01
Discovery and Diagnostic
A two-week structured review of your technology estate, team capability, and strategic intent. Delivered as a…
From £3,200News & Announcements
News & Announcements
2026-07-26
How to run a vendor selection process that holds up
Most technology vendor selections go wrong at the brief stage, not the evaluation stage. By the time you are scoring responses, the damage is usually already done. The requirements were too vague, the evaluation criteria were not agreed in advance, or the wrong people were in the room when the shortlist was drawn up. This guide covers the steps that matter most, in the order they matter.
Read more →2026-06-17
Why technology roadmaps fail within twelve months
A technology roadmap that nobody updates is not a roadmap. It is a record of what the organisation intended to do before reality intervened. The failure is almost never about the technology choices. It is about how the document was built, who owns it, and whether it was designed to be maintained or designed to be presented.
Read more →2026-05-09
What a technology risk review actually covers
Most organisations that commission a technology risk review do so because something has prompted them to. A near-miss, a regulatory enquiry, a board member who read something uncomfortable in the news. The useful thing about a structured review is that it surfaces the risks you were not looking for, not just the ones that prompted the exercise.
Read more →3
Specialist associates
6
Weeks post-go-live review, every time
8+
Years in practice
47
Engagements completed
Our products
What we bring to the climb
Systems architecture review
We map what you have before recommending what you need. Most engagements begin with a two-week discovery that surfaces the load-bearing assumptions nobody has written down.
Technology strategy
A roadmap that accounts for your actual budget, your actual team, and the constraints your board will not bend on. No slide-deck fantasies.
Vendor selection support
We help you write the brief, score the responses, and ask the questions vendors hope you will forget. We have no referral arrangements with any supplier.
Maker
Who you are dealing with
Founder, Established since 2018
Harry Ratcliffe
Harry Ratcliffe spent eight years as a senior systems architect at a mid-sized financial services firm in Leeds before founding TechVault Pulse Lab in 2018. He trained in computer science at the University of Sheffield and later completed a postgraduate certificate in enterprise risk management. The work that shaped him most was a two-year infrastructure overhaul for a regional building society. A project that taught him how much damage a poorly scoped brief can do before a single line of code is written. He set up TechVault Pulse Lab because he wanted to work closer to the decision-making stage, before the expensive mistakes. Outside the studio, he walks the Pennine ridgelines most weekends and keeps a paper notebook for every active engagement.
FAQ
Common questions
Q01
How do we begin working with TechVault Pulse Lab?
The first step is a conversation. Usually a thirty-minute call where we listen to what you are trying to solve and ask a few clarifying questions. If it sounds like a good fit, we will send a short written brief for you to review before anything is agreed. We do not charge for that initial call.
Q02
Do you work with organisations outside financial services and housing?
Yes, though those are the sectors where most of our work sits. We have also worked with professional services firms, a regional NHS trust, and a small number of technology companies reviewing their own internal systems. The diagnostic methodology transfers well across sectors.
Get in touch
Tell us what you are trying to solve
Fill in the form and Harry Ratcliffe will come back to you within two business days with an honest view of whether and how we can help.
No automated responses. A real reply within two business days.