We tell you what we found
Including when the answer is that the program you've already started is aimed at the wrong problem. The uncomfortable finding is the one you paid for.
Established 2018
A consultancy that started writing software.
Sterling Consultants Australia Pty Ltd has been working on data problems since 2018 — master data, governance, integration, and the unglamorous work of getting an organisation to agree on what a customer is.
Who we are
Small, senior, and on the tools.
Sterling is a specialist data consultancy, not a generalist firm with a data practice bolted on. The people who scope your work are the people who do it. There is no pyramid underneath us and no incentive to staff one.
That shapes what we take on. We work in six-month blocks with a defined outcome, because that's the longest horizon anyone can plan honestly against in a data environment that's still moving. We'd rather run two consecutive six-month engagements you chose to renew than one three-year program you couldn't get out of.
Why we ended up building software
By our third or fourth assessment the pattern was obvious. The findings were good; the artefact was a spreadsheet. Six months later the inventory was stale, the ownership map had drifted, and the next consultant to walk in started from scratch — often with us, doing it again.
So we wrote the thing we kept wishing existed: a platform that holds the system inventory, the ownership map and the maturity scoring, and stays current after the engagement closes. That product is TellParrot. We use it to run our own assessments. We'll happily work inside a governance platform you already own instead.
How we're different in practice
Most of what distinguishes us is refusal. We don't resell licences, so we have no reason to steer you toward a platform. We don't propose a roadmap before the assessment, because the roadmap is the output of the assessment, not the pitch for it. And we don't design a governance model more elaborate than your organisation will actually operate — a thin framework people follow beats a complete one they route around.
At a glance
- Established
- 2018
- Entity
- Sterling Consultants Australia Pty Ltd
- Based
- Brisbane, QLD
- Works
- Australia-wide
- Engagement
- 6-month blocks
- Licence revenue
- None
Data residency matters in most of the work we do. Where we host anything on your behalf, it stays in Australian regions unless you direct otherwise in writing.
How we work
Six commitments we'll hold to.
These aren't values on a wall. Each one is something you can hold us to during an engagement, and each one costs us something.
No licence commissions
We take no margin, referral fee or rebate on any platform we recommend. If a tool you already own is good enough, we'll say so.
Fixed price on the assessment
The assessment is a fixed fee with a fixed scope. Discovery that expands to fill a budget isn't discovery.
Something ships in 30 days
Every engagement produces a measurable change inside the first month. Programs that show nothing for two quarters get cancelled in the third.
Your team can take it over
Runbooks, documentation and training are deliverables, not extras. If you can't operate it without us, we haven't finished.
You can stop at any stage
Each stage leaves you with something usable on its own. Nothing we build is designed to be worthless without the next phase.
Where we work
Sectors where the data problem is the business problem.
We're sector-agnostic in principle, but the work concentrates where entity resolution is hard, ownership is distributed, and the regulator has an opinion — utilities and infrastructure, health and community services, government, financial services, distribution and manufacturing, and not-for-profits carrying decades of donor and member history across half a dozen systems.
The common thread isn't industry. It's that the same customer, asset or member exists five times under five spellings, and somebody senior has finally decided that's a problem worth paying to fix.
- Utilities, energy & infrastructureAsset master data, lifecycle records, contractor and supplier hierarchies.
- Health & community servicesClient and participant identity across programs, with privacy constraints that are non-negotiable.
- GovernmentCross-agency reference data, records obligations, and a definition of “current” that has to survive audit.
- Financial servicesCustomer and counterparty resolution, regulatory reporting lineage, retention and access controls.
- Distribution & manufacturingProduct, SKU and supplier master data spanning ERP, e-commerce and the warehouse.
- Not-for-profitMember, donor and supporter records fragmented across CRM, events, email and payment platforms.
Want to know where you actually sit?
The assessment answers that in two to three weeks, for a fixed fee, with no obligation to run the plan with us.