The diagnosis is the easiest part of this work to sell badly. It's paid up front, delivered on paper, and the client has no way of knowing whether what they got is worth anything until they try to use it.
I charge €450 for mine. The Spanish market sits between €900 and €1,500. With that kind of money on the table, the least you can do is know what you're buying.
What gets delivered badly
Three formats come up again and again, and none of them is any use.
The first is the deck of recommendations: twenty slides ending in "digitalise the processes", "implement a management tool" and "build a data culture". All true, all useless, because none of it can be executed on Monday morning.
The second is the tool report: a comparison of four products with their prices, which is really the vendor's catalogue dressed up as analysis. You spot it because the conclusion matches, suspiciously well, whatever that vendor sells.
The third is subtler — the beautiful map: a flawless BPMN diagram of the ideal process, which looks nothing like what the company actually does, because it was drawn by asking management rather than the people who run it.
A diagnosis that describes the process that should exist, instead of the one that does, is an essay, not a diagnosis.
The seven things it does need
1. The current process, step by step, with stopwatch times
Not "the team spends a fair amount of time on this". Step 1, step 2, step 3, who does it, how many minutes and where it stalls. If the minutes come from asking "how long do you think this takes you?", they're worthless: people are off by a factor of two, in both directions.
2. Numbered breaking points, each with what it costs
Numbered so you can talk about them ("the one in point 3"), and with a cost beside each. The cost can be in hours, in errors per quarter or in risk, but it has to be there — it's what lets you decide what gets fixed first.
3. What gets automated, and what doesn't
The list of what stays out is what separates an honest diagnosis from a quote in disguise. Every process has decisions that should stay human and exceptions that cost more to automate than to handle by hand.
4. A phased proposal, in order, priced per phase
And the order matters: each phase has to leave something working on its own. If the client stops after the first one, what's built should keep earning its keep. A plan that only works in full is a plan that ties you in.
5. The rollback plan
What happens if something breaks on go-live day. Written before starting, not improvised on the day it's needed.
6. What's needed from you
Permissions, people, time and test data. Half the projects that stall, stall here, and almost always because nobody wrote it down at the start.
7. What happens the day the supplier disappears
Which account it lives in, with what documentation, and what the next person needs to know to carry on. If that's missing, you haven't bought a diagnosis — you've bought a dependency.
How to check before paying
Ask to see one.
Not a case study or a testimonial: the document, whole, even with the data changed. Anyone who has a real deliverable can show it in thirty seconds. Anyone who doesn't starts explaining that every project is different and everything is tailored to the client — which is the polite way of saying there is no format.
If they can't show you the deliverable before you pay for it, it doesn't exist until you pay for it.
Mine is published: the sample report is built on an invented company, with its timings, its seven breaking points and its phased proposal. Eight pages, no slides. (It's in Spanish — that's the market it's written for.)
One more signal: the credit
A diagnosis that gets credited against the build if you carry on is a good sign for two reasons. The obvious one: it's cheaper for you. The one that matters: whoever credits it is betting that the diagnosis will turn into a project, and that bet only pays off if the diagnosis is genuinely good.
A diagnosis that's never credited, and gets invoiced the same whatever happens, is a standalone product. It can still be fine, but it's no longer aligned with you.
If you're weighing up paying for a diagnosis — mine or anyone's — download the example and use it as a checklist against whatever you're offered. For the questions to ask on the call, they're here. For anything else, write to me or see what each line costs.