What a technology adviser should leave you with.

Advisory is easy to buy and hard to evaluate. The deliverable is usually a document, the fee is usually counted in days, and the value — if there is any — shows up months later in decisions that went differently. So it is worth being clear about what good advice looks like before you pay for it.

A decision, not a deck.

Good advisory ends in a recommendation someone can act on: do this first, do not do that, and here is why. If the output is a maturity score, a capability map or a list of options with no preference expressed, you have paid for analysis, not advice.

A named person who stays accountable.

The adviser who scoped the work should be the one answerable for it. Be wary of any model where a senior partner sells the engagement and a team you have not met delivers it.

Advice priced separately from what follows.

If the adviser also sells the platform or the implementation, the recommendation is only independent when the advice is priced and delivered on its own. Ask how the adviser is paid if the answer is to buy nothing.

The starting point, described honestly.

Most technology recommendations are written against the target. Good advice spends as much effort on what you actually have — the systems, the contracts, the spreadsheets that hold the business together — because that is where the cost and the risk sit.

The security implication, named.

Every material recommendation has one. If it is not stated, it has either been missed or quietly moved into someone else's budget.

One sentence about what you are buying.

We test every engagement against a single sentence: "I need [practice area], bought as [engagement model]." If a proposal cannot finish that sentence, it is a delivery shape pretending to be a service.

Questions to ask before you engage anyone.

• What will I have at the end that I can act on?

• Who, by name, is accountable for the recommendation?

• How are you paid if the answer is to do nothing?

• What will you need from my people, and for how long?

• What would make you tell me not to go ahead?

Technology is a strategic asset. Advice about it should be treated like one. If you would like to put these questions to us, speak with Toga.