info@benchmarkconsulting.com
How we work

A service, not a software purchase

You do not license anything, install anything or train anyone. We do the work and you keep the result.

The shape of an engagement

  1. Tell us the decision you are trying to make

    Not the technology. The decision. Whether to migrate, what it will cost, why something keeps breaking, what a rule says, whether a replacement behaves the same. The right scope follows from that, and sometimes the answer is that you do not need us.

  2. We scope it against real code

    We look at a representative slice of the actual estate rather than estimating from a description of it. You get a scope and a price based on what is there.

  3. We build the benchmark

    Automated analysis of COBOL, JCL and CICS together, producing the model and its derived artifacts. This is the part that used to take a team of people months.

  4. We answer the question

    Assessment, rule recovery, lineage, conversion or a readiness package, depending on what you came for. Delivered as something a sponsor can read and a team can act on.

  5. You keep the model

    It is yours, in an international standard format, traceable back to your source. It stays useful after we leave, and it can be refreshed as the estate changes.

Where the work happens

There are two options and you choose between them at scoping, not at the end.

Most engagements are delivered from our own hosted environment: you provide the application, we scope, analyze and deliver. It is the fastest route, and there is nothing for you to stand up.

Where source code cannot leave your environment, and in banking, insurance and government it usually cannot, we deploy a project-based license onto a server inside your own environment and work over VPN. Nothing moves, including the AI. This is a routine arrangement for us rather than an exception.

How the two options compare

Quality and continuity

Engagements are led by people with deep mainframe experience, which is a smaller population every year and part of why this work is hard to staff internally. Where clients want an ongoing relationship, we combine maintenance with modernization so that application quality improves measurably over time rather than degrading, with quality metrics aligned to service levels, and complete documentation of the application handed over at the end of any term.

What we need to start

  • Source for the systems in scope
  • Copybooks and JCL
  • Someone who knows the business domain

What we do not need
Up-to-date documentation. If you had that, you would not need us.

Tell us what you are trying to move

A short conversation is usually enough for us to say honestly whether we can help, and roughly what it would take. No obligation either way.