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GEN's consultancy is independent technical advice from the engineers who run production systems for our customers every day. When we tell you what a decision is likely to cost, or whether a system is worth keeping, it is because we have built, supported and repaired that kind of system ourselves, not because we looked it up.
The same experience goes into the contracts you sign with suppliers, and into settling technical disputes when a supplier relationship has stalled. You do not need a contract with us, you pay only for the time you use, and eligible small businesses have their first hour free.
Decisions about technology should rest on evidence: what the options really cost, what each one depends on, and what happens if it goes wrong. We are a full stack IT service provider, and we work with current systems, software, processes and standards every day, so the answers we give come from genuine experience. That is the difference between an engineer's opinion and a report compiled from the internet.
Most engagements start with a single question and a conversation, by telephone, email or video, or on your site if that is more useful. Where the answer turns out to be that you need somebody to run the systems, that is IT outsourcing. Where your own team need the skills, it is training. Security and data protection questions are covered in depth under compliance.
Whether a system can be fixed or modified to meet the need, or whether replacement is the better spend once maintenance, downtime and remaining life are counted, not just the purchase price.
Vendors have their own reasons to push a complete upgrade. We separate the genuine ones, such as security fixes and the end of support, from the commercial ones, and say whether a targeted change would do.
A proposal, quotation, design or contract from another supplier, checked before you commit money to it: what has been missed, which terms are unfavourable, and what is normal practice in the industry.
A look across the whole operation for the most efficient use of IT in time, cost and energy, with a roadmap for getting there. You pay for the review once, and the savings continue.
Choosing new software, planning a system upgrade or introducing a new security measure, with the impacts, risks and gains set out before the decision rather than discovered after it.
Where the business sees IT as an obstacle and the IT team feel cut off from the business, we work out why, and how to realign the service with what the departments actually need from it.
When a project is expensive, business critical or closely integrated with other systems, the contract is not paperwork: it is how delivery will be run and measured. We bring a technical view to the commercial terms. We understand what the supplier is really proposing, how it will be implemented, what it depends on, and where delivery usually goes wrong.
We have contracted with service providers, and been one, for thirty-seven years, so we know how suppliers operate, how delivery plans drift and how disputes start. We support managed services, software delivery, infrastructure projects, cloud migrations, security programmes, telecoms and multi-supplier environments, working with your procurement team, project office or senior stakeholders.
GEN are not solicitors and do not give legal advice. We supply the technical and operational input, and work alongside your own legal advisers, who remain responsible for the legal drafting and advice.
Before you sign, we review the proposed solution for technical fit, delivery risk and operational realism: architecture, dependencies, assumptions, security, support model, and whether the service levels can actually be met. Gaps in monitoring, backup, incident response and maintenance responsibilities are found here, not after go live.
Many projects fail at the definition stage. We create or validate a functional specification with deliverables, milestones and acceptance criteria you can actually test, separate what is essential from what would be nice, and set out what is in scope, out of scope, and formal change.
Practical terms that protect delivery: service levels and KPIs that measure what matters and can be evidenced, service credits that genuinely encourage performance, and your position on subcontracting, dependencies and supplier changes.
A shortlist shaped to your organisation, tender packs that force comparable responses, scoring that weighs delivery risk, security and operations alongside price, and reference checks that ask the right questions.
During the term: service reviews, KPI and SLA tracking, escalation and post-incident review, and change control that assesses impact, controls cost and records every approval, so what is delivered continues to match what is paid for.
Exit assistance that is measurable and time bound, with data portability, handover documentation, configurations, runbooks and knowledge transfer, so you can move supplier or bring a service in house without losing continuity.
Weak contracts let projects drift. Scope expands without control, acceptance becomes a matter of opinion, service levels cannot be evidenced, and disagreements turn into delay and additional cost. The UK public sector has had a number of IT programmes where overruns and partial delivery became the story.
These are widely reported headline figures, given to illustrate the scale of risk when governance, scope and accountability are not adequately controlled. The lesson is consistent: success needs precise scope, measurable acceptance, controlled change, and governance that operates throughout the term, not just at signature.
