Fractional CTO steers a Wiesbaden training firm's portal rebuild

Situation

A professional training provider in Wiesbaden, 28 staff, about €4.5 million in annual revenue, running certification courses for the insurance and banking sector in Wiesbaden and Frankfurt. Half the revenue now came through an online learning portal an agency had built in 2019. The portal was slow, the agency had quoted €180,000 for a rebuild, and the hosting bill had crept to about €2,100 a month without anyone knowing why.

The two founders had trainer backgrounds. They had no one in the building who could tell them whether €180,000 was fair, whether the rebuild was needed at all, or what to ask the agency. Hiring a full-time CTO at €140,000 a year for one decision made no sense.

Approach

Two days a month for six months, at €3,400 a month. Day one of each month on site in Wiesbaden, day two remote. The retainer buys architecture and vendor decisions, and the founders wrote down the four they needed: the rebuild, the hosting, a video platform contract up for renewal, and whether to hire a developer.

Month one: we read the agency’s proposal and the portal’s code, and had the hosting account opened to us. Month two: we rewrote the rebuild brief around what learners and trainers use, cut three modules nobody had opened in a year, and put the brief out to the incumbent agency and two others. Month three: we compared the offers on a one-page grid and sat in on the negotiation. Months four to six: we reviewed the agency’s weekly progress, checked each delivery against the brief, and moved the hosting.

Every decision got a one-page record: the question, the options, the numbers, the choice and why. Eleven of them by the end. The founders read all of them in under an hour.

Result

In this scenario the rebuild was awarded to the incumbent agency at €95,000 for the trimmed scope, with milestone payments tied to working software. The hosting moved to a plan that matched the actual load and fell from about €2,100 to about €900 a month, which covers about two thirds of the retainer over a year. The video platform was renewed for one year instead of three, with a data-export clause. The developer hire was dropped in favour of a maintenance contract at about a fifth of the cost. The founders now know which questions to ask and have a written record of why their systems look the way they do.

What it cost

€3,400 per month for six months, €20,400 in total, quoted as a fixed monthly price before the work started, for two days a month of architecture and vendor decisions. The agency’s fee, the hosting and the video platform are third-party costs, paid by the client and excluded from the guarantee. The retainer is covered by our 100% money-back guarantee: full refund on request within 14 days of delivery, and for a monthly retainer the first month is refundable in full.

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