Four practices. One job.

Ottotell exists to make technology decisions defensible — before the money is spent, and again after, when someone asks why. These are the four ways that work usually arrives. Most engagements start in one and end up touching two.

Book a consultation How engagements run

01 — Practice

AI strategy & implementation

Most organizations do not have an AI problem. They have a dozen candidate ideas, no way to rank them, and pressure from above to do something visible. We turn that into a short list with numbers attached — and then build the ones that survive.

What we do

AI readiness review. Data quality and access, security posture, policy gaps, and where the appetite in the organization actually sits.
Use-case discovery and ranking. Every candidate scored on value, feasibility, data availability and risk — so the argument happens on paper, cheaply.
Proof of concept. A working pilot on your real data, in weeks, so the go or no-go decision is made on evidence rather than a demo video.
Production implementation. Retrieval over your own content, integration with the systems you already run, evaluation harnesses, cost controls and monitoring.
Governance and policy. Acceptable-use policy, data-handling rules, human-in-the-loop design, and vendor and model due diligence.
Enablement. Training your people so the capability stays in the building after we leave.

Where it usually starts

Document processing
Support triage
Internal knowledge search
Drafting & summarisation
Classification & routing
Research & enrichment

What you get

A ranked use-case register with estimated value, effort and risk
A data readiness assessment naming the specific blockers
A working pilot running on your data, not a vendor’s sample set
An AI acceptable-use policy and governance model
Production architecture, cost model and operating runbook

Our bias, stated up front

We will tell you when a rules engine, a database query or a better form would do the same job for a fraction of the cost and none of the risk. That answer has ended more than one of our own engagements early, and we still give it.

Talk about AI work

02 — Practice

Custom software & automation

The gap between what your software does and what your business does is usually filled by people doing repetitive work by hand. That gap is measurable, and closing it is often the highest-return project available to you.

What we do

Internal tools and line-of-business applications. The system that does the thing your industry’s software has never quite done properly.
Integration and API work. Making the products you already pay for talk to each other, so nobody re-keys the same record three times.
Workflow automation. Approvals, hand-offs, notifications, scheduled jobs — the quiet machinery that removes a day a week from someone’s calendar.
Data pipelines and reporting. One version of the numbers, produced automatically, that leadership will actually trust.
Legacy modernization. Incremental replacement with the business running throughout. We do not recommend big-bang rewrites, and we will argue against yours.
Maintenance or handover. We keep it running, or we document it and hand it to your team. Your call, made at the end, not the start.

Typical work

Web applications
APIs & integrations
Databases
Cloud infrastructure
Process automation
Dashboards

What you get

Written requirements and process maps, agreed before anyone writes code
Working software delivered in milestones you can see and test
Source code in your repository, under your organization’s account
Infrastructure in your cloud accounts, billed to you directly
Deployment documentation, runbooks and handover training

Before we build anything

Every custom build starts with a serious look at whether something off the shelf would do. Custom software is a long-term commitment — someone has to own it for years — and it should only win when the fit genuinely justifies that.

Talk about a build

03 — Practice

Technology selection & vendor evaluation

Buying is usually cheaper than building — until it is not. And the common failure is not picking the wrong product; it is picking without ever having written down what “right” would have meant.

What we do

Requirements definition. With the people who will use the system daily, not only the people who sign for it. Separated into must-have, should-have and nice-to-have before any vendor is contacted.
Market scan and shortlist. Including the credible options that do not have a sales team calling you.
Structured scoring. Weighted criteria, applied consistently, with the scoring sheet handed to you.
Demo scripting. We write the scenarios vendors must demonstrate, using your workflows and your edge cases, so you compare like with like instead of watching four showreels.
Reference calls and due diligence. Including references the vendor did not choose.
Total cost of ownership. Licences, implementation, integration, training, internal time and — the one everyone forgets — the cost of leaving again in five years.
Build-versus-buy analysis. The same numbers, applied to both options, with the assumptions visible.
Commercial review and implementation oversight. We help you read the contract and hold the vendor to it. We are not lawyers, and we will tell you plainly when you need one.

What you get

A weighted requirements matrix your team signed off on
A scored shortlist, with the raw scoring visible
A three-to-five-year total cost of ownership model
A written recommendation — including the strongest case against it
Negotiation notes, red flags and the questions still worth asking

No commissions, no referral fees

We hold no reseller agreements and take no payment from any vendor we might recommend. Our fee is the same whichever way the analysis lands, which is the only arrangement that makes the analysis worth anything.

Talk about a selection

04 — Practice

Fractional CTO & IT advisory

Some organizations need senior technical judgment two or three days a month. Hiring for that is close to impossible. Borrowing it is straightforward, and considerably cheaper than the decisions it prevents.

What we do

Technology roadmap and annual planning. What gets done this year, what gets deferred, and the reasoning behind both — written down so it survives a change of staff.
Architecture and security review. An honest read of what you are running, what it will and will not carry, and where the real exposure is.
Budget planning and spend rationalization. Licence and subscription audits routinely find enough unused seats and overlapping tools to cover the engagement.
Vendor and contract management. Someone technical in the room at renewal, holding suppliers to what they sold.
Team structure and hiring. What roles you actually need, in what order, plus technical interviewing so you are not assessing engineers on instinct.
Executive and board reporting. Technology risk and progress explained so that non-technical directors can act on it.
A second opinion, on demand. Before you sign anything significant.

What you get

A written technology roadmap, reviewed and revised quarterly
A risk register with owners, severities and mitigation plans
A technology budget model you can defend line by line
A short monthly written summary for leadership
Direct access between sessions — not a ticket queue

Where this fits

A retainer works best once there is something to steward: a live roadmap, real vendor relationships, an internal team or a build in flight. If you are not there yet, a discovery sprint is the cheaper starting point and we will say so.

Talk about a retainer

Not sure which one you need?

That is a completely normal place to start.

Most people arrive describing a symptom rather than a service. Tell us what is not working in plain language and we will tell you which of these — if any — is the right instrument. That conversation is free and takes about half an hour.

Book a consultation Read the FAQ first

Bring us the messy version.

You do not need a specification or a budget to start a conversation. A description of what is going wrong is enough for us to be useful.

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