The large NZ Microsoft partners are built to serve organisations with hundreds of seats: their pricing, their processes and their Microsoft partner obligations all assume that. A firm with 7 or 15 or 25 staff that needs one database moved into Microsoft 365 is below the size their model works at, so the job gets quoted high, padded with a discovery phase, or turned away. That gap is structural rather than accidental, and it is the gap a solo consultant fills on purpose.
What are large consulting partners built for?
Take the firms that come up when you search for Power Platform consultants in New Zealand: the ones with 200 to 3,000 staff, Inner Circle badges, Solutions Partner designations and Centre of Excellence practices. Every one of those signals is real and earned, and every one of them points the same way. Inner Circle rewards partners on revenue with Microsoft. A Solutions Partner designation is scored on organisation-level metrics like customer adds and deployments at scale. A Centre of Excellence practice exists to govern hundreds of citizen developers inside a large tenant. None of it is designed around one firm with one database and one bookkeeper who wants it in the cloud by Christmas.
Their engagement model follows. A discovery phase, paid, before a number. A project manager and an account manager on the invoice. A security questionnaire sized for a bank. A delivery bench that is booked six weeks out. A retainer or managed-service wrapper after go-live. Each item is sensible at 500 seats. At 7 seats they add up to more than the build.
What should you expect from different sizes of consulting provider?
| What you ask for | Large partner (200+ staff) | Mid-size shop (20 to 100 staff) | Solo consultant |
|---|---|---|---|
| A price | After a paid discovery phase, often $5,000 to $15,000 on its own | After a scoping workshop, sometimes free | Fixed price after a free 30-minute call, published bands on the website |
| Minimum job size | Realistically $30,000 to $50,000 and up | $15,000 to $25,000 and up | None; a single Access database is a normal job |
| Who you talk to | Account manager, then project manager, then the developer via them | A lead consultant, developers behind them | The person writing the code |
| When it starts | When the bench frees up, typically weeks to months | Weeks | Weeks, with a date given at the first call |
| Paperwork before work | MSA, SOW, security questionnaire, procurement portal | Proposal and terms | One-page agreement and a deposit |
| After go-live | Managed service or support retainer | Support hours block | Source, credentials and documentation handed over; 60-day fix warranty; retainer optional, never required |
| If Power Platform is the wrong tool | Rarely said; the practice sells the platform | Sometimes said | Said in the first call, because there is no licence margin to protect |
| Capacity | Any size of programme | Several projects at once | One or two projects at a time; a 5 to 20 staff job fits, a 200-seat rollout does not |
The last row sets out the trade-off. A solo consultant is the wrong choice for a programme of work across six departments. It is the right choice for the job most small NZ firms actually have: one system, one migration, one app, built and handed over.
Eleven things a solo consultant does that a large partner structurally cannot
- Give you a fixed price after a free 30-minute call, not a paid discovery phase.
- Put you in direct contact with the person building it, with no account manager between you.
- Start within weeks, because there is no resourcing queue to join.
- Treat a 7-person firm as the target client, not an exception to be approved.
- Hand over source code, credentials and documentation on go-live, so nothing depends on keeping them around.
- Skip the enterprise procurement paperwork for a job under $20,000.
- Keep one person accountable from scoping to hand-over, so nothing is lost between a sales team and a delivery team.
- Tell you Power Platform is the wrong tool when it is, and point at something you already pay for.
- Write the code themselves rather than routing it through an offshore delivery layer.
- Price a single Access database or SQL migration as a normal job rather than a sales-cycle cost.
- Publish the prices, because there is no reason not to.
The same four routes priced per hour, per day and per job are on hire a Power Apps developer in NZ.
What you give up
Bench depth. If I am sick for a week, the project pauses for a week; a large partner swaps in another developer. That is why everything I build is handed over as source with documentation, and why the agreement says what happens if I am unavailable. You also give up a logo on a slide: no large partner will co-sign the work. If your board needs that, hire the large partner. If your bookkeeper needs the database in the cloud by Christmas, you probably do not.
What should you ask a consulting provider before signing?
The longer list, twelve questions with what a good answer sounds like, is in questions to ask before hiring an automation consultant. These six are the ones that expose the size mismatch fastest.
- Is discovery paid, and what do I get if I stop after it?
- Who writes the code, and can I talk to them directly?
- What exactly is handed over at go-live: source, credentials, documentation, admin rights?
- What do I have to keep paying after go-live for it to keep working?
- Which licences will my staff need, at Microsoft's NZ prices, and could a cheaper design avoid them?
- What is your NZBN?
The licence question is the one large partners answer least often, because the answer is usually SharePoint instead of Dataverse for a small firm, and that removes a NZ$32.40 per user per month line from the deal. If the work you have in mind is a database move, moving a SQL Server database into Microsoft 365 shows the whole decision with prices, and the services page has the fixed-price bands.
Common questions
Do I need an enterprise agreement to get Power Platform work done?
No. An Enterprise Agreement is a Microsoft volume-licensing contract for organisations with hundreds of seats. A 7-person firm buys Microsoft 365 and any Power Apps or Power Automate licences month to month or yearly through the admin centre or a reseller, and hires whoever it likes to build on top of them. The consultancies that talk about enterprise agreements are describing their clients, not a requirement.
Why will a large Microsoft partner not quote a small migration?
Their delivery model has fixed overheads: a paid discovery phase, a project manager, an account manager, security questionnaires, and a bench that needs to be booked in weeks. Below roughly $30,000 to $50,000 that overhead is most of the price, so the job is either quoted high or politely declined. That reflects their cost structure, not a judgement on your business.
What should a small NZ firm expect from a solo Microsoft consultant?
A fixed price after a free 30-minute call rather than a paid discovery phase, direct access to the person writing the code, a start within weeks, source code and credentials handed over on go-live, and no retainer required to keep the thing running. The trade-off is capacity: one person, so the job has to fit in one person's weeks, which for a 5 to 20 staff firm it almost always does.
How do I check a solo consultant is legitimate?
Ask for the NZBN, a public fixed-price page, a written list of what gets handed over, and a plain answer to what happens if they are unavailable. A consultant who hands over source and credentials on day one has already answered the last question.
Too small for the big firms?
You are exactly the right size for me. Book a free 30-minute call, describe the system, and you leave with a recommendation and a fixed price. If it is genuinely a job for a large partner, I will tell you which one to ring.
If what prompted the search was an old website rather than a named system, start with this post, it separates a design job from a genuine legacy migration before you talk to anyone.