The technology changes.The operating discipline doesn’t.
Most people who advise on transformation never carried the profit and loss when one went wrong. We did. Here is the record, what it proves, and what it does not.
Operator, not advisor.
25years
Running customer-facing change with the budget and the result on the line.
£24bnrevenue
Under direct accountability across GM, VP and C-suite roles.
6firms
Vodafone · O2 · Symantec · Staples · Equifax · Helvar.
JD Poweraward
Best customer experience at consumer scale.
Five programmes where the work had to change.
In each case the technology was the straightforward part. Changing how the work was done, while carrying the number, was not.
+45% digital growth
The problem. Nineteen country teams, no shared view of the customer, and a €110M budget with no way to see what it returned. New tooling on top would have industrialised the mess.
What changed. The operating model first — one customer database, 30,000 segments, nineteen teams into a single hub. Then the platform to run it.
The result. The fastest sales growth in seven years and €400M+ delivered.
Eleven quarters of decline reversed
The problem. $390M tied up in legacy retail and eleven straight quarters of decline. Buying tools without changing how customers were won and kept would simply have digitised the decline.
What changed. How customers were acquired, grown and retained was redesigned first. Then the commerce, mobile and CRM platforms were built to run it.
The result. Decline taken to zero, then eight straight quarters of growth.
JD Power award for customer experience
The problem. A £1.8bn business and twelve million customers, with channel-by-channel solutions that would have split the experience and the data into pieces.
What changed. One customer experience was designed across web, mobile and phone first. Then the self-service, loyalty and commerce platforms were built to deliver it.
The result. 4M new customers and 2.5M loyalty sign-ups.
Fourth to second against competitors
The problem. Four countries solving online sign-up four different ways. Four platforms, four sets of data, fraud slipping through the gaps.
What changed. How customers should be won was agreed first. Then one European platform was built to serve all four markets.
The result. One operating model across the UK, Spain, Greece and Germany.
Customer resolution, redesigned
The problem. Customer issues arriving across regions with no consistent route to resolution. Every escalation handled well and none of it joined up, so the same failures recurred and the cost sat in service rather than in the accounts.
What changed. How an issue gets resolved was redesigned before any system work — who owns it, what closes it, and what has to be recorded for the cause to be visible next time.
The result. Two programmes delivered across EMEA and Asia Pacific.
Delivered as an independent senior transformation consultant, not as an employee.
To be clear about what these are
These were operating model and process programmes, not AI projects. We are not going to pretend otherwise. What they prove is that the work was redesigned, that the return arrived, and that the person leading it carried the budget and the result. That is the discipline we now bring to AI — and it is the part that most AI programmes are missing.
What we can claim today, and what we can’t.
Every engagement adds to our evidence base and emerging benchmark of AI adoption, process redesign and realised value across the UK mid-market. It improves every engagement that follows it. It is also young, and we would rather say so than be caught out by a good question.
A baseline taken before the build is evidence. A baseline reconstructed afterwards is an argument. This is why we set the measures before anything gets built.
See what this looks like in your business.
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