What Yoke Consulting does
Yoke Consulting scopes every engagement to what the client actually needs. Some are short, focused projects; others are ongoing advisory relationships. Pricing is clear up front, and the first conversation is always free.
Independent IT Advisory
Most small and mid-market businesses don't need a full-time IT manager, but they do need someone who can look at the whole picture and make sense of it. That's the role Yoke Consulting plays.
We act as a fractional IT lead: scoping projects before they go out to vendors, reviewing quotes and recommendations, overseeing managed service providers, and making sure that the technology decisions you make support where the business is heading rather than complicating it.
The work is deliberately broad. It covers strategy and procurement at one end, and getting into the detail of a specific issue at the other. What sits behind all of it is independence. Yoke Consulting doesn't resell hardware, doesn't take IT provider commissions, and doesn't have a preferred vendor list to push. You pay for advice, and the advice is yours.
What an engagement looks like
- Project scoping and vendor selection (network upgrades, M365 migrations, security reviews)
- Ongoing oversight of your managed service provider
- IT strategy aligned with business plans
- Procurement support and contract review
- Acting as your representative when dealing with technical vendors
Good fit if
You're running a business with somewhere between 10 and 100 staff, you rely on technology to operate, and you don't have the time or the technical background to manage your IT vendors as well as you'd like. You want someone who can sit on your side of the table and translate.
Engagement model
Practical Cyber Security
Most small and mid-market businesses know cyber security matters, but the advice they get tends to come in two unhelpful flavours: alarming sales pitches from vendors with something to sell, or technical jargon from specialists who assume everyone speaks their language. Neither helps the business owner actually decide what to do next.
Yoke Consulting takes a practical approach. We look at your whole picture: your devices and how they're managed, your password practices, your network, and how your staff use it all. Yoke works through it all in plain English with you. The aim is a security posture that's right-sized for your business: not bare minimum, not over-engineered, and not driven by whatever the latest scare story happens to be.
(Email and domain security is handled separately, and the first check there is free, see Domain Audit.)
The work is often the entry point for a longer advisory relationship, because once we've been through everything together, you have a clear picture of what's actually going on and what to do about it.
What an engagement looks like
- Full security review across devices, network, and people
- Password management rollout and shared vault setup
- Phishing simulation campaigns to give staff realistic practice
- Staff awareness sessions in plain English
- Door access, cameras, and other connected devices reviewed alongside the rest
Good fit if
You're not sure where you stand on cyber security, you've had an incident or a near miss, or your insurer, head contractor, or a customer has started asking pointed questions about how you protect data.
Engagement model
Domain Audit
Your domain is the foundation of your business email and your online identity. If it's set up incorrectly, other people can send email that looks like it came from you: invoices, payment requests, anything. Your customers have no reliable way to tell the difference. Most businesses don't know whether theirs is protected, because nothing looks wrong until something goes wrong.
A domain audit checks the actual state of your domain: whether others can impersonate your business email addresses (the technical setup behind this is called DMARC, but what matters is whether it's working), whether your legitimate email is set up to reach inboxes rather than spam folders, and whether anything's quietly misconfigured. You get a plain-English summary of what's there, what's missing, and what's worth doing about it.
This one's free. It's often the first conversation, and for some businesses it's the only thing they need.
What the check covers
- Whether others can send email that appears to come from your business
- Whether your domain is set up to keep your legitimate email out of spam folders
- Misconfigurations and gaps in how your domain and email are set up
- A clear summary of what's worth fixing, and what isn't
Good fit if
You're not sure whether your domain is protected, customers have received suspicious email that looked like it came from you, or an insurer or head contractor has started asking about email security.
How to start
The check is free. Get in touch and we'll take a look. No obligation, no sales pitch.
AI Advisory
AI is genuinely useful for the right problems and if implemented well. The question isn't whether it's worth taking seriously; it clearly is. The question is whether it solves a problem you actually have, at a cost that makes sense, without creating new risks around your data.
Yoke Consulting gives you an independent read on that: where AI genuinely fits your business, where it doesn't, and what a sensible next step looks like (if there is one). Sometimes the honest answer is "not yet," and that's not something you'll hear from someone selling a product.
The same principles apply here as everywhere else. Plain English, no jargon for its own sake, and no commission riding on the recommendation.
What an engagement looks like
- Review of AI implementation in your industry
- A look at where AI could realistically help in how your business operates
- An honest assessment of what's worth doing now, later, or not at all
- The data and privacy questions that come with AI tools, addressed plainly
- Clear next steps you understand and can act on
Good fit if
You're being told you "need AI" and aren't sure what that means, you're weighing up a tool or vendor and want an independent opinion, or you want to understand what's genuinely useful before spending money on it.
Engagement model
Website and business email
If you need a website and business email set up properly, Yoke Consulting can handle it: a domain, a fast mobile-friendly site, email on your own domain, and a Google Business Profile, all configured to work and stay working.
This isn't a custom design studio. It's a credible, well-built web presence for businesses that need one without the overhead of juggling separate hosting, domain, and email vendors. Set up once, properly, by someone who'll also make sure the rest of your IT fits around it.
What it covers
- A mobile-friendly, fast-loading website
- Domain registration and setup
- Business email on your own domain
- Contact form, click-to-call, and a photo gallery
- Google Business Profile setup
- Hosted, secured, and backed up
Add-ons
Additional pages, online booking or quote requests, custom photography sourced locally, social profile setup, and multilingual content are all available, quoted per job. We'll talk through what you actually need before recommending anything.
Good fit if
You need a credible website that works, and you don't want to deal with website builders, hosting bills from three different vendors, or someone trying to sell you a custom build you don't need.
Ongoing
Not sure where to start?
Most engagements start with a free 20-minute call to talk through your situation. No prep needed; just a conversation about what you're trying to figure out.