Operational infrastructure for professional firms that need to scale with discipline — not just grow.
Most professional firms make technology and vendor decisions based on referrals, demos, and gut instinct. The result is a stack that costs more than it should, creates operational fragility, and limits what the firm can become.
Anthracite Advisory brings a different standard. Over fifteen years building and operating mission-critical platforms across regulated, high-accountability environments — where getting these decisions wrong has real consequences — produced a level of judgment that most advisory firms have never had access to.
That experience spans both sides of the house: technology infrastructure, cybersecurity, and systems architecture on one side — and operations, vendor oversight, service provider management, and compliance readiness on the other. Professional firms get both, integrated, from a single advisor who has done it at scale.
Anthracite Advisory is the practice of Joseph Narvaez — a technology and operations executive who has served simultaneously as Chief Technology Officer and Chief Operating Officer at regulated investment management firms for over fifteen years. He has built infrastructure from inception, managed senior functional leaders, overseen service providers and vendor relationships, and run the kind of operations where control gaps have real consequences. That experience is what Anthracite's clients are buying.
Each tier is designed to stand alone or sequence naturally into the next. Most clients begin with an Assessment and never need to look elsewhere.
Every engagement follows the same sequence. Each step earns the next — and most retainer relationships begin with a single Assessment.
We map your current state — vendors, workflows, costs, control gaps. You receive a clear diagnosis and a prioritized blueprint. Most clients find enough savings to cover the engagement fee in year one.
We execute the blueprint. Vendor selection, contract renegotiation, stack redesign, workflow modernization. You get infrastructure that fits where your firm is going — not just where it is today.
We stay in the room. Quarterly reviews, renewal negotiations, automation improvements, and scaling advisory. A fractional operating partner who knows your infrastructure and knows what good looks like.
The right starting point is a brief call — not a proposal. If we can help, we'll tell you what that looks like. If we can't, we'll tell you that too.