Work you cannot throw over the wall.
Complex work is the boundary of what HBN does. It is not defined by job title or seniority. It is defined by whether the work can be specified once and handed over — or whether it needs judgement, context and continuity inside your organisation.
Eight characteristics. Most complex roles have several.
A commoditised process has a defined input, a defined output and a service level. Complex work has a customer who changes their mind, a system that behaves unexpectedly, and a colleague who has the context you need.
The roles clients ask us for most.
Software development
Engineers working in your repositories, your sprints and your review process — not a separate vendor team delivering against a statement of work.
Product development
Product, design and technical roles contributing to what you build rather than to a client-facing service. Continuity matters more here than anywhere.
Implementation
Configuration, data migration, integration and go-live work in front of your customers, often in a regulated environment.
Project management
People who can hold a plan, a customer and an internal delivery team together across timezones.
Consulting
Advisory and functional specialists who work directly with your customers under your brand and your delivery model.
Application and technical support
Second and third line support where diagnosis requires product depth, not a script. Frequently the reason a new region needs local hours.
Customer success
Relationship and adoption roles that hold retention and expansion, and need to know your product properly.
Specialist operations
Knowledge-intensive operational roles — reconciliation, data, reporting, compliance support — where getting it wrong is expensive.
Born in complex investment technology. Built for complex work.
Investment management technology remains a specialist practice and our deepest domain. The underlying problem — small specialist teams, demanding customers, unforgiving systems — is the same across the technology sector.
If the work can be specified once and handed over, we are the wrong partner.
High-volume, well-defined process work at scale is a solved problem, and traditional providers do it well and cheaply. HBN is built for the opposite case: small, specialist, integrated, and difficult to buy off a shelf.
On what makes work complex.
Four tests for whether work can be handed to a provider — context, judgement, continuity, collaboration — and what we turn down.
Cost per head is where everyone starts and rarely what decides the outcome. The five factors that do.