How to choose an IT consultant in Cebu (without getting burned)

There are a lot of 'IT consultants' in Cebu. Most are body shops who'll hand you a junior who bills at senior rates and learn your stack on your dime. Here's how to filter for real consulting on the first call.

1. They ask you hard questions before quoting

Good consultants spend the first call asking about your business, your constraints, your existing team, what success looks like — not pitching a service. If someone's quoting you a price before asking any of that, they're selling hours, not advice.

2. Their deliverables are documents, not just code

• A written assessment before any work starts
• Roadmap with sequencing — what to do first, what to defer, what's not worth doing
• Monday-morning actionable recommendations, not 60-page reports nobody reads
• A handoff plan so your team (or a future vendor) can pick up where they left off

3. They push back when needed

If your consultant agrees with everything you say, they're a vendor, not an advisor. Real consulting includes at least one 'I think you're solving the wrong problem' conversation.

4. Their engagement model is fixed milestones, not hourly

Hourly billing rewards the consultant for taking longer. Fixed milestones reward them for finishing. The exception: short advisory work (<2 weeks) where hourly is fair.

First-call checklist

• What's your typical engagement size? (Anything under ₱80k for a real engagement is a red flag.)
• Who does the actual work — the salesperson, a senior, a junior?
• Can you show me a sample roadmap or assessment from a past engagement (anonymized)?
• What happens if scope changes — written delta or new PO?
• How do you handle the handoff at the end?

What we do

428AM does IT consulting for Philippine SMBs — tech audits, roadmaps, vendor selection, and Data Protection Officer advisory. Fixed milestones. Written deliverables. We'll push back when we disagree. Discovery call scheduled within 3 business days.