The Practice — $5,500 per month

The data practice
your business doesn't have to hire.

One senior data architect on call. One continuous intelligence operation. All of the architecture, capture, systems, software, and cyber work your data layer needs — every month, on a single retainer, with no project invoices in between.

Monthly
$5,500
Term
12 months
Break clause
3-month
Senior time included
~10 hrs/mo
What ships every month

One retainer.
Five deliverables on cadence.

The Practice is not "an architect you call when something breaks." It's a defined operating cadence — five things ship every month, on time, in the same format, against The Veridicus Method.

Weekly

Pipeline operation

Your data infrastructure runs, monitored, maintained. Captures live and feeding. Errors caught before you see them.

Monthly

The Monthly Brief

Written insights report — what changed in your data, what to act on, what's at risk. Delivered first business day of the month.

Monthly

The Working Call

One hour with the senior architect. Strategy, decisions, what's in flight. Calendar-locked, no rescheduling games.

Quarterly

The Health Tracker

Architecture review, security posture, data quality scorecard. Delivered quarter-end. Shows you what's improving and what's drifting.

Always

Direct access

Slack, Signal, or email to the senior architect — not an account manager, not a junior, not a ticket queue.

The enabling work is included. Architecture, integration, software builds inside the data layer, cyber and access posture, governance documentation — all of it ships under The Practice. No "that's an additional engagement" conversations. No separate invoices.

What's not included: new capture operations, one-off Intelligence Sprints, sales or customer system builds, custom development beyond the data layer. Those are The Augmentations — priced separately, available to anyone who's done the Audit.

The 12 months

Months 1–3 are the build.
Months 4–12 are the operation.

The first quarter looks like a senior consulting engagement. The next nine months look like a managed practice. Same retainer, same architect, two distinct phases of work.

Phase A · Setup
Months 1 — 3

The build phase.

Architecture locked. Foundation laid. First capture live. First Brief shipped. Your data layer goes from where it is now to where The Practice operates from.

  • Week 1 — discovery, scope lock, architecture decision documented
  • Weeks 2–6 — warehouse, pipelines, integration, governance built
  • Weeks 7–10 — first capture operation live, first Intelligence Brief in draft
  • Weeks 11–12 — first Monthly Brief shipped, Quarterly Health Tracker baseline set
  • End of month 3 — handover doc, source-ownership confirmed, ongoing cadence locked
Phase B · Operate
Months 4 — 12

The practice rhythm.

Monthly Brief, weekly pipeline operation, working call, quarterly health, ongoing maintenance. The architect becomes a known fixture in your business — embedded, accountable, available.

  • Monthly — Brief delivered, working call held, captures running, data healthy
  • Quarterly — Health Tracker shipped, architecture revisited, posture re-baselined
  • Ongoing — new captures added as you identify them (Augmentations), Intelligence Sprints booked when you need them, the data layer kept current
  • Month 11 — renewal conversation: continue, restructure, or wind down
Honest comparison

The Practice is not
a fractional CTO.

There are firms in Brisbane selling fractional CTO time at the same monthly price as The Practice. They are excellent at what they do — and they are not what we are. The work is different. The depth is different. The deliverables are different.

A fractional CTO

Generalist technology breadth.

Strategic technology leadership across the business — vendor selection, hiring panels, board reporting, tech roadmap, security posture, infrastructure decisions, the lot.

  • Broad coverage across all of technology
  • Executive-level voice in business decisions
  • Generally won't write code, run captures, or build pipelines
  • Generally won't produce a monthly intelligence brief

The Veridicus Practice

Specialist data depth.

One thing, done in depth — the data layer of your business. Architecture, capture, intelligence — at the operational tempo of a working senior architect, not the calendar tempo of an executive advisor.

  • Data architecture, capture, and intelligence operations
  • Senior architect time, not executive advisor time
  • Hands-on — pipelines, captures, briefs, dashboards, all built
  • The Monthly Brief and Quarterly Health Tracker ship on cadence
If your business already has a fractional CTO, The Practice sits beside them, not instead of them.If your business needs both functions and is buying one person for both — buy the CTO. We'll build the data layer for them when they're ready.
The Augmentations

Project work, priced clearly.

Anything outside the Practice baseline is an Augmentation — fixed scope, fixed price, no surprises. Available to any client who has completed The Audit. Practice clients get priority scheduling and a 10% rate.

