Somewhere past twenty-five people, the business gets harder to see and the big decisions get harder to make. We rapidly build a working model of how your firm really runs, then turn it into tools your team uses daily: a workbench, a live map, a way to test a decision before you commit. You still make the call…but now you can see what it touches.
Picture a firm of thirty people turning over £3m. Now these aren't your numbers, but you'll recognise the patterns...and the potential costs associated to them:
A 1% rise on £3m lands almost entirely on profit. Most firms wait far longer than a year, because nobody can see whether it's safe to ask.
Salary, months of drag, then the redo. The going rate is one to three times salary by the time it's unwound.
It should have ended in March and ran to September. Let's call it two people, half their time, six months of wages.
Started with energy, attached to a number nobody watches. This year it's usually an AI experiment per team, and no one able to say what any of it changed.
This shows up in the quarter's numbers, three months after the door closed. And every leader names a different culprit.
Sales wants a hire, Ops wants a system, the platform replacement waits another year. With no shared yardstick, the best ask loses to the best argued.
Details drop at every handoff: work delivered but never billed, rework at the seams, two systems doing the same job since the merger.
The work sped up where it was already fastest. The real bottleneck sat two stages upstream, still untouched.
All this adds up to £250,000 a year riding on eight common situations. In a firm whose whole profit line is £120,000 to £150,000, you could halve every number to be optimistic and still end up negative. If you're a bigger firm, then the numbers are bigger, but it's all the same shape.
If you're a founder/CEO then you already know all this. But getting everyone else to agree on what it all means is the hard part.
The most confident voice wins the budget, not the best bet. With nothing solid to point to, issues just come back round at the next board meeting.
Senior days disappear into picking up dropped balls and crisis management. There's no time left for the work that really matters.
Everyone carries a different piece of the business in their head. Four people can leave the same meeting with four different versions of what was agreed.
Well you don't need to know where AI goes...
but you can still be ready. Every week brings another claim about what AI will do to firms like yours. Some of it will turn out true. Firms that handle a shift like this have a clear view on how their business really runs and can change it without drama. Building that visibility and confidence is exactly what we do.
We don't know where this goes either, and we'd be careful with anyone who tells you they do. But we're old enough to have lived through several major technology shifts like this before and you have to respond with proactive changes.
Some of your best moves will use AI. Plenty won't. Often the right move is changing how the work flows, or what you charge for, before it means buying anything.
Every serious piece on AI lands in the same place: you have to know how work actually moves through your business. That's what the map gives you, live, so you can judge an AI pitch on what's true, not on how good the vibe-coded prototype looks.
Nobody can plan five years of this, and you don't need to. Just make one sound move, watch what it does, then make the next. The rhythm exists so these moves keep compounding, month after month, building their own momentum.
You can't out-predict this shift.
But you can out-adapt it.
A working set of tools your team uses to make the call in front of you, and the ones that come after. The tools reveal defensible decisions based on a model of how your business really runs. The first version of the map will be wrong in places, and often that's the first time your leadership team will have something concrete enough to be wrong about. Arguing with it is the steering.
Read your business from all angles. Where it's fragmented, what's load-bearing, where you're over or under-invested, and the decision each one puts in front of you.
Every part of your business and how it connects. Click a decision and trace what it touches, before you need to commit to it.
Score what matters, tune the weights, and watch what should rise to the top for next quarter.
Leadership, engineering, finance and sales all work from the same map, so you stop talking past each other.
We do the heavy lifting and we move fast. The call stays yours to make, and our job is to make sure you can see what it touches before you make it. The map is always changing, which is why we teach your team how to evolve it. The journey runs in four stages: click each one to see what it holds.
Every relationship starts here, and it stands on its own. If we're not right for each other, this is where we both find out.
For firms that need us in the engine room, pushing the change along.
For firms whose own people have picked it up and are finding their feet.
For firms running their own rhythm who want to be held accountable, the tech looked after, and us on hand.
We're not here to tell you what you already know.
We get the whole team seeing the same business.
We're not selling you a project with an end date. We build you a map quickly so you can get moving, then stick around to help you refine it and keep it alive, working with you on a regular rhythm. We start where you need the most help, and as your own people take it on, the fee steps down. It's paid monthly by direct debit, and you can cancel any month. You already run your business on subscriptions…software, payroll, accounting. Nobody has offered you your operating model that way, mostly because it breaks how consultancies pay themselves. We've designed our business from the ground up to deliver this way.
