"A consultant can help you manage your expenses? Ha! They are normally part of the problem."

This is true more often than anybody in the consulting field would like to admit. There are many examples of consultants driving up costs by over-architecting solutions, advocating expensive and unnecessary acquisitions, pushing for additional resources (usually their own) and falling far short of their value proposition. You may have felt the sting of this in your own experience.

I worked for some time as a high cost Big Five (at the time) management consultant. I learned that game, I didn't like it and I got out. There are some really great people working in that field. If you can identify them and get their dedicated time, they are worth every penny. Too often, though, their time is spent overseeing the activities of recent college grads for whom you are paying $150/hour.

Okay, here is how I can help. First, I don't believe in designing a system to do anything more than you are reasonably sure it will need to do in its first iteration. The perfect system (if it exists at all) is not the system with bells and whistles that runs flawlessly with screaming performance. It is the system that strikes a balance between your needs in terms of features, quality, performance and cost.

Second, my 20 years of experience as a software developer and system architect enable me to identify possible solutions, their total costs and potential pitfalls. In cases where more information is needed, I can quickly produce, or "spec" for someone else to produce, deliverables (e.g., dueling prototypes, requests for proposal) that will contribute to making a good decision.

Finally, I will be honest with you. If any aspect of the project begins to show signs of becoming a cost concern, I will let you know and will typically present options for minimizing the damage.