a Tempe location. We design the IT. Wireless, circuit ordering, switch/AP placement, server room, security cameras, and orchestrate the day-of cutover so users walk in Monday and everything works.
System selection (LOB apps, vendors)
You’re picking a new EHR, LOS, AMS, or PMS. You need a vendor-neutral advisor who knows the market, can run a real RFP, and can challenge the salespeople. We’ve done dozens. We know which features matter and which are marketing.
Four project disciplines, fixed-fee deliverables
Every consulting project ends with an artifact. A document, a deployed system, a migrated tenant, a signed-off design. You know exactly what you’re buying.
IT environment + posture review
2-week scoped review of your current environment, IT spend, vendor stack, security posture, and risk profile. Written deliverable with prioritized recommendations and a 12–24-month roadmap. Often the first engagement for new clients.
Migration + cutover planning
M365 tenant migrations, server-to-cloud (Azure, AWS), Google Workspace → M365, on-prem → SaaS line-of-business apps. Designed plan, cutover runbook, rollback strategy, user comms. Implementation can be us, your team, or another vendor.
M&A IT due diligence + integration
Pre-close: tech stack assessment, cyber-insurance review, post-close cost estimate. Post-close: tenant merge, identity consolidation, app rationalization. We’ve sat across the table from PE buyers, family-office acquirers, and strategic sellers.
System selection + vendor RFPs
Help you pick the right line-of-business app. EHR, LOS, AMS, PMS, ERP. Vendor-neutral evaluation, real RFP, reference checks, contract negotiation support. Saves you 12+ months of vendor demos and the sunk cost of picking wrong.
We plan and recommend. We do not operate.
IT Consulting is project-bounded. We deliver an artifact and move on. We do not provide ongoing helpdesk, sysadmin, or monitoring as part of a consulting engagement. If you want a long-term relationship, you need Managed IT, Co-Managed, or Prime. If you want strategic IT leadership as a monthly retainer, you need vCIO.
- • Day-to-day helpdesk
- • Server / network administration
- • Backup operations
- • Security monitoring
- • Patch management
- • Recurring vCIO meetings
- • Continuous compliance posture
- • Quarterly business reviews
- • Ongoing risk register
- • Board-ready quarterly reports
- • We design the migration; we charge separately to execute it
- • We pick the system; you (or we) install it under a separate SOW
- • Hardware procurement (cost pass-through)
- • SOC 2 / HIPAA / PCI audit signoff (we are not auditors)
- • Regulatory compliance certification
- • Financial audit support
- • Forensic incident response
If your consulting engagement reveals you need ongoing operations or strategic leadership, we’ll recommend the right plan and credit a portion of the consulting fee toward the first month.
Three ways to engage. All fixed-fee or scoped quote.
No monthly retainer. No “starts at” sticker shock. You know the scope and price before you sign.
- 2-week engagement (Week 1 discovery, Week 2 deliverable)
- Written recommendations document (20–40 pages)
- 12–24 month IT roadmap
- Prioritized budget estimates
- 1 leadership presentation
- Yours to keep. Even if you take it to another implementer
- Fixed-fee scoped project (price quoted up front, no overage)
- Named senior project lead + bench of supporting engineers
- Weekly status report + milestone gates
- Implementation oversight (execution billed separately if we do it)
- Dedicated project portal with all deliverables
- Off-the-shelf SOW templates for common projects (M365 migration, M&A diligence, etc.)
- Embedded senior project lead full-time on your initiative
- Access to our bench of 5–15 engineers on demand
- Weekly leadership steering committee
- Documented architecture, runbooks, and handoff plan
- 3–12 month typical engagements (minimum 3 months)
- Knowledge transfer to your team at the end
Hourly rate for unscoped or one-off questions: $185/hr. Existing Inventive Prime clients get a 20% credit toward Strategy Sprint or Project Engagement fees. Consulting engagements that convert to ongoing Managed IT or vCIO get the first month’s retainer credited 50% from the consulting fee paid.
Your industry’s IT problems. Our project playbooks.
Most industries have a handful of recurring IT projects. System migrations, regulator-driven upgrades, growth-driven moves. We’ve done them before.