Up top we counted £250,000 a year riding on eight common calls in a £3m firm. Halve it to be safe, and one better call a year still clears every fee below several times over. That's the bar we set ourselves on our pricing.
First, how big is your team? The prices differ, because bigger teams bring more people and process complexity to the map.
Construct is a one-off fee to rapidly get things moving. Everything after it is a monthly subscription, and the cost steps down as your team steps up to the markers we agree at the start. We reckon that over the first two years it averages about £3,075 per month, roughly what a junior hire costs, for an outcome that no single hire could give you.
Construct is a one-off fee to rapidly get things moving. Everything after it is a monthly subscription, and the cost steps down as your team steps up to the markers we agree at the start. A bigger team brings more people and process complexity to map, which is what these prices reflect. We reckon that over the first two years it averages about £5,700 per month, roughly what one experienced hire costs, for an outcome that no single hire could give you.
At the start we agree a short list of plain markers on a shared scorecard: decisions are being made with the map without us in the room, your own people keep it current, the rhythm runs without anyone chasing it. When those hold for two months running, we're the ones who recommend the step down. Moving down is a graduation, and both sides should be pleased about it. Most retainers are designed so you forget to leave. This one has a finish line built in, and we're the ones pointing at it.
A big call to weigh, or a heavier spell (an acquisition to digest, a change at the top), and you step back up a stage for as long as it takes. Big decisions are rarely settled inside a month anyway…there's usually fallout to manage and explain, so we stay up there while that lands and then glide back down as the markers come good again. Same staircase, same prices, nothing new to buy.
One agreement carries the whole staircase, so moving between stages takes an email rather than a negotiation. If you ever want something built that sits outside all this, we'll write it up as its own piece of work and you're free to say no. Nothing gets sprung on you halfway through.
No lock-in and no notice games. It's collected by direct debit in advance, so there are no invoices to chase on either side, and no invoice ever mentions hours. What we bill for is the map being used, not the time we spent.
At Construct you choose three numbers you want moved: margin, capacity freed up, how fast decisions get made, whatever is true for your business. Every review puts those numbers next to the markers. If they aren't moving, you'll hear it from us first.
Our tooling builds the map in days and keeps it current for a fraction of the effort, which is what makes these prices possible at all. It also gets better every fortnight, so the same money buys more as the years go on. The people stay for the part that needs people.
Most people don't call us on a quiet Tuesday. They call when one of these lands:
Probably a fair bit of what you already know, yes. We're not here to tell you that. We get your whole team seeing it the same way, and turn it into something you can act on together.
You shouldn't, on day one, and we'll say so before you ask. The first version will be wrong in places…that's what makes it useful, because it's the first thing concrete enough for your team to correct. Every claim shows where it came from, corrections stick, and it gets more right every month. You learn to trust it by arguing with it and winning.
We do the heavy lifting and work from what you already have. Construct is mostly short interviews spread over a few weeks, without pulling anyone off the floor. After that the rhythm is one working session a week while we're driving, dropping to one a month once your own people have it.
It depends on the size of your team. For teams of 25 to 99, Construct is £9,000, fixed. After that it's a monthly subscription: £4,950 while we're doing the driving, £2,950 once your own people are running it with us alongside, and £1,450 to keep the map looked after and us on hand. For teams of 100 to 250, where there are more people and more process to map, Construct is £32,000 and the same stages are £9,950, £4,950 and £2,950. Every one of those prices is in the agreement you sign on day one, and you can cancel any month.
Because it isn't built once. Your business changes: a product line goes, two teams merge, a definition shifts. A map nobody looks after becomes wrong quietly, and nobody notices until a decision goes through it. And you won't pay this fee forever…it's designed to step down as you need us less. We're the only adviser you'll meet whose price falls as you get better.
That's the one we'd worry about too, so the answer is built into the contract rather than the brochure. You can cancel any month, and the shared scorecard shows both sides how many decisions went through the map. If that sits at zero for two months, we'll raise it before you do. A client paying for something they don't use is the worst advert we could buy.
Gyms need the no-shows locked into annual terms. We ask for no term, we're in the room every month regardless, and our fee goes down as you improve. An unused subscription costs us the renewal, the graduation story we sell with, and our reputation. The incentive runs the opposite way to the gym's.
That's the plan, and the staircase is how we get there: each step down hands more of the work to your own people, on purpose, on a schedule both sides can see. By Care you're running it yourselves, with us close enough to spot it drifting. If you'd rather hire someone internally along the way, we'd sooner build that capability with you than compete with it.
