Services
Strategy on top. Four things holding it up.
Strategy fails on the same four foundations every time: the money, the operation, the technology, and the way the business grows and presents itself. We work across all four, which is why a single team can take a problem from diagnosis to delivery without handing it on.
The four foundations
What sits underneath the strategy
Financial performance
- Planning and forecasting
- Measurement and reporting
- Accounting and close cycle
- Cashflow modelling
Operations
- Systems
- Process
- Supplier management
- Supply chain
Technology
- Core systems
- Engineering capability
- Design
- Scale and adoption
Growth & brand
- Marketing
- Revenue growth
- Product
- Partnerships
Service lines
How we can serve your business
Each of these can be a whole engagement or a single phase inside a larger one. In practice they arrive tangled together, which is the argument for a team that covers all of them.
Business strategy
Direction, position and priorities. Internal and external analysis, competitive position, portfolio decisions, and a strategy specific enough that someone can be held to it.
Financial outlook
Planning, forecasting, measuring and reporting. Scenario models with the cash consequences attached, and a close cycle that does not consume three weeks of every month.
Operations review
What actually happens, mapped honestly, then simplified. Process, systems, supplier management and the waste that accumulates when nobody owns the whole flow.
Project management
Agile or traditional, governance and cadence, and the discipline that stops a good recommendation dying between approval and delivery.
Business risk
Risk registers that get used rather than filed, exposure across commercial and operational lines, and support through due diligence when someone is buying, selling or raising.
Contract review
A commercial contract review process the business can run itself, plus review of the contracts that carry the most exposure right now.
Supply chain
Supplier concentration, cost structure, lead times and the trade-offs between resilience and working capital.
Marketing strategy
Go to market planning, market entry, segmentation and the campaign logic that follows from the commercial model rather than from a brand mood board.
Organisation design
Structure, capability and accountability. Who decides what, and whether the shape of the business still matches the strategy it is meant to deliver.
Design consultancy
Strategy that people can see
Most consultancies stop at the recommendation. We have a product designer on the team, which means the work can carry through into the things your customers and staff actually touch.
That matters more than it sounds. A market entry plan that never reaches the website is a document. A brand position that never reaches the interface is an assertion. Design is where strategy becomes visible, and it is the step most often left to someone who was not in the room when the strategy was set.
Brand identity
A coherent visual identity that separates you from the competition and holds together across every touchpoint. Built to be used by other people after we leave.
Web & digital
Websites and interfaces that are quick to read, easy to act on and honest about what the business does. Built for the people using them, not for an awards page.
Reports & presentations
The board pack, the investor deck, the annual report. Designed so the argument survives contact with an audience that has eleven minutes.
Design process
How design work runs
Five steps, and you see the reasoning at each one. Nothing is presented as a finished thing you were not part of.
A visual identity is not decoration on top of a strategy. It is the strategy, in the only form most people will ever see it.
Discovery
Understanding the brand, the audience and the goals, before anything is drawn.
Concept
Initial directions for you to react to, deliberately different from each other rather than three versions of one idea.
Refinement
Iterating on the direction you chose, with the reasoning behind each change made explicit.
Implementation
Translating the design into the real thing, with attention to the details that decide whether it feels considered.
Handover
Final assets, the rules for using them, and support while your team takes them on.
Next step
Not sure which of these you need?
Most clients arrive with a symptom rather than a service line. Describe the symptom and the first phase will identify what is actually going on.