How we work

Digital transformation

The situation: Production, stock and dispatch each live in their own spreadsheet, maintained by the person who built it. Orders are re-keyed twice. Nobody can say what is actually in stock without a phone call.
What we would look at first: Where the re-keying happens and what it costs in time and error. Which system of record the business should have — there is usually only one candidate that fits how they already work. Whether the plant floor will use it, which decides everything else.
What a good outcome looks like: One place the business looks for the answer, and a shop floor that keeps using it three months after we leave.

Business intelligence

The situation: Finance, sales and operations each bring their own figures to the monthly meeting. Half the meeting goes on reconciling them. Decisions slip a month.
What we would look at first: Which measures actually drive decisions here — usually far fewer than are being reported. Where each one should come from at source. What can be retired.
What a good outcome looks like: A short set of numbers everyone accepts, arriving at the frequency decisions are actually made.

Fundraising

The situation: Growth needs funding. The management accounts are behind, customer concentration has not been examined, and the story has not been tested against the kind of questions an investor asks in the second meeting.
What we would look at first: Whether raising is the right answer at all, before anything else. Then what a serious investor will find, in the order they will find it — and what to fix before rather than during.
What a good outcome looks like: A business that can withstand diligence, introduced to sources appropriate to its stage. Sometimes the outcome is a decision not to raise this year, and that is a legitimate result.

M&A advisory

The situation: A competitor is available at a price that looks like a bargain. The synergy case has been built by people who want the deal to happen.
What we would look at first: What the target actually earns, separated from what it reports. What integration would genuinely cost in management attention. What happens to the combined business if the optimistic half of the case does not land.
What a good outcome looks like: A decision made on the downside case as well as the upside — including, sometimes, not buying.

Market entry

The situation: The home market is understood. The new one has different buyers, different regulation, and a cost of presence nobody has priced.
What we would look at first: Whether there is demand, tested cheaply before any structure is committed to. The practical cost of being present and compliant. Whether a partner, a distributor or an own entity fits the way the product actually sells.
What a good outcome looks like: A first phase small enough that being wrong is survivable, and specific enough to learn something.

Operational excellence

The situation: The business has grown and the way it works has not. Things that used to be handled by someone noticing are now being missed.
What we would look at first: Where work actually queues, which is rarely where it feels slow. Which steps should be standardised and which genuinely need judgement. What is repetitive enough to automate.
What a good outcome looks like: A day-to-day that holds at the new volume, measured afterwards rather than asserted.

Staff augmentation

The situation: Everyone agrees what should happen. The people who would do it are already fully committed to running the business.
What we would look at first: What the role actually requires as the team would describe it. Whether this is a temporary gap or a permanent hire being avoided — the honest answer changes the recommendation.
What a good outcome looks like: People inside the team doing the work, reporting into your management, and handing over properly at the end.

Risk management

The situation: The business is materially bigger than when its processes were set, and a near miss has made that visible.
What we would look at first: Operational, financial, regulatory and key-person exposure — separated into what would hurt and what would end it.
What a good outcome looks like: Controls where they change an outcome rather than where they generate paperwork, and a written plan for the things that will happen anyway.

Strategy development

The situation: The business could go three ways. Each has an advocate. There is no agreed basis for choosing, so nothing is chosen and everything is half-resourced.
What we would look at first: What the numbers say about each, what each rules out, and what would have to be true for it to work.
What a good outcome looks like: One direction, in an order a real team can carry, with the things it rules out written down so they stop being reopened.

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