The client journey
Small firm. Deliberately.
Athencis is built around one idea: the Global CISO you meet in the first conversation is the person who does the work, signs the findings, and answers for them afterwards. That shapes everything about how we engage — the scoping, the pricing, the honesty, and the handover.
From first call to handover
What actually happens, step by step.
Step 1 · Free
The first conversation
Thirty to sixty minutes, no charge, no deck. You describe the situation; we ask the questions a CISO or chief architect would ask. By the end you'll have our honest view of the problem — including, sometimes, that you don't need us. Around a third of first conversations end there, and that's fine.
Step 2 · Days
A written proposal you can hold us to
A short, plain-English proposal: the objective, the scope, the deliverables, the timeline, the price, and — importantly — what's out of scope. Fixed-price where the work can be fixed; day-rate where it genuinely can't. No discovery phases that exist to sell the next phase.
Step 3 · Week one
Evidence first
Every engagement starts by gathering facts: your documents, your systems, your people's accounts of how things really work. Recommendations come later. Clients are often surprised how much of week one is listening — it's where the eventual answer earns its credibility.
Step 4 · Throughout
No surprises delivery
A short written update every week: what we found, what we did, what's next, what we need from you. Findings are shared as we go — the final report should be the written record of conversations you've already had, never a reveal.
Step 5 · Final fortnight
Deliverables built for their audience
Board packs written for boards. Policies written for engineers. Evidence structured for auditors. Every deliverable is walked through live with the people who'll use it, and revised until it works — that revision loop is inside the price, not an extra.
Step 6 · The end
Handover, then leave
The measure of a good engagement is what still works six months after we've gone. We hand over working artefacts, brief the owners, and step away — with a check-in call at three months, on us. Engagements that need to continue are renewed because you choose to, never because the work was designed to be unfinishable.
Operating principles
The rules we don't bend.
The truth, early
If the programme is in trouble, the tool is the wrong one, or the plan won't survive the audit — you hear it in week two, not in the final report.
Independence is the product
No reseller margins, no referral fees, no bench to keep busy. The only thing we sell is judgement, so it has to stay unconflicted.
Your team gets stronger
We work alongside your people, not around them. Knowledge transfer is a deliverable on every engagement, because dependency is a failure state.
Evidence over opinion
Every recommendation traces to something observable. If we can't show the working, we don't make the claim.
Practicalities
The questions procurement will ask.
“Consultancy has a simple honesty test: would the advice be the same if the adviser weren't paid by the day? We price and scope so that the answer is always yes.”
— On incentives
The first conversation is free.
And genuinely useful, whether or not it goes anywhere. Bring the problem; we'll bring thirty years of pattern recognition.