DEDICATED ENGINEERING FOR ENTERPRISE DEPARTMENTS

Your engineering department

Central IT has bigger priorities. Your department needs dedicated capability. We become the engineering team that builds exactly what you need, when you need it.

47 daysAverage IT ticket resolution for non-critical department requests
The Briefing
MARKET REALITY

The state of enterprise departments

Across industries, internal departments face the same structural problem: centralized IT serves the enterprise, not the department. The data is clear, consistent, and damning.

67%
IT Backlog Crisis

of enterprise IT organizations report backlogs exceeding 12 months, with department-specific requests consistently deprioritized behind product and security initiatives

(Gartner IT Spending Survey, 2024)
42%
Shadow IT Proliferation

of enterprise software spending now occurs outside IT budgets, as departments build unsanctioned workarounds to fill capability gaps that central IT cannot address

(Everest Group, 2024)
8.2 months
Average Request Lifecycle

from department IT request submission to delivery for non-revenue-generating internal tools — nearly three times longer than customer-facing feature requests

(McKinsey Digital, 2023)
$4.2M
Annual Productivity Loss

average annual cost per large department from manual workarounds, process inefficiency, and delayed automation that IT cannot prioritize

(Forrester Total Economic Impact, 2024)
23%
Feature Utilization

of enterprise software features actually used by the average department — organizations pay for platforms optimized for no one while departments need solutions built for them

(Pendo State of Software, 2024)
3.1x
Turnover Multiplier

higher voluntary turnover in departments reporting "poor tooling and technical support" compared to those with dedicated engineering capability

(Deloitte Human Capital Trends, 2024)

The centralization trap

Enterprise IT was built to serve the organization, not individual departments. Centralization reduces cost and risk at the enterprise level while creating capability starvation at the department level. The departments that generate the most value often receive the least technical support.

4:1ratio of IT resources allocated to product/engineering vs. operational departments in the average enterprise

The workaround economy

When departments cannot get technical support, they improvise. Spreadsheets become databases. Email becomes workflow management. Personal accounts become data storage. The workaround economy is invisible to enterprise leadership but consumes enormous time and creates significant risk.

11.4 hrs/weekaverage time per knowledge worker spent on manual workarounds that dedicated tooling would eliminate

The innovation gap

Departments with ideas and budget but no technical capability watch opportunities pass. By the time IT approves, scopes, and delivers, requirements have changed and competitors have moved. The approval process designed to reduce risk has become the largest risk factor.

74%of department-level innovation initiatives abandoned due to inability to secure IT resources within the opportunity window
WHAT IT FEELS LIKE

Dispatches from the department floor

Six moments that every department leader inside a large organization recognizes. The frustration is structural, not personal.

Monday 8:30amVP of Operations

Opens the IT project tracker to check on the dashboard request submitted four months ago. Status: "In Prioritization." The same status it had last month. And the month before. The quarterly executive review is in two weeks, and the data will once again be compiled manually from six different systems over a three-day sprint.

“I have budget for this. I have executive support. I have a clear business case. But I cannot buy engineering attention. The IT steering committee meets next month and my request is item fourteen on a list of twenty.”

Hidden cost: 40+ hours/quarter of senior staff time on manual data compilation that a purpose-built dashboard would eliminate entirely

Tuesday 10:15amDepartment Director

Training a new hire on the team's processes. The "training materials" are a combination of a two-year-old SharePoint document, three email threads forwarded with the note "this explains it," and a spreadsheet template that stopped working after the last software update. The new hire's expression shifts from enthusiasm to concern.

“Every new person we hire goes through this same confusion. We lose the first month to them figuring out our workarounds. The last two hires from competitors mentioned how much better their previous firm's systems were. One of them has already started looking.”

Hidden cost: 6-8 weeks of reduced productivity per new hire, plus institutional knowledge that exists only in the heads of people who might leave

Wednesday 2:00pmSenior Manager

The enterprise CRM was customized for the sales team two years ago. The operations department was told to "use the same platform." Except the fields do not match their workflow, the reports generate the wrong metrics, and the integration with their project management tool broke in the last update. A vendor support ticket has been open for six weeks.

“We were promised this platform would serve everyone. It serves sales. We get the leftover configuration options and a help desk that does not understand our use case. My team has a shadow spreadsheet that is the actual system of record.”

