UK Software Consulting Services — Pricing and Scope
| Service | What You Get | When You Need It | Fixed Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Technical Discovery | Architecture assessment, compliance gap analysis, build vs buy recommendation, risk register | Before committing to any software development project above £30,000 | £3,500–£8,000 (4–6 weeks) |
| Architecture Review | Current architecture assessment, scalability, security, UK GDPR data flow mapping | Existing system growing or struggling, pre-funding technical due diligence | £5,000–£12,000 (3–4 weeks) |
| CTO Advisory | Fractional CTO — monthly retainer for technical strategy, vendor selection, team hiring | No CTO in-house, or CTO needs a sounding board for complex decisions | £2,500–£5,000/month |
| Technical Due Diligence | Investor-grade codebase and architecture review for M&A or investment | Pre-investment (Series A/B), M&A target assessment, vendor due diligence | £8,000–£20,000 (2–4 weeks) |
| Regulatory Readiness Review | FCA, NHS DTAC, GDS, or ISO 27001 gap analysis with remediation roadmap | Pre-submission preparation for regulatory assessment | £4,000–£10,000 (3–5 weeks) |
| Team Assessment | Engineering team skill gap analysis, process review, hiring recommendations | Building or scaling an engineering team | £3,000–£6,000 (2–3 weeks) |
What Technical Discovery Includes
The most valuable sentence in a Technical Discovery: "the cheapest fix here is to change direction now, not in 12 weeks." ClickMasters has a financial incentive to recommend build — our consultants are instructed to recommend the right approach, even when that is a competitor, a SaaS tool, or no build.
UK Technical Due Diligence — What Investors and Acquirers Want
| Area | What We Assess | Red Flags | Investor Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Architecture quality | Scalability, security posture, cloud-native vs legacy | Monolith unable to scale, no CI/CD, manual deployments | High — affects valuation and growth thesis |
| Code quality | Test coverage, TypeScript, security scanning, documentation | < 30% coverage, no TypeScript, hardcoded secrets | Medium — affects technical risk premium |
| Compliance posture | UK GDPR, ICO registration, sector compliance (DTAC, FCA) | No ICO registration, no DPA with processors | High for regulated sectors — deal blocker |
| Technical debt | Legacy code, unsupported dependencies, accumlated shortcuts | Critical CVEs in production, unsupported Node/Python versions | Medium — affects post-acquisition cost |
| Team and process | Engineering team size, skill profile, delivery process, key person risk | Single key engineer, no documentation, no incident process | High — key person risk is deal risk |
| Vendor / IP lock-in | Proprietary dependencies, licensing, IP ownership | No IP assignment from contractors, GPL code in commercial product | High — affects IP ownership certainty |