Handover

A complete handover is a short list and every item is checkable: accounts and administrative rights transferred to company-owned identities; the source code in a repository the company controls; the domain and DNS in the company's registrar account; documentation sufficient for a competent third party to continue; the credentials in the company's password manager; and a named contact for the period after.

Written into the engagement at the start, it costs nothing. Requested at the end it becomes a negotiation, and requested after a disagreement it becomes leverage.

Accepting delivery instead of transfer

A launched site is not a handover. If the repository, the domain and the analytics remain under the vendor's account, the company has bought the use of an asset rather than the asset — and will pay again for the next change, or pay a great deal more to rebuild.

Digital asset register

A written list of every account, domain and system the business depends on, recording who owns it, who administers it, what it costs and how it is recovered.

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Vendor selection and total cost

Judging a supplier on what the work costs over its life — including the rebuild — rather than on the quotation.

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Key-person risk

The number of people whose sudden absence would stop something important — and in most small companies the answer for the digital estate is one.

All forty-five termsWhat this is regulated by in the UAE

Is this one right in your own numbers?

The definitions are the easy part. Whether the figure on your dashboard was computed this way is a different question, and usually the more expensive one.