Hidden cost: $180K/year in enterprise license fees for a platform the department uses at 15% of capacity while maintaining parallel manual systems

Thursday 9:00amChief Administrative Officer

In a steering committee meeting, presenting the business case for department-level automation for the third consecutive quarter. The CTO is sympathetic but explains that security patches, product engineering, and a company-wide ERP migration have consumed all available engineering capacity through Q3. The suggestion: "Have you looked at off-the-shelf solutions?"

“I have looked at off-the-shelf solutions. Fourteen of them. None of them fit how we work. The last one we tried cost $200K in licensing and was abandoned after six months because it required us to change every process to match the software instead of the other way around.”

Hidden cost: Strategic initiatives delayed quarter after quarter while the department falls further behind competitors who have solved this problem

Friday 3:30pmOperations Analyst

Finishing the weekly reconciliation between the HR system, the project management tool, and the billing platform. The three systems use different employee IDs, different project codes, and different date formats. A macro built by someone who left two years ago does most of the heavy lifting, but it breaks whenever IT updates the export format. It broke this morning.

“I spend twelve hours a week on this reconciliation. I have a computer science degree. I could automate this in a week if I had access to the APIs and someone to help maintain it. But IT says API access requires a security review, and the security review requires a project sponsor, and the project sponsor requires a business case, and the business case requires the data that I am trying to reconcile manually.”

Hidden cost: 600+ hours/year of analyst time on manual reconciliation — time that should be spent on analysis that actually moves the department forward

Saturday 7:00amDepartment Head

Reading a LinkedIn article about how a competitor's operations department built custom automation that cut their processing time by 60%. Knows the exact same opportunity exists for their department. Also knows the IT request for "exploration of automation opportunities" has been sitting in the backlog since the previous fiscal year.

“We have the budget. We have the need. We have the executive support. What we do not have is anyone to build it. And every month we wait, the gap between us and organizations that figured this out gets wider.”

Hidden cost: Competitive position eroding in real time while the department waits for resources that are always allocated elsewhere

Department Technology Deficit Assessment

A systematic evaluation of the technology gaps holding your department back. Each deficiency represents real operational cost, measured in hours lost, dollars wasted, and talent frustrated.

5 Critical
4 Major
1 Moderate

DEFICIENCY D-001: SIX-MONTH QUEUE FOR SIMPLE REQUESTS

CRITICAL

AFFECTED: Operations team, department leadership, downstream stakeholders

FINDING:

Central IT has a backlog stretching to next fiscal year. Your department's automation request is behind three product launches and a security overhaul. Work that should take days waits months.

You submitted a request for a basic reporting dashboard eight months ago. It's still "in prioritization." Meanwhile, you're exporting data manually every Monday morning, formatting it in Excel, and sending PDFs.

EVIDENCE:

8+ monthsaverage request wait time
$156K/year in delayed productivity

TESTIMONY:

“We put in a ticket for a simple dashboard in January. It's November and we're still exporting to Excel every Monday.”

DEFICIENCY D-002: ENTERPRISE TOOLS OPTIMIZED FOR NO ONE

CRITICAL

AFFECTED: Operations team, department leadership, downstream stakeholders

FINDING:

The company bought a platform that's supposed to do everything. It does nothing well for your department. Your workflows don't fit the tool; your team works around it daily.

The enterprise software was selected by committee, purchased on discount, and rolled out company-wide. Your team uses maybe 15% of the features while maintaining workaround spreadsheets for everything it can't do.

EVIDENCE:

15%of enterprise features actually used
$89K/year in workaround labor

TESTIMONY:

“We have a $2M platform license and my team still lives in spreadsheets because the tool doesn't match how we actually work.”

DEFICIENCY D-003: MANUAL PROCESSES THAT SHOULD BE AUTOMATED

MAJOR

AFFECTED: Operations team, department leadership, downstream stakeholders

FINDING:

Your team spends hours on tasks that engineering could automate in days. But those days never materialize in IT's queue, so manual work continues indefinitely.

The monthly report that should auto-generate takes two full days of manual compilation. Data entry bridges gaps between systems. Copy-paste is a core job function.

EVIDENCE:

23 hrs/weekspent on automatable tasks
$112K/year in manual labor costs

TESTIMONY:

“My senior analysts spend two days every month compiling reports that a script could generate in minutes.”