The Sales Augmentation
$8,500 fixed
AI-enabled lead scoring + prospecting system, CRM integration, senior data feed into sales pipeline. 3-week build, 2-week tuning, full handover. For Practice clients whose sales team is leaving money on the table.
The Customer Performance System
$6,500 fixed
Cohort analysis, churn prediction, LTV dashboard, auto-generated monthly performance reports. 2–3 week build. For businesses that want to understand customer health, not just customer count.
The Capture Operation
$5,500 per source
New competitive or market intelligence capture pipeline. One named source — competitor, market, regulatory, news. 2-week build. Ongoing capture folded into the Practice baseline at no additional cost.
The Intelligence Sprint
$4,500 fixed
One-off deep competitive intelligence brief on a specific question — competitor pricing move, market entry, product launch threat. 5–7 day delivery. Public-data-only. For Practice clients with a strategic question that can't wait for the Monthly Brief.
The Custom Build
$1,500 / day
Anything not on this menu — bespoke development inside or adjacent to the data layer. Senior-led, scoped and quoted before work begins, fixed-fee preferred. By exception.
More on request
Quoted
If you have a data-adjacent build in mind that doesn't fit any of the above, raise it on the Monthly Working Call. We'll scope and quote it in writing within five business days, fixed fee, no PowerPoint.

The Augmentation rule. Augmentations are available to any client who has completed The Audit — you don't need to be on The Practice. Practice clients get priority scheduling, a 10% rate on every Augmentation, and ongoing capture work folded into the baseline at no additional cost. The Audit is the qualifier; The Practice is the discount.

Terms, plainly

The contract is on the page.

No legal surprises in month seven. Everything material is here, in plain English, before you sign anything. The full standard-form contract is available on request and has been solicitor-reviewed.

Engagement structure

Price
$5,500 / month, exclusive of GST.
Term
12 months from go-live.
Break clause
3-month break available any time after month 3, with a sunk-cost exit fee tied to documented setup work delivered.
For cause
Termination for material breach available to either side with 14 days' written notice.
Renewal
Renewal conversation in month 11. Continue at current price, restructure scope, or wind down.
Payment
Monthly in advance, direct debit or invoice. First month and setup fee on signing.

Ownership and access

Source code
You own everything. Full source ownership transferred at handover.
Data
You own all data the Practice produces, captures, or processes. We hold no rights.
Documentation
Architecture, runbooks, and handover docs delivered in month 3 and kept current.
Capture compliance
Public-data-only. Detailed capture stance incorporated into the engagement contract.
Insurance
Professional indemnity + cyber liability bound, certificates on request.
Confidentiality
Mutual NDA part of the standard form. Strict.
Asked and answered

The objections that come up most.
Direct answers.

Can I buy The Practice without doing the Audit?

No. The Audit is the qualifier. It's $2,500 — one day, two outcomes documented up-front, you own the plans either way. The Practice is too embedded a relationship to sign blind on either side.

What if my needs are too small for The Practice?

Honest answer — the Audit might be all you need. We'll say so in the deliverable, hand you the plans, and you can take them to your existing team. We'd rather you not sign The Practice than sign and underuse it. That's the two-outcome rule.

What if my needs are too big for ~10 hours a month?

Talk to us. The standard Practice is built around the busy SMB-to-mid-market reality. For larger engagements we run an increased-hours variant priced accordingly. Raise it on the scoping call.

Why is the Augmentation rule "Audit clients" and not "Practice clients only"?

Because we want the work, and locking Augmentations behind a 12-month retainer is artificial gating. The Audit is the qualifier that proves we understand your data well enough to build against it. After that, you can buy The Sales Augmentation without committing to The Practice. Practice clients still get priority and a 10% rate — that's the reward for the relationship.

Who actually does the work?

The senior architect you spoke with in the Audit. Today that's the founder. As Veridicus grows, that will be a named senior architect on every engagement — never a junior, never an account manager between you and the build. That's the firm-level promise, not a personal one.

What happens if you get hit by a bus?

Documented, transferable, owned by you. Every Practice engagement ships with a handover document at month 3 covering architecture, runbooks, credentials, access patterns, and continuity. If we cease to exist, you can take the document to any senior data engineer and they can operate against it. We hold no lock — by policy and by contract.

Start the conversation

The Practice is signed on the back of the Audit. Start there.

$2,500. One day. Written deliverable. Two clean outcomes — take the plans and walk, or sign The Practice from a position of full information. Either way, we're paid for the thinking and you keep the plans.

Email · hello@veridicus.com.au
Calendar · calendly.com/heston-veridicus/30min
Brisbane · Australia-wide