Consulting: change that holds after the project team has gone
Change is often designed well and then lost in the handover. We carry AI, digital and technology change through to the day a named person in your business runs it without us.
Who this is for
Executives sponsoring a change who need people to do the work and not only describe it: COOs, CIOs, CTOs and transformation leads accountable for how a function runs after the project ends.
In brief
Consulting carries AI, digital and technology change to the day a named person in your business runs it without us. AI Consulting, Digital Transformation, Technology Consulting and Product Innovation each answer a different cause of stalled change. This page shows which fits the problem you can see, and in what order to buy them.
How we see it
Change is rarely lost in the design
A strategy, a pilot, a new platform: they usually reach launch day in good shape. They are lost in the weeks after, when the project team returns to its day job and the people left behind meet a system with no owner, a second route beside the first and a figure every report states differently.
So we scope consulting from that point backwards. Before we agree what to build, we ask who will run it on the first ordinary Monday, what that person will stop doing, and which date ends the old way. If nobody can answer, answering is the first piece of work.
On this page
Which service answers the problem you can already see?
Start from the symptom, not the service name. One sponsor can have all of these at once, so the table separates them by what you could point to in a meeting.
| What you can point to | Where to start | What gets settled first | What we need from you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pilots that demonstrated well, then stopped moving | AI Consulting | Whether the use case has an owner, usable data and a route into the tools people use | The sponsor, access to the data, and the person who would run the system |
| A new platform live while the old spreadsheets carry on | Digital Transformation | Which route is the record, and the date the other stops | Decision rights from operations, and authority to switch things off |
| Reports that disagree, and integrations nobody remembers building | Technology Consulting | One source for each record, and who may change it | The system owners, and access to the systems as they run |
| A capability that fits the roadmap but has no buyer | Product Innovation | Whether named buyers will pay, before a line is built | Introductions to buyers, and a product owner who can stop the work |
| A mix of these, or none that fits | A diagnostic, then one of the above | Which problem is causing the others | Time with the sponsor and the person closest to the daily work |
In what order, when more than one applies
Order matters more than which service you buy first. AI work built on data nobody trusts inherits the disagreement, so where figures conflict, Technology Consulting comes before AI Consulting. Product Innovation can run beside any of the others, because it depends on buyers and not on your estate.
An engagement ends on the day someone in your business is running the change without us.
How an engagement starts, runs and ends
- 01
A conversation with the person who owns the result
We begin with the sponsor, not a requirements list: what must be different, and who answers for it. If the sponsor cannot say, that is our first finding.
- 02
A short diagnostic
Interviews with the people who do the work, a look at the systems as they run, and a written account of why the current way breaks, for the sponsor to argue with.
- 03
A scope in writing
What is in and out, who decides each part, the date the old route stops, and how both sides will know the work is done. Ownership terms go to your counsel first.
- 04
The work, inside your tools
Done in the systems your people already use, with your staff in the room, so nothing needs translating later.
- 05
The ownership pack and a return visit
Run books, monitoring thresholds and a named owner for everything we touched. We return after the first full cycle of real use to check it is run as written. Then we close.
When consulting is the right purchase
It fits when
- The change crosses team boundaries and needs someone with no stake in the old way.
- The leader who owns the result can be in the room.
- The old way can be switched off by someone you can name.
Look elsewhere when
- You want a judgment and will do the work yourselves. Advisory is the closer fit.
- The open question is which vendor to pick. Research and evaluation answer that.
- Nobody can be named as the owner at the end. We will help you find one, but we will not build around an absence.
What you give up is your own people's time. Consulting works because they take part, so expect scheduled attention from operations, the system owners and the product owner.
A pattern we are called into
Stock figures that disagree, and a forecasting pilot that stopped
A retailer sells through stores, a web shop and a marketplace. A forecasting pilot gave good results on a sample, then stalled, because planners distrust the stock figures. The store system, the web platform and a nightly spreadsheet each hold a different answer, and the sponsor assumes it is an AI problem.
- Diagnostic. We trace where a stock figure is written, and by whom. More than one system writes it, and one of them by hand.
- Technology Consulting first. One system is named the record for stock, the others read from it, and the manual step gets an owner and a stop date.
- Digital Transformation for the routine. Store managers stop adjusting figures in the spreadsheet on the agreed date, and the weekly stock review moves onto the record.
- AI Consulting second. The forecast is rebuilt on the single record, with a monitoring threshold and a planner who reviews exceptions.
Where it endsPlanners use the forecast in the weekly buying meeting, and when a figure looks wrong they know whom to ask. The pilot team is no longer needed to keep it running.
Questions
What do buyers ask about consulting?
How does a consulting engagement start?
With a conversation about the problem and a short diagnostic. We write the scope only after we understand why the current way breaks, because a scope written before the diagnosis fixes the wrong problem in detail.
Do you work alongside our teams and vendors?
Yes. Engagements run next to internal teams and existing vendors, and the written scope names who owns each part. Where a vendor's product is part of the problem, we say so and set out what would change.
Who owns what you build?
Ownership terms are set in each statement of work and reviewed with your counsel before work begins. The ownership pack at the end names the owner of every system, process and runbook we touched.
How is client information handled?
Every engagement is under NDA, and the Trust Center describes how we handle data. We ask only for the access the work needs, and the written scope records what we may see and who may see our notes.
Which change needs carrying through to daily use?
Describe what you are weighing in a few lines. A senior practitioner replies with a suggested first conversation.