DEFICIENCY D-004: DATA LOCKED IN DISCONNECTED SILOS

MAJOR

AFFECTED: Finance team, budget owners, executive leadership

FINDING:

Information your team needs lives in systems you can't access or connect. Getting it requires requests, approvals, and waiting. By the time you have it, it's outdated.

Financial data sits in ERP. Client data sits in CRM. Project data sits in PM tools. None of them talk to each other. Reconciliation is manual and error-prone.

EVIDENCE:

4 systemswith no automated data flow
$67K/year in reconciliation costs

TESTIMONY:

“We spend the first week of every month reconciling numbers across four systems that should agree automatically.”

DEFICIENCY D-005: BUDGET WITHOUT CAPABILITY

CRITICAL

AFFECTED: Finance team, budget owners, executive leadership

FINDING:

Your department has budget for tools and solutions. What you lack is the technical capability to build or implement them. Money can't buy IT attention.

The budget exists. Leadership approved it. But IT can't allocate engineers, procurement takes months for vendors, and SaaS tools need customization no one can do.

EVIDENCE:

$250K+in unspent technology budget
$250K/year in unrealized investment

TESTIMONY:

“I have the budget. I've had it for two years. What I don't have is anyone to build what we need.”

DEFICIENCY D-006: TALENT FRUSTRATED BY TOOLING

CRITICAL

AFFECTED: Department staff, hiring managers, HR leadership

FINDING:

Your best people spend their time fighting systems instead of doing meaningful work. Some leave for organizations with better technical support.

Exit interviews consistently mention frustration with internal tools. New hires from modern companies are shocked by the manual processes. The technology gap is a retention liability.

EVIDENCE:

34%of exit interviews cite tooling frustration
$180K per lost senior employee

TESTIMONY:

“I lost my best analyst to a startup that gave her real tools. She took a pay cut to escape our spreadsheets.”

DEFICIENCY D-007: SHARED RESOURCES MEANS NO OWNERSHIP

MAJOR

AFFECTED: Department staff, hiring managers, HR leadership

FINDING:

The developer assigned to your project also supports four other departments. Context switches constantly. Your initiative moves in fits and starts.

You were promised "dedicated support." What you got was a rotating cast of engineers who spend the first hour of every interaction re-learning your business context.

EVIDENCE:

5 departmentssharing one IT resource
$94K/year in context-switching overhead

TESTIMONY:

“Every time our "dedicated" developer comes back, we spend an hour re-explaining what we do. Then they leave for two weeks.”

DEFICIENCY D-008: COMPLIANCE COMPLEXITY SLOWS EVERYTHING

MAJOR

AFFECTED: Compliance officers, department leadership, enterprise IT

FINDING:

Enterprise security reviews, vendor assessments, architecture committees. Every new tool requires six months of approvals before any work begins.

You found a solution. It needs security review (8 weeks), vendor assessment (6 weeks), architecture approval (4 weeks), legal review (4 weeks), and procurement (4 weeks). By the time it's approved, requirements changed.

EVIDENCE:

26 weeksaverage tool approval timeline
$45K per delayed initiative

TESTIMONY:

“By the time we get approval for a tool, we've already built three workarounds and the vendor raised prices twice.”

DEFICIENCY D-009: SHADOW IT PROLIFERATES UNCHECKED

CRITICAL

AFFECTED: Compliance officers, department leadership, enterprise IT

FINDING:

Team members build their own solutions in Google Sheets and personal accounts. Institutional knowledge lives in tools IT doesn't know exist. Compliance risk grows silently.

A security audit revealed 47 unauthorized SaaS tools across the department. Critical business logic lives in personal Google Sheets. One departure could erase institutional knowledge.

EVIDENCE:

47 toolsunauthorized SaaS in department
$130K/year in compliance risk exposure

TESTIMONY:

“Half our critical processes run on spreadsheets that IT doesn't know about. If Sarah leaves, we lose the formulas that run our billing.”

DEFICIENCY D-010: INNOVATION DIES IN THE APPROVAL PROCESS

MODERATE

AFFECTED: Compliance officers, department leadership, enterprise IT

FINDING:

Good ideas require IT support. IT support requires prioritization. Prioritization requires business cases. By the time you've justified it, the opportunity has passed.

The business case process takes 6 weeks. Committee review takes 4 weeks. If approved, implementation queues add 3-6 months. Total time from idea to execution: 9-12 months minimum.