You need to know how your business runs, and a calm way to change it when something real turns up. Call that an AI strategy if the board wants the words. Most AI strategies we see are a shopping list, and the hard part is knowing what the shopping is for.
Probably, though not for the reason the headlines give. Missing some tool this quarter costs you little, and the tools will still be there next quarter, cheaper and better. The deeper risk is a business too tangled to change when something that matters does arrive. Untangling is the work worth starting now, and it's most of what we do.
Waiting is a move too, and sometimes the right one. But wait with your eyes open: know which parts of your business would be exposed if a rival got faster or cheaper, and what you'd do about it. That's a much calmer way to wait, and the map is how you get it.
You're exactly who we built this for: firms that run on technology without selling it. That's where we've spent most of our working lives. The model maps your whole business, its parts, its people and its money, and shows where the technology carries them.
Close. It's a twin of your operating model: how the business actually runs, built for your leadership team to use. That's a different animal from an enterprise data platform, in scope and in price.
We build with AI agents, run by people who know what good looks like. The machines do the heavy lifting; the judgement calls stay human. It's the same working method we'd recommend to you.
Yes. We won't try to reopen your priorities. We help you deliver them: show what they touch, get the team behind them, and report progress in terms your board trusts.
We'll say so on the first call. No pitch, no pressure.
Two founders who take every job together: one from the business side, one from the build side. Trusted specialists and AI agents give us reach when a job needs more hands. No pyramid of juniors learning on your budget.
20 years at the BBC and 15 at the John Lewis Partnership. Budgets, operations, and big calls inside two of Britain's most complex organisations. And of course, building Hppn for 8 years and counting.
35 years of engineering and business analysis, for names like Tesco Mobile, ITG, Barclays and the Rail Delivery Group. The costliest failures we've seen were well-built answers to the wrong question. Our job is to stop those before they get funded.
We build the model and the tools using AI agents and harnesses; but the judgement calls stay human. That's why a full toolset only takes a few weeks, at money that makes sense for a firm your size. This is not big-corp budgets and timescales.
“We measure ourselves on one thing. Is your team still using what we built months after we've gone?
Our promise
Everything in our tools pages is drawn from real client work for an international software firm that had grown by acquisition. On a call, we'll walk you through a live model and a redacted decision scenario: what it mapped, what it settled, and what the team still uses months later.
No pitch deck, no obligation. Come with a decision you're weighing up, or just with the feeling that the ground is moving and you can't see it clearly yet. Both are normal, and both are where we start.
Everything we build rests on one idea, and the clearest way to understand it is by comparison to the most boring object of the twentieth century. Fifteen minutes, no jargon: how a steel box rewired the world, and how the same move works on a business.
Tools make you faster at the job you already have.
Coordination changes what the job is.
Most firms run on a handful of big products, systems or service lines. Each one works, but each is a single fused block, and you can only build crude shapes with blocks that big.
Pull each big block apart into the capabilities inside it. You see the work at full resolution for the first time, and you own far more reusable pieces than you thought.
Small bricks snap together in near-infinite ways. New offerings stop being product-sized bets and become combinations of things you already do well.
Back the specific capabilities that serve the strategy, instead of pouring money into big blocks and hoping the shape sorts itself out later.
Standard parts do something quieter than composability, and more powerful. They give the whole firm one trusted vocabulary. Leadership, engineering, finance and sales stop talking past each other, because they're reading from the same map.
When the language is shared, coordination stops being a meeting. It becomes how the work is shaped.
When we map your business, every part gets a manifest, every dependency gets drawn, and every big call can be tested against the whole. That's what the workbench is for.
This is where your team works out what to do next. Read the business several ways, trace what a decision touches, and see the options each view puts in front of you. Everything on this page is drawn from real client work, anonymised.
Read your business several ways: what's fit, what's ageing, what carries risk. Then weight what matters to you this year and watch the priority list re-rank in front of you. Open any capability to see the exact score behind its place, signal by signal.
Every part of your business and every dependency between them, on one map. Click the thing you're about to change and see everything it touches, while it's still cheap to know. Before we hand over, we agree who keeps the map current and how little time that takes.
Each capability declares what it's for, the value it delivers, its maturity, what it depends on, and the numbers it moves. Arguments get shorter when everyone reads from the same card.
Every capability scored as it runs today, next to where your strategy needs it to be. The distance between the two is your plan, sequenced and honest about effort.
One model underneath everything.
Every tool reads from the same map.
Everything above is drawn from real client work for an international software firm, anonymised. On a call, we'll walk you through a live model: what it mapped, what it settled, and what the team still uses. Thirty minutes, and no pitch.