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Services / Business & Digital Strategy / Digital Transformation Roadmap
90-day deep-dive · senior-led · costed & phased

From "we should digitise" to "we shipped it."

A 90-day, exec-led engagement that finds where your business sits on the digital maturity curve, prioritises the moves that earn ROI fastest, and produces a phased roadmap with budgets and owners — written for SA realities, not US case studies.

90 days Senior partner-led ROI-modelled 4-week scan from R14,000

Four reasons "digital transformation" becomes a R12m line item with nothing shipped.

We've audited engagements at three SA mid-market businesses that quietly buried theirs. The pattern is uncomfortably similar.

!

Tech-first, business-second

It starts with a CIO buying Salesforce, not with a CEO asking "what's breaking customer retention?" Tools land first, business questions never get answered.

73%of SaaS spend goes unused
!

200-slide strategy decks

Some consultancy delivers a beautiful deck. Six months later it's a PDF in someone's downloads folder. Nothing executable, nothing measurable, nothing shipped.

"strategy_final_v9.pptx"
!

Big-bang, no early value

"In year three we'll be data-driven." Year one feels like cost. Year two the project champion leaves. Year three the new CEO cancels it. Nothing shipped.

2.4 yrsmedian to first measurable win
!

Tied to no P&L line

"It'll improve agility." Will it? By how much? Tied to which P&L line? When the CFO asks at month 6, the answer is hand-waving. Budget gets cut at month 7.

68%defunded before year 2

Five stages. Most SA mid-market is on stage 2.

The roadmap engagement starts by placing you honestly on this curve — across five business dimensions — then designs the climb. Skipping rungs doesn't work; we tell you which one to step on next.

1
Ad-hoc
Tools chosen by individuals. Spreadsheets everywhere. Knowledge in people's heads. No shared customer view.
Stage 1
2
Foundational
Core systems exist (CRM, accounting, ops). Used inconsistently. Data lives in silos. Integration is manual exports.
Most SA mid-market
3
Connected
Systems talk to each other. Shared customer record. Some automation. Dashboards exist and are looked at weekly.
Stage 3
4
Optimised
Decisions made on real-time data. AI in customer-facing and back-office processes. Teams own KPIs they can move daily.
12-month target
5
Pioneering
Digital is the product, not the support function. Compounding data advantage over competitors. Industry-defining moves.
Stage 5

Five dimensions. Every transformation lives on all five.

A roadmap that only addresses technology is half a roadmap. The diagnostic covers the dimensions that actually predict transformation success.

01

Data & analytics

How clean, connected and accessible is your customer + operations data? Can leadership answer the same question with the same number?

  • Source quality
  • Single source of truth
  • Self-serve access
02

Process automation

What's still manual that shouldn't be? Invoicing, onboarding, approvals, reconciliation — where are the people doing what a script could do?

  • Manual-effort audit
  • Workflow heat-map
  • Auto-opportunity ROI
03

Customer experience

Where do customers get stuck, frustrated or churn? Map their digital journey, find the friction, prioritise the fixes by revenue impact.

  • CX journey audit
  • NPS + churn drivers
  • Top friction fixes
04

People & capability

Do your teams have the skills to run the digital business you're building? Where are the gaps, and how do we close them — train, hire, or partner?

  • Skill-gap audit
  • Training roadmap
  • Hire-vs-partner plan
05

Tech & infrastructure

Last. Not first. We design the tech stack after we know the answers from the first four — not before. No vendor recommendations before week 8.

  • Stack audit
  • Vendor-neutral options
  • Cloud + security review
The deliverable

What you'll actually receive. An 18-month phased roadmap.

Anonymised excerpt from a recent engagement (Pretoria-based logistics company, R220m turnover). Five workstreams × three time horizons. Every block has a budget, an owner and a measurable outcome.

