Four contracts. One firm.
Choose a contract around the work: a project for defined deliverables, a retainer for ongoing capacity, an embedded team for work inside your organisation, or advisory support for a decision. Compare scope, responsibilities and exit arrangements below. Prices and capacity are confirmed after scoping.
The four models
Enterprise Retainer
Continuous capacity across practices, monthly.
- Best for
- Continuous AI operations and model governance
- Service lines answered by voice agents
- Brand and growth systems across many markets
- Board-cadence market intelligence
- For whom
- Organisations with a continuing need across several practices — a model portfolio that needs a permanent owner, a service line that has to improve every month, a brand that lives in forty markets — and a leadership that would rather govern capacity than re-procure it.
- How it starts
- An initial review establishes the portfolio of work, the capacity required and the first priorities. The duration of this review, the start date and the governance arrangements are agreed for the assignment.
- How it is governed
- Quarterly planning sets priorities; monthly steering reviews delivery, risk and spend against the capacity band; a weekly operating rhythm runs inside each practice. Capacity not drawn in a month may be carried forward within the quarter; capacity above the band is agreed in advance, never billed by surprise.
- How it ends
- A minimum term, then rolling with a notice period agreed at signature. Handover obligations are the same as for a project: documentation current, systems in a stated condition, knowledge transferred to named people. Minimum terms are set per retainer and stated in the agreement.
- How it is priced
- A monthly fee for an agreed number of specialist working days: one day means one person working for the daily hours stated in the agreement. Specify the skills, rate, included activities, unused-day treatment and extra-work approval. Currency, expenses and any usage charges are confirmed in the quotation.
Project Engagement
Fixed scope, fixed outcome, fixed price.
- Best for
- Core system migrations
- New platforms and products
- Sovereign or on-premises deployments
- Identity systems and rebrands
- For whom
- Organisations with a defined outcome and a real edge: a migration with a date, a platform with a launch, a rollout with a scope. And for a first engagement, when a client wants to see how the firm works before buying more of it.
- How it starts
- A scoping phase — one to three weeks depending on the mandate — produces the statement of work: scope, acceptance criteria, phases, gates, price and the assumptions the price rests on. Nothing is built until the acceptance criteria are signed.
- How it is governed
- Phase gates with written exit criteria. A steering committee at each gate and at a fixed cadence between them. Change control in writing: any change to scope produces a change note with its effect on price and date, accepted or declined before work continues.
- How it ends
- At acceptance. The final phase is the handover — documentation, training, an operating runbook, a warranty period for defects — and it is priced into the project, not added afterwards.
- How it is priced
- A fixed price against fixed acceptance criteria, invoiced against phase gates. Where a mandate genuinely cannot be fixed at the outset, the scoping phase is priced fixed and the remainder is proposed once the unknowns are known.
Embedded Teams
Dedicated squads inside your organisation.
- Best for
- Standing up an internal AI or data function
- In-house advertising and growth teams
- Programme delivery inside a ministry or group
- Long transformations that need continuity
- For whom
- Organisations building a capability they intend to keep — an AI engineering function, a growth team, an intelligence unit — who want it to exist inside their own organisation from the first day rather than arrive as a handover at the last.
- How it starts
- A team charter defines the squad's mission, composition, reporting line inside the client and the capability-transfer plan: which roles the client will hire, by when, and how Altuon's people step back as theirs step forward.
- How it is governed
- The squad works on the client's tools and in the client's rituals, led by an Altuon principal who reports to the client's manager for direction and to Altuon's engagement lead for standards. Capability transfer is a standing agenda item at every steering meeting, with the transfer plan's milestones tracked like any other deliverable.
- How it ends
- By design, with the client's own team in place. The final quarter is a step-down: Altuon roles are backfilled by the client's hires, with overlap for each one. What remains is documentation, tooling and an optional light-touch retainer for the practice's specialist questions.
- How it is priced
- A monthly fee per squad, by composition and seniority, fixed for the term. The step-down reduces the fee as roles transfer.
Executive Advisory
Board- and C-level counsel on AI and technology.
- Best for
- AI strategy and governance for a board
- Technology due diligence in a transaction
- Vendor and sourcing decisions
- Regulatory readiness — FADP, GDPR, PDPL, the EU AI Act
- For whom
- Boards, executive committees and the executives who answer to them, on the decisions that precede any build: what to build, what to buy, what to refuse and how to govern what is kept.
- How it starts
- With a briefing — forty-five minutes, prepared against the board's agenda — and, if the relationship continues, a letter of engagement that names the questions the advisory will address in its first quarter.