EVIDENCE:

9-12 monthsidea-to-execution timeline
$200K+ in lost competitive advantage

TESTIMONY:

“We had a chance to automate client onboarding last year. By the time we got IT approval, our competitor had already shipped it.”

THE SCALEWERK DIFFERENCE

The Embedded Engineering Model

Most enterprise departments get technology through one of three channels: IT tickets, hired contractors, or agency projects. Each has structural limitations that guarantee suboptimal outcomes for department-specific needs.

Scalewerk's Enterprise partnership is a fourth option: a dedicated engineering team that embeds with your department, learns your operations, and builds exactly what you need. Not shared resources. Not project-based engagements. Continuous technical partnership.

COMPARATIVE EVALUATION MATRIX

Response Time

IT QueueWeeks to months
ContractorDays (once onboarded)
AgencyPer SOW timeline
ScalewerkSame day

Business Context

IT QueueGeneric / company-wide
ContractorResets with each rotation
AgencyProject-scoped only
ScalewerkDeep, cumulative knowledge

Ownership

IT QueueTicket-based, no continuity
ContractorHours, not outcomes
AgencyDeliverables, then gone
ScalewerkFull technical ownership

Strategic Input

IT QueueNone — execute requests
ContractorNone — follow specs
AgencyScoped recommendations
ScalewerkProactive opportunity identification

Enterprise Compliance

IT QueueBuilt-in (but slow)
ContractorYour responsibility
AgencyVaries by firm
ScalewerkEnterprise-grade, our responsibility

Knowledge Retention

IT QueueInstitutional but dispersed
ContractorLost on rotation
AgencyIn final documentation
ScalewerkAccumulates over years

Cost Model

IT QueueFree (massive hidden costs)
ContractorHourly, ongoing
AgencyPer-project, variable
ScalewerkPredictable monthly partnership

Scalability

IT QueueCompete for shared pool
ContractorAdd headcount
AgencyNew SOW required
ScalewerkFlex with department needs
MODEL SPECIFICATIONS

Dedicated Capacity, Not Shared Resources

Your department gets 60-100+ hours of dedicated engineering capacity every month. Not split across departments. Not competing for attention. Your priorities, your timeline, your team.

60-100+ hrs/month dedicated

Cumulative Business Knowledge

Every month we know your department better. The context that takes a new contractor weeks to build, we carry forward continuously. By month six, we anticipate needs before you articulate them.

Zero context resets

Enterprise-Grade Governance

We work within your enterprise constraints. Security reviews, compliance requirements, architecture standards — we handle the governance burden so you don't have to fight the system to get things built.

100% compliance maintained

Strategic Technical Leadership

We don't just execute requests. We identify opportunities, scope solutions, and drive technical strategy for your department. You get a CTO-level perspective dedicated to your operations.

Proactive, not reactive

Continuous Delivery, Not Project Milestones

No waiting for SOW approval. No project kickoff delays. Solutions ship continuously — quick wins in weeks, major platforms over months. Momentum never stops.

Weekly deployments
Department Capabilities

Department-specific capabilities

Every department has unique workflows, compliance requirements, and pain points. We build solutions shaped to your actual operations, not generic enterprise features.

Operations departments are the backbone of service delivery, yet they're typically the last to receive engineering attention. Your team manages client workflows across disconnected systems, reconciles data manually, and maintains spreadsheet-based processes that should have been automated years ago. We build the integrated operations platform your department actually needs.

Key Workflows

Client deliverable processing

3 hrs/deliverable
Current State

Manual data pull from 4 systems, Excel reconciliation, PDF formatting

Automated State

Automated pipeline: pull, validate, format, deliver — triggered on schedule

Automation
85%

Monthly reporting compilation

24 hrs/cycle
Current State

Senior analyst spends 3 days pulling, cleaning, and formatting data from multiple sources

Automated State

Real-time dashboard with scheduled report generation and automated distribution

Automation
90%

Resource allocation tracking

5 hrs/week
Current State

Shared spreadsheet updated manually, outdated by the time it's reviewed

Automated State

Live utilization dashboard synced with project management and time tracking systems

Automation
75%

Vendor invoice reconciliation

8 hrs/week
Current State

Manual comparison of invoices against contracts and purchase orders across two systems

Automated State

Automated three-way match with exception flagging and approval routing

Automation
80%

“We had 12 outstanding IT requests. The oldest was 14 months. Scalewerk shipped the first one in two weeks.”

