Consultancy · IT strategy & modernisation

IT modernisation consultant.

A vendor-independent advisor who reviews your IT landscape, delivers a workable modernisation roadmap and, if you wish, helps build the execution. No 200-page report, but a concrete plan your team can start on tomorrow.

RoleAdvisor + builder
IndependentNo reseller deals
AudienceCIO / CTO / IT leadership
Lead timeA few sprints
ApproachPragmatic & iterative
OutputRoadmap + execution

What does an IT modernisation consultant do?

An IT modernisation consultant helps your organisation make the move from legacy to modern, from on-premise to cloud, from monolith to modular. It is a broader role than a standalone platform migration or technical debt programme: we look at your entire application portfolio, suppliers, contracts, costs and strategic fit, and give well-founded advice on the right direction for each system.

In practice, that means reviewing your application landscape, mapping costs and risks, drawing up a modernisation roadmap together with you, and supporting you with the decisions that follow. Whether that ends up being a SaaS package, a cloud migration or a piece of cloud-native custom development, we are not tied to any particular direction, because we have no reseller deals with vendors.

Our consultants are not pure advisers who only produce PowerPoints. They are experienced engineers and architects who have built systems themselves, so the advice you receive is technically sound and actionable. And if you want, we can also take on part of the implementation.

The typical client is a CIO, CTO or IT director dealing with a fragmented application landscape, declining agility, rising maintenance costs, or compliance pressure from new legislation and regulations such as NIS2 or DORA. Board members who feel a "loss of speed" and post-merger IT integration challenges also call for this type of advice. We combine an independent outside view with practical feasibility, not ivory-tower advice that disappears into a drawer.

An engagement always starts with listening: what prompted it, which business goals are on the table, what has your team already investigated and which constraints are non-negotiable? Only then do we take stock of the landscape. This order prevents us from laying a generic modernisation template over your situation: your context determines the scope, not the other way around.

6 R's
Gartner options per application: Retain, Rehost, Replatform, Refactor, Repurchase, Retire
Roadmap
A concrete action plan, not abstract slides
Vendor-neutral
Independent advice, no partner commissions
Builders
Advisers who can develop software themselves

When do you bring in a modernisation consultant?

01
Agility

The board senses a loss of speed

Releases are slowing down, simple changes take a disproportionate amount of time, and competitors ship features faster. An audit shows where the bottleneck lies, often spread across several applications at once.

02
Costs

Maintenance costs are spiralling

Licences, maintenance contracts, downtime and specialist support are swallowing the IT budget. With a TCO analysis, we set current costs against scenarios for consolidation, SaaS replacement or cloud migration.

03
Risk

Compliance or supplier risk

A supplier ends support, GDPR/NIS2/DORA forces changes, or a key system runs on outdated technology. We map the risk and provide a prioritised mitigation plan.

04
Integration

Post-merger or after an acquisition

After a merger or acquisition, you are left with two or more overlapping IT landscapes. Which systems stay, which go, which are merged: these choices call for independent advice that doesn't favour either side.

05
Transformation

Digital transformation has stalled

The strategy is clear, but the existing IT does not enable it. A roadmap links the business goals to concrete modernisation steps, prioritised by value and risk.

06
Independence

You want a second opinion

Your current supplier or internal team has put forward a recommendation, but you doubt whether the direction is right. We give an independent assessment, vendor-neutral and based on technology rather than commercial interests.

Three core tasks of a modernisation consultant.

Core task 01

Assess

An inventory of applications, integrations, hosting, contracts and vendor dependencies. We create a blueprint of your current situation, with a TCO analysis, risk mapping (GDPR, NIS2, DORA, ISO 27001 gap) and business-IT fit. Without a full baseline assessment, a roadmap is a guess.

Core task 02

Advising

For each application, we give a keep/migrate/replace/retire recommendation based on the Gartner 6 Rs: Retain, Rehost, Replatform, Refactor, Repurchase or Retire. Plus make-or-buy choices (SaaS vs package vs custom) and, where relevant, RFI/RFP/POC support for vendor selection.

Core task 03

Guiding

Not "advice only" — we can also build. That means programme management for large migrations, architecture coaching for your internal team, and, where it makes sense, building a piece of software ourselves (see enterprise software). You decide where our role begins and ends.

Eight concrete deliverables.

What you get in your hands at the end of a consultancy engagement, depending on the scope you choose.

IT landscape blueprint

A full overview of applications, integrations and hosting in your current situation.

TCO comparison

Total cost of ownership of your current IT versus modernisation scenarios, with a multi-year forecast.

Modernisation roadmap

Prioritisation and sequencing per application, with scenarios and an indication of lead times.

Risk report

GDPR, NIS2, DORA and ISO 27001 gaps, plus technical debt translated into business risk.

Vendor selection report

A well-founded RFI/RFP/POC outcome for cloud, SaaS or custom partners.

Architecture rationale

The reasoning behind the chosen architecture, including weighted alternatives.

Implementation plan

Sprint planning, team composition, milestones and risk management for the delivery phase.

Change management approach

The people and process side alongside the tech: adoption, training and governance.

Typical engagement formats.

Not every consultancy engagement looks the same. Five ways we get involved: you choose the format that fits your question.

Format 01 · Audit + plan

Strategy engagement

An audit of your IT landscape, TCO analysis, risk mapping and delivery of a modernisation roadmap. A few sprints of work, with a plan as the end result that the board, IT and the business all stand behind.