Workstream
0 – 90 daysQuick wins
90 – 180 daysFoundational
180 – 540 daysStrategic
Data & analyticsBuild the spine
Data warehouse · 14d
BI dashboards · 6w
Predictive forecasting
Process automationFree up FTE-hours
Invoice auto-route
FICA onboarding flow
AI document workflows
Customer experienceReduce friction · grow LTV
Self-service portal
CRM unification
AI sales co-pilot
People & capabilityBuild internal muscle
Foundations first
Data-literacy training
Hire data lead + 2
Tech & infrastructureCloud + security
Cloud migration plan
Cloud migration + ISO 27001 prep
Each block has a written brief, costed budget, named owner, and a 30/60/90-day measurable outcome.

Battle-tested strategy tools — not consulting jargon.

We use the right tool for the question. The frameworks below are the ones we lean on most; we'll only use the ones that map to your situation.

McKinsey 7S
Strategy, structure, systems, style, staff, skills, shared values — for diagnostic on org alignment.
When · org-readiness audit
Wardley mapping
Plot capabilities by user value × maturity. Surfaces what to build, buy, outsource.
When · capability strategy
JTBD framework
Jobs-to-be-Done — frames transformation around customer jobs, not product features.
When · CX roadmaps
RACI matrix
Responsible, accountable, consulted, informed — for every roadmap block.
When · execution planning
North-Star metric
One number the whole business orients around. Cuts conflicting initiatives.
When · KPI alignment
Effort × Impact 2×2
Plot every roadmap item by build effort vs business impact. Quick wins surface fast.
When · prioritisation
Business Model Canvas
Visualise how transformation shifts your revenue, cost, channel and partner shape.
When · BM-shift moves
DORA + SPACE metrics
Engineering productivity scoring — when delivery speed is part of the problem.
When · tech maturity

Seven artefacts. Board-ready.

No "we'll share findings verbally." Every output is documented, costed, and shareable with your board the next day. You own everything.

01 · Maturity report

Honest, scored, by dimension

Where you are on the maturity curve, dimension by dimension. With evidence — quotes from interviews, gap examples, benchmarks against your sector.

PDF + Notion + radar chart
02 · 18-month roadmap

Phased, costed, owned

Visual swim-lane roadmap with every initiative on a timeline. Each block has a budget range, an owner, a measurable outcome, and dependencies.

Visual swim-lane + Gantt
03 · Business case

ROI model — challengeable

A spreadsheet your CFO can poke. Costs, expected revenue lift, expected efficiency gain, payback period, sensitivity to assumptions.

Excel / Google Sheets
04 · KPI scorecard

The numbers to watch

One north-star metric. Five leading indicators. Each tied to a roadmap block. Quarterly + monthly cadence. Owner per row.

1-page scorecard
05 · RACI matrix

Who does what · in writing

Responsible · accountable · consulted · informed — for every initiative. No "I thought Sarah was doing that" moments six months in.

Editable matrix
06 · Exec deck

16-slide board readout

The deck you'll actually present to your board or exco — pre-built, with speaker notes. We can present it with you if you want backup.

Keynote / PPT / PDF

Three phases. Discover → Design → Decide.

You'll spend ~20 hours of stakeholder time across the whole engagement. Most of it in the first 30 days (interviews), the last 10 days (presentation), and a workshop in the middle.

01
Discover
Days 1 – 30
Stakeholder interviews, tech audit, data audit, customer journey shadow, financial review. Surface the truth about where you are, not where you say you are.
12–18 interviews
Data + tech inventory
Customer journey shadow
Maturity scoring (draft)
02
Design
Days 31 – 60
2-day full leadership workshop. We co-design the roadmap with your team — not at them. Prioritise, sequence, score against effort × impact, build the business case.
2-day exec workshop
Initiative scoring
ROI model build
Roadmap drafted
03
Decide
Days 61 – 90
Stress-test with your CFO + IT lead, finalise the artefacts, present to the board. Hand over the roadmap, the scorecard, the RACI. You're ready to execute.
CFO + IT stress-tests
Artefacts finalised
Board presentation
30-day check-in scheduled

The numbers behind a roadmap that actually got shipped.

Aggregated from clients we engaged 12+ months ago. Your numbers will be yours — these are the order-of-magnitude bracket to plan against.

