01
Positioning diagnostic
A review of the market, the competition and how the business is actually perceived. The starting point of any engagement — and sometimes the only one needed.
Strategy first. The means come after.
Positioning the business as a whole: what it is, who it serves, and why it deserves to be chosen. Everything else follows — the message, the organisation, and the choices made about its IT systems.
The starting point
The request almost always arrives badly framed.
We get called to “rebuild the website”. Or to “review the maintenance contract”. Two unrelated requests, apparently. In both cases, nine times out of ten, that is not the problem.
The site does not convert because the business cannot yet say what it is, nor who it primarily addresses. The contract is badly judged because nobody inside is in a position to state what should be required of it. In both cases the request arrives badly framed — and delivering it as it stands amounts to paying to change nothing.
It is not about being the expert. It is about knowing who to put which question to, and knowing when the answer is not good enough.
It is the same move on both sides. Choosing between markets or between technical scenarios changes the subject, not the method: make a diagnosis, state the requirements, test the answers, then stay long enough for the decision to take effect. Digital is a lever of execution, never a positioning — and a roadmap is only useful once it is costed and prioritised.
On the IT side, that position assumes having got your hands dirty: running CMS estates, tracking hardware, investigating incidents. You do not negotiate a service level the same way once you have handled the incident it is supposed to cover.
We work on one-off engagements — a diagnostic, a framing exercise, an audit — as well as on standing support alongside the leadership, across several quarters.
How we work
One trade, two territories.
Every engagement is scoped to fit. These blocks combine according to the maturity of the business and what is genuinely urgent — rarely along the boundary between the two families.
Positioning & organisation
02
Brand strategy
Defining the territory, the promise and the language. What you say, to whom, and what you stop saying.
03
Shaping the offer
Clarifying what the business sells, at what price, in what order. Often where the fastest growth is hiding.
04
Internal organisation
Turning positioning into roles, processes and priorities. Without that, the strategy stays a document.
05
Working alongside leadership
A standing presence alongside the owner and the leadership team: decisions, framing, useful disagreement. A partner, not a report.
06
Framing before building
Specifying what must be built — and above all what must not be — before putting Build or any technical team to work.
IT systems
01
IT audit
An eighteen-point framework, interviews with the people in post, and an assessment of what exists. The report is written for the business owner, not the IT department: it has to be readable by whoever signs off the budget.
02
Technology roadmap
Three costed scenarios — basic, intermediate, premium — prioritised against criticality, functional coverage and current status. A roadmap you can commit to, not a wish list.
03
Contracts & outsourcing
Steering contract variations: exit clauses, service levels put in writing, a RACI framework for incident response. What is not written down will not be handed back.
04
Regulatory compliance
Data processing agreements under Article 28 GDPR, closing the gaps an audit surfaces, and settling how a service is classified — hosted software and a managed service do not carry the same scope of validation.
05
Automation & monitoring
Designing processing pipelines: automated regulatory monitoring, AI-assisted extraction, hosting arranged to stay within the European Union.
06
Hands on
Running CMS estates across several clients, tracking hardware, diagnosing incidents. This is not what we sell — it is what makes the judgement credible.