Straight answers, no consulting theater
We are already on Inventive Prime. Why would we ever buy IT Consulting?
Prime includes 2 project hours per user per month on the standard tier (1–19 users), jumping to 8 project hours per user per month on Prime Enterprise (20+ users). So a 30-user Prime Enterprise client has 240 hours/month of project capacity, that absorbs Strategy Sprints and most Project Engagements without overage. Smaller Prime clients (under 20 users at 2 hrs/user) usually hit IT Consulting territory faster. Prime clients pick IT Consulting in three specific scenarios: (1) The project exceeds your monthly bucket. A network refresh design at 200+ hours blows past what Prime can absorb in a month. (2) You want fixed-fee certainty. Prime overage at $115/hr can surprise you; IT Consulting fixes the price up front. (3) You need bench depth fast. IT Consulting can dispatch 5–15 engineers to a sprint within 2 weeks; Prime’s included hours scale with your monthly allotment, which means slower for big projects. Prime clients get 20% off any IT Consulting engagement.
How is this different from vCIO?
vCIO is an ongoing monthly retainer. Quarterly business reviews, annual budget, maintained risk register, continuous board-level cyber posture. IT Consulting is project-based. Fixed scope, fixed deliverable, defined end. When the project ships, the engagement ends. Most clients use both: vCIO for the strategic relationship, IT Consulting for specific projects that need senior bench depth. vCIO clients get a 20% credit on Consulting fees.
Do you implement what you design, or just hand us a plan?
Either way. Many clients want the design + plan only. They have internal IT or another MSP who’ll execute it. Others want us to execute too. We always quote design and implementation as separate line items so you can pick. Designs that we built are easier to execute (we know the choices we made), but we’ll happily hand the SOW to another implementer if that’s the better fit.
How quickly can a Strategy Sprint kick off?
Two weeks typical lead time from signed engagement letter to Day 1 of the sprint. Two-week sprint itself, then 1-week buffer for deliverable polish. So roughly 5 weeks from “let’s do this” to written recommendations in hand. Faster turnarounds available if there’s a real driver (board meeting, M&A close, regulator deadline).
What does a typical Project Engagement quote look like?
Range varies dramatically by scope: an M365 tenant migration for 50 users might be $10K–$18K, a network refresh design for a multi-site company might be $25K–$40K, an M&A IT integration for a $50M acquisition might be $30K–$60K. Quotes are fixed-fee with a defined scope. We don’t bill by the hour mid-project, so you know the cost up front. Out-of-scope additions are quoted separately.
Can we just hire you by the hour for a one-off question?
Yes, $185/hr with a 2-hour minimum. Best for narrow questions (“which Azure SKU should we use?” “is this network design sensible?”) rather than full project work. For anything that turns into more than 10 hours, the Strategy Sprint at $5,000 is usually a better deal.
What if the project surfaces something we did not scope for?
We flag it immediately and quote it as a change order. Separate scope, separate price. We never quietly let scope expand and surprise you at the end. About 30% of projects identify an additional workstream during execution; that conversation is part of the steering committee cadence, not a billing surprise.
Do you have references for similar projects?
Yes. We can share named references for M365 migrations, M&A IT diligence, network refreshes, and system selections. We respect that not every client wants to be a reference, so we share what’s available and never share without permission. For competitive industries (healthcare, banks), we anonymize the reference unless the prospect signs an NDA.
If we like the consulting engagement, can we convert to ongoing Managed IT?
Yes. About half of our consulting clients eventually become Managed IT, Co-Managed, vCIO, or Prime clients. When that happens, we credit 50% of the consulting fee paid against the first month of the ongoing engagement. The reverse is also true: existing Prime clients get a 20% credit on consulting work.
Tell us about the project. We’ll tell you the scope.
Free 30-minute scoping call. Describe the project, the timeline, the people involved. We’ll either propose a Strategy Sprint, quote a Project Engagement, or recommend a different product if consulting isn’t the right shape. No commitment. Even if you don’t hire us, you’ll know which type of engagement actually fits.
Phoenix-based · Senior engineers only · Fixed-fee per project · Deliverable-focused · 50% credit if it converts to ongoing