Discovery
Finding what others have missed
Often when we’re brought in, there’s already a working theory about what’s gone wrong — and a plan already in motion to fix it. Our job in Discovery is to test those assumptions against evidence, and see what holds up.
This isn’t a tick-box audit. It’s a structured, evidence-led assessment that examines the gap between what’s being reported and what’s actually happening. We talk to the people doing the work, not just the people presenting the status. We look at the data, not just the dashboards.
Discovery covers the full landscape: programme health, technical debt, vendor performance, team capability, commercial exposure, and increasingly, whether AI changes the assumptions your investment case is built on.
What Discovery typically uncovers
The programme is further behind than the RAG status suggests. The technology choice was made before the business problem was properly understood. The supplier relationship has drifted from partnership to dependency. The team is exhausted but nobody has acknowledged it. The original business case no longer reflects the current commercial environment.
These aren’t hypothetical examples — they’re patterns that repeat across every sector we’ve worked in over 30 years. Recognising them early is the difference between a course correction and a write-off.
Discovery doesn’t always lead to “fix it and carry on.” Sometimes the hardest and most valuable conclusion is that the programme should stop. We’ve made that call. It takes independence, and it takes courage.
Design
Strategy that survives contact with reality
Design is where Discovery findings become a plan of action. Not a 200-slide strategy deck that sits in SharePoint — a pragmatic roadmap with clear phases, honest dependencies, and commercial logic that a CFO can follow.
We work to a principle we call Fix–Platform–Grow. Fix what’s broken and is creating risk. Build the platform that enables the business to operate reliably. Then — and only then — invest in growth and innovation. Too many transformations jump straight to “Grow” on a foundation that can’t support it.
Every design decision now has an AI dimension. Are you about to spend millions on a platform that AI will make obsolete in three years? Or are you ignoring AI because nobody on the programme understands it well enough to factor it in? We ensure AI is a considered element of strategy, not an afterthought or a distraction.
Architecture without the ivory tower
We don’t produce enterprise architecture for its own sake. What matters is business architecture — understanding what the organisation needs to be capable of before anyone draws a solution diagram. The technology choices flow from that, not the other way around.
That means understanding the real constraints: the contracts you can’t exit for 18 months, the legacy system that three critical processes depend on, the team that’s already at capacity, the budget cycle that doesn’t align with the delivery timeline.
Good design absorbs these realities rather than pretending they don’t exist. The result is a roadmap your organisation can actually execute — not one that requires perfect conditions that will never materialise.
Delivery
Execution with accountability
Strategy without delivery is just a conversation. We get involved at the sharp end — running programmes, recovering failing deliveries, building the governance and cadence that turns chaos into control.
Our delivery approach is built on transparency. Clear success criteria agreed upfront. Honest reporting that tells you what’s actually happening, not what people think you want to hear. Escalation paths that work before problems become crises.
We’ve recovered programmes from red to green across insurance, energy, manufacturing, telecoms, logistics, and retail. The patterns are remarkably consistent — what changes is the sector context and the specific constraints.
When programmes are in trouble
Programme recovery is where our 30 years of cross-sector experience pays for itself. When a £12m logistics transformation has stalled, or an insurance programme has burned through €29m with critical status, or 150 retail stores are running on infrastructure that’s falling apart — the playbook for stabilisation is remarkably similar.
Stabilise the immediate risks. Re-baseline against reality, not the original plan. Rebuild stakeholder confidence through visible, measurable progress. Get the right people in the right roles. Remove the blockers that everyone knows about but nobody has addressed.
Sometimes recovery means making the hard call that a programme should close. We’ve done that too. The independence to recommend stopping — rather than keeping the meter running — is what separates independent advice from advice with a vested interest.
Pattern recognition across sectors
30 years across insurance, energy, manufacturing, telecoms, logistics, pharma, retail, and financial services. The problems repeat — the organisations just don’t know it yet.
The failing programme in insurance looks remarkably like the one in energy. The vendor dependency in telecoms mirrors the one in manufacturing. Seeing these patterns across sectors means faster diagnosis and fewer wrong turns.
A career that began on the shop floor, not in a server room. That background means technology decisions are always framed in commercial terms — cost, risk, capability, and competitive advantage.
We don’t resell software. We don’t have strategic partnerships with vendors. Our recommendations are driven by what’s right for the organisation, not what’s right for our margin.
Purpose-built tools for programme assessment, delivery tracking, risk management, and reporting — with AI at the core, not bolted on. We arrive with methodology, tooling, and structure from day one.
Let’s talk
Whether you need an independent assessment of a programme in trouble, a pragmatic transformation strategy, or experienced hands to get delivery back on track — the conversation starts here.
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