For the person who has to sign, GDPR consultants is bought by a business processing personal data of people in the EU at the moments a program is most anxious and least able to say what it needs: before a license, before an examination, after a finding. The seller's value is judgement about what the regulator expects; the buyer's leverage is knowing the program in numbers first, because an engagement scoped from the register is smaller, cheaper and better than one scoped from a brochure. This page walks what to bring to GDPR consultants, what the engagement should change, what must come back at the end, and where the free sheets on this site work the program's own figures, with no account, so the first meeting starts from them.
What to bring to GDPR compliance consultants
The register's numbers: obligations, controls per obligation, evidence items per control, minutes per item, reviewers and their hours. The obligations register sheet on this site returns the items, the hours and the months to a full attestation. For a business processing personal data of people in the EU the record behind those numbers is the record of processing, the processor agreements, the lawful bases and the requests handled; bring it as a count, not a folder. A provider of GDPR consultants who can read the sheet and say which obligations are over-evidenced and which are bare has found the engagement's value in the first hour.
The two engagements sold as one
Almost every proposal here bundles an assessment with a remediation build, and the two have different shapes. The assessment is bounded, produces a document, and is worth buying from whoever will be most honest about what it finds. The build is open ended, produces a program, and is worth buying from whoever will still be there in a year. Asking for them as separate lines with separate prices is not adversarial; it is the only way to see what the assessment costs on its own, and it leaves you free to take the findings elsewhere or do the work yourself.
What the engagement should change
The count of obligations actually owed, the controls that satisfy several at once, the evidence each control needs and no more, the audit days per year, the gap rate and the hours per gap. Each is an input to a sheet on this site, so the before and after of the engagement is a pair of worked sheets rather than a slide. For GDPR the sheet to start with is the GDPR data-mapping sheet. Ask for the before and after in that form; a provider who promises maturity rather than numbers is promising a feeling.
A consultant, singular
A single consultant's time is the scarcest thing in the engagement, and the client who has counted the program before the first meeting spends it on judgement rather than discovery. Bring the register sheet's items and hours and the control-testing sheet's tests and failures; ask which the consultant would change and by how much.
What must come back
The register, in a form the program keeps updating without the provider: obligations, controls, evidence templates, an audit plan the program can run itself next year, and the attestations with who signed them. A deliverable that lives only in the provider's portal is a subscription to the provider. The guide this page supports covers scoping regulatory compliance consulting from the register in detail. Attestvio Pro keeps the register under the client's own name and exports it; the sheets stay free.
Questions people ask about GDPR consultants
What does GDPR consultants cost?
Providers quote after scoping and this site publishes no figure for them. The number that matters is the fee against the reviewer hours and audit days the engagement removes, which the free sheets on this site work from your own program.
How do I scope GDPR consultants?
From the register: obligations, controls, evidence items, reviewer hours and the months to attestation, worked on the free obligations register sheet and brought to the first meeting.
Does Attestvio provide GDPR consultants?
No. Attestvio is software that keeps the register, evidence and attestations and works the arithmetic; it gives no view on what a regulation requires. The sheets make any provider's engagement scoped and checkable.