Format 02 · Vendor

Vendor selection

Support with RFIs, RFPs and POCs for cloud providers, SaaS tools, integration platforms or custom software partners. We help you draw up criteria, compare vendors and substantiate your choice, with no stake of our own in the outcome.

Format 03 · Delivery

Modernisation execution support

Programme management and architecture direction during large migrations. We safeguard coherence between separate projects and keep the roadmap up to date when reality deviates from the plan.

Format 04 · Sparring

Architecture coaching

Regular sparring with your internal tech team on choices, design documents, security reviews and technical debt. Especially useful if you have a strong internal team that wants an independent sounding board.

Format 05 · Advisory

CIO advisory / interim

A sounding board at CIO level or a temporary fill of the role. Particularly relevant during vacancies, transition phases or when an experienced tech perspective is missing at board level.

Format 06 · Combination

Hybrid engagement

Most clients don't choose a pure format but a mix: for example audit + delivery, or vendor selection + architecture coaching. We agree the scope sprint by sprint, so you're not locked into a format that stops fitting halfway through.

How we position ourselves, honestly.

We're not a Big Four firm, not McKinsey, not Gartner. We don't deliver two-hundred-page reports and we don't have an army of junior consultants turning up on your doorstep. What we are: a small team of technically rigorous consultants and engineers, with decades of combined experience in building and modernising business software.

For some organisations, that's exactly what they need: direct contact with people who can build themselves, no process overhead, vendor-independent advice. For others, a large consultancy is a better fit; that's fine too, and we're transparent about it.

A key difference lies in combining advice with delivery. Many traditional consultancies deliberately don't build software themselves — they rely on implementation partners to do the actual build. That creates a gap between "what was recommended" and "what gets delivered", and in practice a lot of value is lost there. With us, the same architect who helped write your roadmap can also help write the first production release. For projects where the technology is genuinely complex, that saves months otherwise lost in handover.

We're also transparent about what we don't do. We don't take on pure organisational advice, large-scale change management or highly specialised compliance questions (think in-depth DORA audits) on our own — for those we work with specialist partners. Being honest about our limits prevents disappointment later.

  • Vendor-independent. No reseller commissions, no partner tiers steering us towards a particular supplier.
  • Technically rigorous consultants. Our advisers have built systems themselves — no pure consultants without development experience.
  • Concrete and pragmatic. We would rather give you advice you can use within a few sprints than a perfect report that's ready months from now.
  • Advising and building. If you wish, we can also handle delivery — or part of it. See also platform modernisation.
  • Small team, short lines. You speak to the same people at the end of the engagement as at the start.

Frequently asked questions.

What's the difference between you and a Big 4 or strategy consultancy?
We're smaller, technically more rigorous and considerably more pragmatic. With us you work directly with senior engineers and architects who have built systems themselves, rather than with a team most of whom have never touched code. We don't deliver two-hundred-page reports, but a workable plan your team can pick up in the next sprint. The flip side: we have less bench capacity for very large programmes. In that case a Big 4 firm may be a better fit.
Do you only advise, or do you build too?
Both are possible. Some clients bring us in for a pure strategy engagement with an audit and roadmap, and then put their internal team or another partner to work. Other clients also have us handle (part of) the delivery — for example a platform migration or a cloud-native platform. You decide where our role begins and ends.
How can you really be vendor-independent?
We have no reseller agreements with cloud providers, no partner tiers with SaaS vendors, and no commission on sales. Our revenue comes from the work we do for you, not from referrals. In practice, that means that if the right choice for your situation is a package or SaaS, rather than custom software we could build ourselves, we will simply advise that. We show the reasoning in the RFP documents so that you can verify it.
How long does a consultancy engagement take?
A strategy engagement (audit plus roadmap) typically takes a few sprints. A vendor selection can be shorter, and execution support can run considerably longer, depending on the scope of the modernisation. We don't put fixed numbers of weeks on a price list, because it depends heavily on the complexity of the landscape. After the initial exploration you'll receive a concrete plan.
What does a modernisation consultant cost?
That depends on scope, duration and the degree to which we're also involved in delivery. A short strategy engagement is a different investment from long-running execution support across multiple applications. We usually work with a fixed sprint budget and, after the initial exploration, give you a concrete price and a clear overview of what you'll receive for it.
Do you work with our internal IT team?
Almost always. We assume your internal team knows the organisation and the systems best — our role is to combine that knowledge with outside experience, an independent perspective and methodical rigour. We deliberately transfer knowledge, write down our decisions, and work in your own tooling wherever possible. Handover at the end is a standard part of every engagement.
How does this compare to purely technical engagements such as tech debt reduction?
An IT modernisation consultant looks beyond technology alone: we weigh cost, risk, vendor dependencies and strategic fit. For a purely technical project — such as resolving technical debt within a single application — you don't necessarily need a consultant. For a portfolio-wide choice between retaining, migrating, replacing or retiring systems, you do.
Who is this relevant for?
Primarily CIOs, CTOs and IT directors at mid-sized companies and enterprises — whether or not following a merger or acquisition — who have multiple legacy systems, no internal modernisation roadmap, and need independent advice. Organisations that want to accelerate digital transformation but find their existing IT architecture getting in the way are also typical clients.

Talk to us about your IT modernisation.

A half-hour introductory call in which we go through where your organisation stands, what you want to achieve and which type of engagement fits your needs. No sales pitch — just an honest conversation about whether we are the right partner.

Reply within 1 working day
No-obligation conversation
Westerdoksdijk 599, Amsterdam
Fabian van Dijk · fabian.vandijk@appfront.nl

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