87%
Roadmap shipped
Median % of roadmap initiatives completed in 12 months.
R 4.2M
Year-1 value
Median revenue lift + cost saved attributable to the roadmap.
+1.4
Maturity gain
Average maturity-stage progression across dimensions.
3 / 5
Become repeat clients
Hire Sitect to build something on the roadmap. (We tell you it's optional.)

Pick the depth. We deliver in 4 weeks to 120 days.

Fee is fixed in writing. The roadmap is yours — you can hand it to any agency or your own team. We charge for build separately so there's no implicit upsell.

Rapid scan

4-week diagnostic

R14,000
/project
  • Maturity scan (3 dimensions)
  • 6–8 stakeholder interviews
  • Priority shortlist (top 5)
  • 1-page roadmap + readout
  • 30-min board presentation
Choose Rapid scan →
Embedded

120-day + retainer

R128,000+
+ optional execution retainer
  • Everything in 90-day
  • 30 days of pilot execution
  • Vendor evaluation + selection
  • Monthly steering meeting (12mo)
  • Optional fractional CDO (from R18k/mo)
  • Quarterly board updates
Talk to us →

Questions every CEO and CFO asks first.

If yours isn't here, request a 30-min discovery call — same senior who'd run the engagement, no junior, no sales pitch.

How is this different from a McKinsey / Deloitte engagement?
Three differences: Senior-only delivery — no army of juniors padding the rate card; one or two seniors do the work end-to-end. SA-tuned — POPIA, BEE, ZAR economics, local vendor knowledge baked in, not retrofitted. Executable — every roadmap block has a costed budget, named owner and a measurable outcome, not just principles. We're also typically 10–15× cheaper.
Will the roadmap recommend Sitect for the build?
Sometimes. Often not. Our roadmaps recommend the right vendor / approach for each block — sometimes that's us, sometimes it's a specialist agency, sometimes it's hiring in-house. Using Sitect for a build phase is never a condition. You can hire any agency or use your own team.
What if we don't have time for 20 hours of leadership engagement?
Then the engagement won't work — and we'll tell you in the discovery call. Digital transformation can't be delegated to a vendor; it requires real exec time. If your leadership team isn't able to commit, we recommend waiting 3-6 months until they can. We've turned down engagements for this reason.
What if our board doesn't like the roadmap?
It happens occasionally — usually because we've recommended cutting a sacred-cow initiative. We don't soften the analysis to please the room. If the board disagrees, you have three options: (1) ignore our recommendation, (2) commission a second opinion, (3) re-scope based on board priorities. Whichever you pick, you keep all the artefacts.
Can you do this remotely or do you need to be on-site?
Hybrid is best. Discovery interviews can be remote — though we ask for at least one in-person day in week 1. The 2-day design workshop is strongly recommended in-person (at your office or ours in Midrand). Final presentations can be remote or in-person.
POPIA — what about our customer data during the audit?
We sign a POPIA-compliant DPA before any data leaves your tenant. The data audit reviews data shapes and flows — not the data itself. If we need to see actual records (rare), we work in your environment using read-only access. Standard NDAs in place throughout.
How is success measured 12 months later?
Three signals: (1) Roadmap shipped % — what fraction of the initiatives actually got delivered. (2) Maturity progression — re-score against the same 5 dimensions, did you climb? (3) P&L attribution — the business case predicts a number; the scorecard tracks actuals. We offer a 12-month follow-up assessment for R10k.
Do you do equity-for-engagement deals?
Rarely, but yes — for high-growth scale-ups (Series A onwards) we'll consider a partial equity component. The conversation is reserved for businesses where we'd want to be on the cap table. Talk to us.

Spend a Friday afternoon
diagnosing the gap.

A 30-minute discovery call with one of our senior partners. We won't sell you anything — we'll ask the questions that surface whether a transformation engagement is the right next move for your business, or whether you should be doing something else entirely.

What you'll leave the call with

  • Indicative maturity placement
  • Three quick-win candidates
  • Honest "should you do this now" verdict
  • Written follow-up within 48h

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