Proof

Deployment reports

Real outcomes from real departments. Each engagement started with the same frustration — central IT couldn't prioritize their needs — and ended with genuine technical capability.

Three FTEs stopped doing data entry and started doing strategy.

200-person firmOperations DepartmentWashington, D.C.
The Situation

Client deliverables were processed across four disconnected systems with manual reconciliation at every handoff. Three full-time employees spent 60% of their time on data entry, copy-paste workflows, and spreadsheet maintenance. The team had submitted seven IT tickets in two years — two were completed, neither matched what they actually needed.

Processing time reduction85%
FTEs reallocated to strategy3
IT tickets replaced7
Time to first deployment3 weeks
The Outcome

Built an integrated workflow system that automated deliverable processing end-to-end. Data flows between systems automatically, reconciliation happens in real-time, and exception handling replaces manual review. The three team members now focus on client relationship management and strategic analysis — work that actually requires human judgment.

“We spent two years asking IT for help and got two tools that didn't fit. Scalewerk delivered in three weeks what we'd been waiting years for. My team finally does the work they were hired to do.”

Month-end close dropped from 12 days to 5. Audit prep went from panic to routine.

300-person companyFinance DepartmentNorthern Virginia
The Situation

Month-end close consumed 12 business days of frantic reconciliation across the ERP, project accounting system, and multiple spreadsheet models. DCAA audit preparation required a dedicated analyst for three months each year, manually assembling evidence from shared drives, email archives, and filing cabinets. Every audit was a fire drill that disrupted normal operations.

Close cycle reduction58%
Audit prep hours saved480/yr
Manual journal entries eliminated73%
Continuous audit readinessYes
The Outcome

Automated the reconciliation pipeline between ERP and project accounting, built pre-validated journal entry workflows, and created a continuous audit evidence repository. Close cycle dropped to 5 business days. Audit preparation shifted from a three-month scramble to a continuous process — when auditors arrive, evidence packages are already assembled and organized.

“The CFO asked if we hired new people. We didn't — we finally got systems that match how finance actually works, not how an ERP vendor thinks we should work.”

Onboarding went from 3 weeks of chaos to 3 days of clarity.

150-person firmHR / People OperationsAustin, TX
The Situation

Every new hire triggered a 3-week onboarding process involving 47 manual steps across six different systems. The HR coordinator maintained a 4-page checklist in a Word document, frequently missed steps, and spent more time on administrative setup than on actually welcoming new team members. Benefits questions consumed 15 hours per week of HR bandwidth despite having an HRIS that supposedly handled self-service.

Onboarding time reduction86%
Routine HR inquiries reduced80%
Missed onboarding steps0
New hire satisfaction score+34 pts
The Outcome

Built a self-service onboarding platform with automated system provisioning, document collection, benefits enrollment, and compliance tracking. New hires complete a guided experience in 3 days instead of 3 weeks. The HR team's routine inquiry volume dropped 80% with an intelligent FAQ and self-service portal. The coordinator who used to manage checklists now focuses on culture and engagement programs.

“Onboarding was our biggest complaint from new hires. Now it's the first thing they compliment. Same team, same budget — just systems that actually work.”

Contract backlog eliminated. Audit readiness went from weeks to hours.

250-person companyLegal / ComplianceChicago, IL
The Situation

The legal team had a 90-day contract review backlog that kept growing. Compliance documentation was scattered across 200+ shared drive folders with no version control and no reliable audit trail. Every regulatory audit triggered a weeks-long scramble to locate, assemble, and verify documentation. The enterprise CLM platform purchased two years ago was used by exactly one person for exactly one workflow.

Contract backlog cleared90 days → 0
Audit prep time reduction92%
Compliance docs centralized200+
CLM adoption rate increase15% → 89%
The Outcome

Built a contract intelligence system with automated intake, clause library, obligation tracking, and compliance documentation hub. Contract review backlog was eliminated within the first quarter. Audit preparation shifted from a multi-week scramble to a same-day evidence package generation. The existing CLM platform was either integrated where it worked or replaced where it didn't.

“We went from dreading audits to being ready for them at any moment. The GC said it felt like we tripled the legal team without adding a single headcount.”

