A deliberately small, independent IT advisory practice on Sydney's lower north shore — senior practitioners, fixed fees, no vendor commissions.
About the practice
PML IT Consultancy was founded in November 2019 as an independent IT advisory practice serving Australian organisations. We are deliberately small. We are deliberately senior. We are deliberately focused on the kind of work that requires independent judgment rather than large-team delivery. The decision to stay small is not a growth constraint; it is the basis on which the independence of the advice rests.
Every engagement is led by the founding principal. We do not run a junior pyramid; we do not have a bench of analysts to draw on; we do not have a back office of partners managing their own portfolios. The person you meet in the first conversation is the person who does the work, and is the person accountable for the conclusion.
Operating principles
We would rather decline an engagement than accept one where the conclusion cannot be what we believe is right. We do not sell software, we do not accept vendor commissions, we do not have referral arrangements.
The value of independent advisory is the quality of the judgment. Quality of judgment comes from experience, not from headcount. We are deliberately small so that every engagement benefits from senior attention.
Every engagement has a written deliverable, a price and a date. The client knows what they are buying and we are judged against all three.
Every engagement leaves the client team better able to manage the next one without us. We do not create dependency; we do not bill for ongoing relationships that are not producing value.
The board can read our engagement letter and our work product and know what we did, what we found, and what we recommend. We do not hide behind methodology.
How we are different
The large advisory firms have their place. For the largest transformations, the most complex multi-vendor integrations, the most ambitious multi-year programmes, a major firm brings depth and breadth that a small practice cannot match. We are not that firm and we do not try to be.
What we offer instead is the experience of a senior practitioner, end to end, on every engagement. The person you meet in the first conversation is the person who does the work. The person who signs the deliverable is the person who would defend it in front of your board. The person who attends your steering committee is the person who will answer when the question is hard.
We are also different in the way we scope and price. Every engagement is fixed-fee. We do not bill by the day. We commit to a deliverable, a price and a date, and we are judged against all three. This is unusual in our market, where most advisory is still sold by the day. The reason we do it is that it aligns our incentives with our clients: we make more money if we deliver more efficiently, not if we run the engagement longer.
The final thing we offer is a particular kind of judgment. Our practitioners have spent twenty-plus years in the market. We have seen the strategies that worked and the strategies that did not. We have run the programmes that delivered and the programmes that did not. We have made the architecture decisions that aged well and the ones that aged badly. That experience is the basis on which the advice rests, and it is what we are paid for.
Please ask the larger firm the same questions you would ask us: who specifically will be doing the work, what is the deliverable, what is the price, what is the date, and what recourse do you have if you are not satisfied. The answers are usually illuminating.
Our history
The practice was founded in November 2019. The first engagement began in February 2020, two weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic forced the country into lockdown. That first engagement was a strategy review for a mid-tier financial services organisation that was using the pandemic as the trigger for a long-postponed conversation about its technology operating model. The work continued remotely through the worst of the pandemic and delivered a strategy document in August 2020 that the executive team adopted in full.
From that first engagement, the practice grew through referrals from clients who had been on the receiving end of the work and who believed the model was worth recommending to their peers. Six years on, the practice serves clients across financial services, healthcare, public sector, manufacturing, retail and insurance. We remain deliberately small. We have no plans to grow beyond the size at which the senior-practitioner model can be sustained.
The office is in Artarmon, on Sydney's lower North Shore. We work on-site at client locations when the engagement requires it, and we work from the office when it does not. We do not have a remote-only team; we believe that some of the most important conversations in advisory happen in person, and we make the effort to be in the room when it matters.
Common questions
Because the IT advisory market had stopped serving executives honestly. Large firms are paid to staff large programmes, vendors are paid to sell platforms, and the board rarely hears a plain answer. PML was set up to be the adviser with no side: fixed fees, senior practitioners, no commissions, no implementation targets.
We advise. We do not staff builds, run offshore delivery, or resell software. That is deliberate: it is the only way our recommendation stays independent. When implementation is needed, we help you choose and oversee a delivery partner rather than becoming one.
The person you meet in the first conversation. We are deliberately small — the principal leads every engagement, supported by a small senior network when volume requires it. There is no junior team producing drafts that a partner reviews. You get senior judgment on day one.
No commissions, no referral fees, no reseller margins, no equity. We will name vendors neutrally and assess them on your requirements. If we ever have a relationship that could be perceived as a conflict, we disclose it in writing before the engagement starts.
Banking and financial services, healthcare, public sector, manufacturing and logistics, retail and consumer, insurance, and professional services. The discipline transfers: a defensible decision is a defensible decision in any regulated environment.