Decision review / Second opinion
A second opinion, from someone with nothing riding on your answer.
Your integrator says yes. Your MSP says yes. The vendor says yes and has a quarter-end for saying it. None of them are lying. They are all answering a question that quietly includes their own revenue. A second opinion is what you buy when the decision is large enough that agreement stops counting as evidence.
What we actually check
The four places a confident recommendation usually breaks.
Not the technology. A recommendation is rarely wrong about what a product does; it is wrong about what it assumes.
The assumption nobody stated
Almost every proposal rests on something taken as settled: that headcount holds, that the data is clean, that the other system stays where it is. We find it and say it out loud, because it is the thing that will change.
The cost past year one
The first-year number is the one being sold. We look at what reprices, what scales with headcount or data volume, and what the exit costs if you want out in year three.
Who has to operate it
A recommendation that works only if you hire two people you have not budgeted for is not a recommendation, it is a proposal for a different company.
What happens if it is wrong
Some decisions are cheap to reverse and some are not. Knowing which one you are making changes how much certainty is worth paying for, and is usually the most useful thing in the report.
What you get
A position, not a list of considerations.
You already have people who can list considerations. What is missing is somebody willing to say which way to go and put their reasoning where you can check it.
This is bought as a private advisory session, at a fixed fee agreed before anything is booked.
A recommendation
Proceed, proceed with changes, or do not proceed yet. In the first paragraph, not on page nine.
The reasoning, attached
Every conclusion carries what it was drawn from, so your team can argue with the logic rather than with us.
What would change the answer
A named list of conditions. When one of them moves, you will know the recommendation has expired without having to ask.
Who you are working with
Thirty years of being the person who had to decide.
VanDien.io is led by Christopher Moskowitz, who most recently ran engineering for Jefferies, a full service capital markets, investment bank, leading a 55-person organization that supported more than 16,000 endpoints on a budget of $15M to $20M, and was Chief Technology Officer at two premier New York alternative investment organizations before that. The opinions on offer here were formed by approving the spend and then living with it.
More specific than this?
Sometimes the decision already has a name.
Common questions
How is this different from just asking another vendor?
Another vendor gives you a competing quote, which is a second sales position rather than a second opinion. We are not bidding on the work, so the answer can be that your incumbent is right and you should proceed.
Do we have to tell our current provider?
No. Most clients do not. The review happens from your material and your side of the conversation, and nothing goes to the vendor unless you send it.
What do you need from us?
Whatever the decision was made from: the proposal, the quote, the architecture diagram, the internal memo. If it is thin, that is itself a finding, and we will say so rather than pad the report.
When is a second opinion not worth buying?
When the decision is reversible, small, or already made for non-technical reasons you cannot change. We will tell you that at the scoping stage, before you have paid anything.
Bring us the thing everyone already agreed to.
info@vandien.io · (551) 236-3191 · Ridgewood, NJ, serving the New York metro