The Transformation

What transformation looks like

Six areas where departments see measurable change. Before-and-after results based on how the Enterprise model works.

The Problem

Your team compiles data from six systems manually every week, losing days to formatting before leadership ever sees it.

Our Solution

Automated dashboards pull real-time data from enterprise systems, generating reports that refresh continuously without human intervention.

Before3 days/week

Senior analysts assembling executive reports from disconnected exports

Critical drain
After15 minutes/week

Automated dashboards with real-time data — analysts review and interpret instead

Fully automated
Efficiency Gain92%

“Designed so Monday mornings start with strategy discussions using current numbers, not data wrangling.”

Enterprise client

The Partnership Experience

Building your technical foundation

We don’t submit tickets to a queue. We embed with your department, learn your operations, and build exactly what you need.

Month 1

Team Integration

  • Week 1: Deep discovery, stakeholder mapping, pain point inventory
  • Week 2: Enterprise context analysis, compliance requirements, integration opportunities
  • Week 3: First quick win in development, demonstrating value immediately
  • Week 4: Quick win shipped, 90-day roadmap finalized, team relationships established
Key Deliverable90-day strategic roadmap with prioritized initiatives

Credibility. "They actually get our department." After years of explaining your needs to IT generalists, someone finally understands your specific challenges.

Quarter 1

Infrastructure Foundation

  • Core systems assessed and integration strategy defined
  • First automated workflow replacing manual process
  • Data pipelines established from enterprise systems
  • Communication rhythm feels natural, trust building
  • Department team sees concrete improvements in daily work
Key DeliverableFirst automated workflow replacing a manual process

Momentum. Progress is visible and consistent. Other team members start bringing their pain points forward without being asked.

Quarter 2

Platform Development

  • Department-specific platform taking shape, not just point solutions
  • Multiple workflows automated and interconnected
  • Self-service capabilities emerging for routine requests
  • Integration with enterprise systems working smoothly
  • Stakeholders outside department noticing results
Key DeliverableDepartment-specific platform with self-service capabilities

Capability. Your department has technical capability that rivals what central IT provides to product teams. The playing field is leveling.

Quarter 3-4

Operational Excellence

  • Platform mature enough to handle edge cases gracefully
  • Team members trained and self-sufficient on new systems
  • Documentation and training materials enterprise-grade
  • Compliance and security requirements fully satisfied
  • Maintenance and enhancement rhythm established
  • Technical capability becomes departmental competitive advantage
  • Ideas that were impossible a year ago are now achievable in weeks
Key DeliverableMature platform with enterprise-grade documentation and training

Recognition. Your department isn't asking for table scraps from IT anymore. You're setting the pace others want to match.

Year 2+

Strategic Independence

Your department has genuine technical independence within the enterprise. Not shadow IT, but legitimate capability that meets enterprise standards while serving your specific needs. We've built institutional knowledge that would take years to replicate internally.

Freedom. Your department operates with the technical capability of a well-funded startup while enjoying enterprise stability. The best of both worlds.

Department ROI Analysis

Build the Business Case

Enter your department's numbers to see the cost of waiting. Conservative estimates based on enterprise benchmarks.

Department Parameters

50

Full-time equivalent staff in your department

$120,000

Salary plus benefits, taxes, and overhead

8

Per person — data entry, reconciliation, status chasing

6

Systems that don't talk to each other

45

Average days from IT request to resolution

$500,000

Department technology and software spend

Cost of Waiting

Annual Cost of Workarounds

$1,200,000

Headcount x Hours/week x Hourly rate x 52 weeks

Productivity Reclaimed

6.0 FTEs

(Headcount x Hours/week x 60% capture) / 40 hrs

Conservative Automation Savings

$720,000

Annual workaround cost x 60% automation rate

Months to Payback

4 months

Annual Partnership Investment / Monthly Automation Value

Total Annual Value

$720,000

Conservative automation savings from workaround elimination

vs. One FTE Engineer

$250,000

Fully loaded cost of one senior engineer (salary + benefits + management)

Assumptions & Sources

Assumptions

  • 1.Loaded cost divided by 2,080 annual working hours for hourly rate calculation
  • 2.Conservative 60% automation capture rate on manual workaround hours
  • 3.Enterprise partnership cost modeled at the base monthly investment
  • 4.FTE engineer comparison uses typical fully loaded cost (salary + benefits + management overhead)
  • 5.Payback calculation assumes linear value ramp over first 6 months
  • 6.Actual savings vary based on process complexity, system access, and organizational readiness

Sources

  • [1]Gartner IT Spending and Staffing Survey 2024
  • [2]McKinsey Digital: The case for department-level technical capability
  • [3]Forrester Total Economic Impact methodology
  • [4]Bureau of Labor Statistics: Employer Costs for Employee Compensation
GOVERNANCE

How we operate within your organization

Enterprise environments have real constraints. Security reviews, compliance requirements, IT governance, stakeholder communication. We work within these systems, not around them.