- How it is governed
- Fixed attendance at the meetings where decisions are made, decision papers written to the board's format, and a quarterly review of the questions answered and the questions that have arisen. Advisory is independent of delivery: an adviser's recommendation to buy elsewhere is a recommendation, not a lost sale.
- How it ends
- At the end of a term, or when the questions are answered. Many advisory engagements convert into a retainer or a project when the board decides to build; that conversion is a new agreement, negotiated at arm's length.
- How it is priced
- A quarterly fee for a defined level of access and a stated number of decision papers and briefings. Attendance at additional meetings by the day.
Side by side.
The same nine lines a procurement committee compares. Print this page; it is designed for it.
| Line | Enterprise Retainer | Project Engagement | Embedded Teams | Executive Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Commitment | Minimum term, then rolling | Until acceptance | Term with planned step-down | Quarterly term |
| Scope definition | Quarterly plan within a capacity band | Fixed, with signed acceptance criteria | Team charter and transfer plan | Letter of engagement naming the questions |
| Pricing basis | Monthly fee for specialist working days | Fixed price per phase gate | Monthly fee per squad, stepping down | Quarterly fee plus attendance days |
| Team | Drawn from every practice as the plan requires | Assembled for the scope | Dedicated squad inside your organisation | Practice principals and the engagement lead |
| Governance | Monthly steering, quarterly planning | Phase gates with exit criteria | Client management plus Altuon standards | Board and committee attendance |
| Change control | Re-planned each quarter | Written change notes, accepted before work continues | Charter amendments at steering | Questions added by letter |
| Intellectual property | Deliverables assigned on payment | Deliverables assigned on acceptance | Created inside your organisation; yours | Papers and briefings yours; methods ours |
| Exit | Notice period; full handover | At acceptance; warranty period | Planned step-down with overlap | End of term |
| Best for | Continuous capability | Outcomes with an edge | Capability you will keep | Decisions before building |
Questions procurement asks
Who owns the intellectual property in what Altuon delivers?
The client. Deliverables — code, models trained on the client's data, documents, designs, identity systems — are assigned to the client on payment or acceptance, depending on the model. Altuon retains ownership of its pre-existing methods, frameworks and internal tooling, and licenses them to the client, perpetually and without further fee, to the extent they are embedded in the deliverables. Third-party components remain under their own licences, which are listed in the handover.
For embedded teams, work is created inside the client's organisation and belongs to the client from the moment it is created.
How does an engagement end, and what does leaving cost?
Agree the notice period, transition work and any charges before signing. The handover schedule should list source code, data exports, documentation, credentials, runbooks and the people receiving them. Confirm ownership, third-party licences, any defect warranty and the deletion or retention of remaining copies. These terms belong in the contract and should be reviewed alongside the proposed price.
What service levels apply?
Service levels are agreed per system and written into a schedule of the agreement: availability targets, incident severity definitions, acknowledgement and resolution times by severity, and the escalation path with named people. Where Altuon operates a system on the client's behalf, the schedule includes reporting against those levels at every steering meeting. The specific figures are set in the schedule of each agreement rather than published here, because they depend on the system and the hosting choice.
Can systems run on our premises or in a sovereign cloud?
Yes, and this is decided before any design work. For each system the data plane — Switzerland, the European Union, the United States, the client's own premises or a national or sovereign cloud — is recorded in an architecture register. Models can be deployed inside that plane; policy, identity and observability run in a control plane that never holds client data. On-premises and sovereign deployments carry additional cost for infrastructure the client provides and operates, which is made explicit in the proposal.
Which sub-processors do you use, and how are we told about changes?
The current sub-processor list — hosting, email, telephony, model providers, observability — is provided with every proposal and on request, with each processor's purpose and location. Changes are notified in writing before they take effect, with the right to object. Where a client requires it, model providers can be excluded entirely in favour of models deployed inside the client's own plane.
Who is on the team, and what happens if a key person leaves?
The proposal must identify the people available for the work, their roles, time commitments and any subcontractors. Agree cover, access, documentation and handover arrangements before signing. A deputy or replacement is a contractual requirement to confirm against actual capacity; it is not established by a role description on this website.
What insurance cover and liability terms apply?
No insurance certificate or cover amount is published here. Before relying on cover, request the current certificate and verify the insured entity, activities, territories, limits, exclusions and expiry. The proposal must state any gap. Governing law, liability limits and exceptions must be agreed for the specific contract; a regional preference does not set them.
Can we start small?
Yes. Most relationships begin with an executive briefing or a scoped project. A retainer or an embedded team is proposed only when the work has the shape that calls for it — and we will say so if it does not.
Tell us the shape of the work.
Describe the mandate in the proposal form and we will propose the model that fits it — or tell you which of the four we would not recommend, and why.