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Brief
Questions to ask any software supplier, including us
Download the briefIndustry guide
What the April 2029 e-invoicing mandate settles, and what it leaves open.
Download the retail and wholesale guide (PDF, 13 pages)Industry guide
Five standards for public services, and what checks each one since April 2026.
Download the public sector guide (PDF, 13 pages)A business case is rarely reopened once the spending is approved, so its benefits go unmeasured.
What we do
Cost every route before you commit to one.
When a supplier's quote is the first document in the file, the comparison starts from its answer. The costs that decide the next five years arrive later: the renewal price, the integration work, the staff time, the notice before support ends and the price of getting your data out.
We set the realistic routes side by side: keep what you have, configure it, buy a product, build, or stop the process. We cost each one over three and five years, including the cost of leaving, and write a recommendation with the assumptions under it.
Build is one of the five routes and we also build software, so when the appraisal points to a build the report says so and names who else could do it. Keep and stop are costed on the same columns as buy and build.
Buying software: four public numbers
The two percentages come from the Cyber security breaches survey 2025/2026, a random probability telephone and online survey of 2,112 UK businesses with fieldwork from August to December 2025, weighted to represent UK businesses. Sole traders and businesses with no IT capacity or online presence are outside its scope, and each result carries a margin of error of about two percentage points. Both vary by size: 69% of large businesses considered security to a large extent when buying software, and 48% of large businesses reviewed their immediate suppliers, against 12% of micro businesses. The Software Security Code of Practice is voluntary. The e-invoicing date is announced policy and not yet legislation; HMRC says an implementation roadmap will be published at Budget 2026. The mandate is defined by the VAT invoice, not the customer: HMRC and the Department for Business and Trade say VAT invoices are typically issued for business-to-business and business-to-government sales, though not for sales to consumers.
The decision work we take on
The options appraisal frames the decision; the other five carry it through, from the board paper to the procurement. You own every document they produce and can take each one to any supplier, including one that is not us.
Options appraisal
Set the realistic routes side by side: keep, configure, buy, build or stop. Cost each one, including the cost of leaving it, and finish with a recommendation you can argue with.
- Interviews with the people who run the process and the people who pay for it
- Total cost of ownership at three and five years: licences, implementation, integration, internal time and running costs
- Exit cost for each route: data export, contract terms and retraining
- A sensitivity test on the assumptions that carry the most weight
- A written recommendation with its assumptions and the questions still open
Business case preparation
Write the case your board, trustees or funder will read. State each benefit as a measure with an owner, so it can be checked a year after the money is spent.
- The Five Case Model set out in HM Treasury's Green Book (2026): strategic, economic, commercial, financial and management, for public-sector and housing buyers
- A baseline of today's volumes, times and costs, measured before anything changes
- A benefits register with a measure, an owner and a review date for each benefit
- A risk register naming the mitigation and the person who holds each risk
- A sensitivity table showing how the case moves when adoption or cost changes
Software selection and supplier due diligence
Turn your needs into a requirements list, score a shortlist against it, and check each supplier's security, data handling, support terms and exit route before you sign.
- A requirements list ranked must, should and could, written in the words of your process
- Scripted demonstrations run to your scenarios, scored by your own team on one sheet
- Supplier questions drawn from the government's Software Security Code of Practice
- UK GDPR Article 28 processor terms, sub-processors and where your data is held
- The export format for your data, and how it is handed back when the contract ends
Technology roadmap
Sequence the next two to three years of system changes, with the dependencies, costs and decision points in order. Set each decision against the renewal, end-of-support or regulatory date that forces it.
- A register of contract renewals and end-of-support dates for every system in scope
- Announced changes that will force a decision, such as the e-invoicing mandate the government has set for April 2029
- Dependencies between systems, in the order they have to be resolved
- Cost ranges and a named decision point for each change
- A one-page board view, and a working version for the person who owns the roadmap
Licence and SaaS review
List every subscription, who uses it and what it costs. Find duplicates and unused seats, and put every renewal in one calendar with the date by which notice must be given.
- Seat counts and last sign-in dates from each tool's admin console
- Card and invoice spend matched to the contract register, to find tools bought outside procurement
- Auto-renewal clauses and cancellation deadlines for each contract
- Overlapping tools grouped by the job each one does
- A keep, reduce, merge or cancel recommendation for each licence
Procurement requirements
Write the requirement and the evaluation criteria for a procurement under the Procurement Act 2023 or a framework call-off. Leave the contract terms and the choice of procedure with your legal and procurement advisers.
- Questions for preliminary market engagement under section 16 of the Act
- A specification written as outcomes and constraints, with the must-haves marked
- Award criteria and their weightings under section 23, for the most advantageous tender test in section 19
- A scoring model with a written descriptor for each mark
- Clarification questions and a briefing pack for bidders
What you get
What is settled before the money moves
- All five routes, changing nothing included, come back costed on the same columns over three and five years.