Enterprise environments require trust at an institutional level. We earn that trust through transparency, documentation, and consistent delivery — not sales presentations.

Full governance documentation provided during onboarding

THE INVESTMENT

Dedicated engineering for your department.

Not a line item on IT's budget. Not a contractor rotating through. A team that knows your department as well as anyone on your floor.

Enterprise Partnership

Each engagement scoped to department needs. Investment discussed during consultation.

What's included

  • 60-100+ hours of dedicated engineering capacity
  • Multiple parallel initiatives
  • Same-day response time
  • Weekly with department leadership (60 minutes)
  • Monthly executive briefings
  • Quarterly strategic planning (2 hours)
  • Dedicated channel, team-level access

What this means

  • Enough capacity to drive multiple significant initiatives in parallel
  • Enough access to function as your department's internal engineering team
  • Enough strategic input to shape technical direction, not just execute requests
  • Enough documentation and governance to satisfy enterprise requirements
  • NOT just higher-volume project work (that's Strategic with overflow)
  • NOT on-call for the whole enterprise (this is dedicated to your department)

How alternatives compare

Internal engineering team

Highest cost, longest ramp time

Get: Dedicated capacity, full-time focus, internal visibility

Miss: Hard to hire for department-specific needs. Recruitment takes months. Retention is risky. Management overhead. Plus they won't have our professional services domain expertise.

Central IT allocation

Free but effectively unavailable

Get: Integrated with enterprise systems. Officially sanctioned.

Miss: Six-month queues. Generic solutions. Constant reprioritization. Your needs always behind product and security. The hidden cost of waiting and workarounds far exceeds the partnership investment.

Staff augmentation

Bodies without ownership

Get: Bodies and hours. Flexibility to scale.

Miss: Context resets when contractors change. No strategic thinking. You manage them. No ownership of outcomes. Contractor mentality, not partner mentality.

Enterprise Partnership

Predictable monthly investment

Get: Dedicated engineering team with deep department knowledge, strategic ownership, enterprise-grade delivery, continuous improvement

Miss: Unlimited capacity. But you get enough for genuine transformation, not just incremental projects.

The math

In-House Engineering Hire

  • Single domain expertise
  • Recruitment takes 3-6 months
  • Retention risk in hot market
  • Management overhead on you

Scalewerk Enterprise

  • Senior-level team, not one person
  • Start in days, not months
  • No retention risk -- partnership model
  • We manage ourselves, you set direction

Broader expertise. Zero management overhead. No recruitment process.

Terms

  • Initial commitment6 months minimum (need time to build enterprise context and deliver meaningful transformation)
  • After initial periodAnnual renewal with quarterly adjustment options
  • ScalingScope adjusts based on department needs. Can add capacity for major initiatives or reduce during maintenance phases.
  • Major projectsLarge transformation initiatives may layer additional project fees on top of base partnership

Proof of Concept

Not ready to commit to the full partnership? Start with a 2-week, fixed-price assessment. We embed with your department, identify the highest-impact automation opportunities, and deliver a concrete roadmap. If we move forward with the partnership, the assessment fee applies to your first month.

2 weeksFixed priceNo commitment beyond
FAQ

Common questions about Enterprise partnership

Next Step

Your department deserves dedicated engineering.

No pitch deck. No 47-slide methodology presentation. A conversation about your department's challenges and whether we're the right fit.

Book a Conversation

Or start with a fixed-scope assessment — 2 weeks, no commitment beyond the assessment itself.

If we're not the right fit, we'll tell you.
We'd rather have the right clients than more clients.
We respond within 24 hours.
Prefer email? hello@scalewerk.net

Scalewerk Enterprise

Dedicated engineering for departments that build the organization.