Most disagreements on a technical project are settled quickly and the work carries on. Occasionally one reaches an impasse, where normal communication between customer and supplier has broken down and each side is sure the other is at fault. That is the point at which an independent technical view is most useful.
We assess the dispute from both sides, impartially, and consider every aspect of it before proposing a way forward that both parties can accept. We do not make the issue more complicated than it is. Our engineers work across software development, cloud services, telecommunications and cyber security, so they can read the code, the system requirements, the service levels and the logs, and understand what each party actually expected.
This is mediation, not arbitration. In England, arbitration means a binding award under the Arbitration Act 1996, and that is not what we offer. Our proposal binds neither party unless both agree to adopt it.
Custom software that does not function or perform as the customer expected. We examine the code, the system requirements and what the users were led to expect, and establish where the gap really lies.
Uptime, data security and service levels under cloud and hosting agreements, measured against what the agreement actually says and what the evidence shows, so the remedy is technically sound as well as fair.
Disputes over connectivity, bandwidth and network security incidents, where the operational impact is immediate and both sides need to agree the cause before they can agree the remedy.
Many of our cases are about price. One price was quoted, the customer changed something, and now there is another price, or several. Where a consultancy has subcontracted the work, and its subcontractors have done the same, it becomes hard to see what was paid for. We give a full forensic account of each bill: what it covers, who actually did the work (if anyone), and whether it was justified. That is useful to both parties, whichever way it points.
Where the real problem is communication between the business and the technical team, we can sit between them: relaying the customer's needs to the supplier in technical terms, and the supplier's technical constraints back to the customer in business terms. That takes the personal friction out of the dispute and lets both parties get on with the work.
Yes, for eligible small businesses. Under GEN's First Hour Free Policy, a business with an annual turnover under £1 million and fewer than 50 employees can have one hour of free telephone consultancy on IT, cyber security, or disaster recovery and business continuity, once in any rolling 12 months. It needs no contract, and it is usually enough for us to understand the question, tell you what we think, and say how much more time a proper answer would take. We tell you before any chargeable time begins.
No. There is no contract and no commitment beyond the time you choose to use. You pay for the hours worked at GEN's published rates, and small businesses can usually spread the cost over a year if that suits them better.
GEN's own engineers, who run production systems for customers every day and have done so for thirty-seven years. The advice comes from what they have built, supported and repaired, not from research carried out for the occasion. We choose our partnerships carefully, and support only those companies who give us complete freedom in what we advise and recommend.
No. GEN are not solicitors and do not give legal advice. We supply the technical and operational input: whether the solution will work, whether the scope and acceptance criteria can be tested, whether the service levels can be met and evidenced, and what the exit will involve. We work alongside your procurement team and your legal advisers, who remain responsible for the legal drafting and advice.
Yes. We compare what was agreed with what is being delivered and invoiced, then set up the service reviews, evidence and change control that make the rest of the term run to the contract. Where the terms themselves are the problem, we identify what to change at the next variation, renewal or exit point, and help plan the exit if one is needed.
No. GEN do not offer arbitration, which in England means a binding award made under the Arbitration Act 1996. We offer technical mediation: we assess the dispute from both sides, impartially, and propose a way forward. That proposal binds neither party unless both agree to adopt it, and either party remains free to take any other route open to them.
Both parties, equally. The fee is fixed and quoted up front, before any work is done, so neither side is exposed to an open ended cost and neither is paying for the outcome.
Technical ones: software that does not perform as the parties expected, cloud and hosting services that miss their service levels, and connectivity, bandwidth and network security problems. A surprising number are about billing, where a quoted price has become several, or where work has passed through a chain of subcontractors and nobody is sure who did what.
The most expensive technology decisions are the ones made without an independent view: the upgrade that was not needed, the contract nobody could measure, the dispute left to harden. A first conversation with one of our engineers is usually enough to tell you whether the question needs more, and for eligible small businesses the first hour is free.
After that you pay only for the time you use, at our published rates, with no contract, and small businesses can usually spread the cost over a year.