- Your board or funder can hold the business case to each benefit's measure, owner and review date a year after the money is spent.
- Check a supplier's security, data terms, support notice and exit route before you sign.
The options
Keep, configure, buy, build or stop
Every options appraisal sets the same five routes against the same columns, and changing nothing is one of them. The cells below describe each route in general terms. An appraisal replaces them with your figures.
| Route | Cost to start | Five-year running cost | Time to value | Exit cost | Dependency on the supplier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Keep what you have | Staff time to confirm it still fits | Current licences and support, plus the workarounds staff keep up by hand | Immediate, because nothing changes | Unchanged, though each year of new records adds to any later migration | Unchanged |
| Configure what you have | Configuration time, and any higher licence tier the change needs | Current licences, possibly at a higher tier | Short, where the product already supports the process | Low for now, though each configuration is something a later migration has to rebuild | Deepens your reliance on the current supplier |
| Buy a product | Implementation, data migration and training | Subscription fees per user or per record, with renewal prices set by the supplier | Depends on data migration and training as much as on the software | Data export, contract terms and retraining, all set by the contract you sign | High: the product roadmap, pricing and end of support are the supplier's decisions |
| Build bespoke software | Design, build and testing, all paid for before first use | Hosting, support and change, with no per-user licence fee for code you own | Staged: a first release, then additions in order of value | Lower when you own the code, the data and the hosting account | On whoever maintains the code, which you can change if the code and documentation are yours |
| Stop the process | Time to agree what stops and to tell the people it affects | Falls by what the process costs today, less any work that moves elsewhere | Immediate once the decision is made | Notice or termination fees on contracts that supported the process, and records you still have to keep | Removed for this process |
We build software, so build is the route in which we have an interest. When an appraisal recommends a build, the report says so and names other firms that could do the work.
How it runs
How an options appraisal runs
- 01
Frame the decision
Agree the question the appraisal answers, who decides, and the date the decision is needed. Interview the people who run the process and the people who pay for it.
- 02
Inventory what exists
List the systems, contracts, renewal dates and data the decision touches. Measure today's volumes, times and costs as the baseline, and mark any figure that comes from a sample.
- 03
Cost the routes
Set keep, configure, buy, build and stop against the same columns. Cost each one over three and five years, including the cost of leaving it.
- 04
Test and recommend
Move the assumptions that carry the most weight and show how the ranking changes. Write the recommendation, the assumptions under it and the open questions, and present it to the people who decide.
Read
Read the research.
Brief
Before you sign: questions for any software supplier
Questions for whoever signs for new software or a renewal. Security, drawn from the Software Security Code of Practice; ownership, data and access, including UK GDPR Article 28 processor terms; and support, continuity and AI features. Written to be used on any supplier, including us.
Download the briefWorth asking first
- What does changing nothing for the next twelve months cost, in money and in staff time?
- Which contract renewals and end-of-support dates fall in the next two years, and who holds the list?
- Can you export your data from each system today, in a format another system can read?
- Has each supplier stated how much notice it gives before support ends? The Software Security Code of Practice asks for at least a year.
- Who would have to change how they work for this to succeed, and have they seen the proposal?
Talk to us if
- A supplier's quote or shortlist has arrived before anyone has written down the problem it solves.
- A renewal is due and the seat count is a guess.
- Your board, trustees or funder has asked for a business case with benefits they can check.
- A system you depend on is approaching the end of its support, or its supplier has been sold.
- The e-invoicing mandate announced for April 2029 falls before your finance system's contract ends.
- You are preparing a procurement under the Procurement Act 2023 and need the requirement and scoring written.
Questions
Questions buyers ask
Do you build the software you might recommend?
We build bespoke software, and building is one of the five routes every appraisal costs. When a recommendation could lead to work for us, the report says so and names other firms that could do it. The recommendation may be to buy a product, configure what you have or change nothing.
Do you give legal or procurement advice?
No. We write the requirement, the evaluation criteria and the scoring model, and we work from public sources such as the Procurement Act 2023 and HM Treasury's Green Book. Contract terms, the choice of procedure and legal compliance stay with your legal and procurement advisers, who sign them off.
We have already chosen a supplier. Is an appraisal still useful?
The useful work then is due diligence on that supplier and a business case the board can check. We can still set the chosen product against keeping what you have, so the decision record shows the alternative was costed.
Can we use the report with another supplier?
Yes. The recommendation, the cost model and the requirements list are yours to use with any supplier, including one that is not us.
What do you need from us?
Time with the people who run the process and the people who approve the spending, the contracts and invoices for the systems in scope, and any volumes or times you already record. Where no figures exist, we measure a sample and label the baseline as a sample.
We cost all five routes on the same columns.
An options appraisal costs keep, configure, buy, build and stop over three and five years, including the cost of leaving each one.
Request an options appraisal