Hello , my proposal is this :
We will run the sql profiler and we will receive the results to a file.
You will navigate to your application and execute the most heaviest jobs.
You will send me the .trc file , I will check the file to see the most heaviest queries to start with and after 2 days you will receive a report with my recommendations.
We will check the SPs ,as you have proposed, but we will also check the usage of the indices of the tables. We might need to create new indices or new statistics.
Also it is good to know the size of your DB in GB , the number of tables , sp, views , the purpose that DB Serves (OLTP,OLAP). Ii need to know the purpose because we can use different techniques on. index creation (SQL Server 2012 columnstore index).
Also we will secure the DB we can make a lot of things (change default ports,hide the sql instance , review the users and their privileges ,etc).
Final about the backup it depends on the use of the DB. If it is an OLAP DB we can schedule a daily backup after the updates but if it is an OLTP DB we can set up a daily back and log backups every 1hr , 30’ whatever we will decide. With this solution we can restore up to the point of last log backup.
At this time i’m working on another project on the freelancer for a sql server 2008 R2 optimization. I will be more than pleased to send you an example of my recommendations report.