Digital transformation consulting,
judgement first.
Most transformation advice arrives attached to something being sold. This does not. Thirty years of running and rescuing large technology programmes, applied to one question at a time: what is actually true here, and what should happen next.
The technology is rarely the reason a programme fails.
A platform gets selected before anyone agrees what problem it solves. An AI pilot is commissioned on top of a data estate nobody owns. A delivery partner is held to a scope written by the delivery partner. None of these are technical failures. They are sequencing and accountability failures, and they are visible early to anyone who has seen them before.
Independent digital transformation consulting is worth having precisely at those points: before a contract is signed, before a platform is chosen, and while a programme can still be steered rather than rescued.
Four stages, each ending in a decision.
Assess
A short series of structured conversations before either side commits. Who owns the problem, whether the budget is real, and whether this is a technology problem at all rather than a staffing or leadership problem in technology clothing.
Discover
The data estate, the systems of record, the workflows that make the money, and the shadow spreadsheets holding it together. Scored red, amber or green against benchmarks drawn from three decades of comparable programmes.
Design
A target design and sequenced roadmap, with indicative cost ranges and a clear delivery path. Where a partner is needed, a shortlist with the reasoning stated and a negotiation position to go with it.
Advise through delivery
Contracts sit between the client and the delivery partner. Oversight means testing progress claims against what was designed, and raising flags early rather than diplomatically late.
Retail, government and healthcare, at scale.
Programmes delivered and steered for organisations including Primark, John Lewis, Waitrose & Partners, Ocado, Deliveroo, the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Justice and the NHS, alongside smaller brands where a single decision carries the same weight.
Different from a consultancy, on purpose.
No delivery arm behind the advice
Nothing is being sold downstream. There is no bench to fill and no implementation revenue waiting at the end of a recommendation, so “you already have what you need” is a perfectly available answer.
One person, not a pyramid
The person in the first conversation is the person doing the work. No partner-led pitch followed by a team of graduates learning on the client's budget.
Sequence before ambition
Foundation before operating model, operating model before AI. Most failed transformation programmes ran those in the wrong order, at speed.