Cost, risk, and ownership

The first engagement, Diagnose, is a fixed fee agreed in writing before work starts. There is no subscription and no retainer. The number depends on scope — how many departments and systems are involved — and you have it before you commit, never mid-engagement. If the work grows beyond what was quoted, that is a new agreement you approve first, not a larger invoice.

Diagnose is the first, bounded step. If it proves useful, later phases define your terms precisely enough for AI to run them and build the loop that keeps them true. Each phase is a separate decision. None is assumed.

A written definition of how your business runs: which numbers count as revenue, what "qualified" means, when "delivered" is true. Alongside it, a register of every place where two of your departments disagreed about those definitions. Those disagreements are where reports diverge and where automation fails, and most companies have never seen theirs written down.

The documents are yours to keep. They stay useful whether or not you ever hire us again.

We do not operate your systems. There is no plan where NOR-TIC keeps your automations alive month to month, under that name or any other. We define how the work runs, build the connections into tools you already use, and hand everything over. If a vendor's offer depends on you needing them forever, that tells you something about the vendor.

We also do not replace software that already works. A new tool enters only where you have none.

You do. The definitions, the documents and the connections are handed over: running on your systems, under your accounts, with alerts going to your people.

The reason this matters: in documented automation handovers, the recorded cause of failure was never that the client could not use the tool. It was that the one person who understood the system left, and the understanding left with them. Handing over a system your team understands is the direct answer to the failure that happens in practice. That is why the engagement teaches as it delivers.

Four conditions end an engagement before it starts, listed here because you will recognise them sooner than we will. If one appears mid-engagement, we stop rather than bill through it.

1. No executive can settle a definition dispute. When two departments disagree about what "qualified" means, someone with authority has to rule. Without that person the work stalls. That person is probably you.
2. Your source systems are the real problem. Fixing those is a different kind of engagement, and we say so at the start instead of billing through it.
3. What's needed is extra hands, not an outcome. Staffing firms do that well. We do not.
4. What's needed is one deliverable, not a working method. Then we are the wrong size of answer, and a smaller vendor will serve you better.

There is no form. Ask the person who sent you this page to set up a conversation. The quote comes after it, in writing.