Business development and management consulting
Intelligent Business
Solutions for route to market, operating models, product delivery and business administration.
Incorporated 2024 · company 15498047 · Mildenhall, Suffolk, United Kingdom
- Own the risk
- Three products
- Built and funded by us. Each one is written up on this site with its status stated at the top.
- Say the hard thing
- One stopped
- Easy Tax Digital is finished software we chose not to launch. The reasoning is published, not buried.
- Leave properly
- Exit at the start
- Handover criteria are written during the first phase, so the engagement has an end rather than a renewal.
The problem we work on
Advice with nothing behind it.
Most consulting is delivered by people who have never carried the risk of the thing they are recommending. We own three products, so the advice is priced by someone holding the same kind of position.
Plans that stop at the deck.
A strategy that does not change what happens on Tuesday is a document, not a decision. Every engagement here is judged on whether the company operates differently ninety days later.
The uncomfortable answer.
Sometimes the finding is that the product is wrong, the market is not there, or the build should stop. We have reached that conclusion about our own software and acted on it.
What we do
Revenue first, then the machinery behind it.
Most companies that come to us have one of two problems: they cannot sell what they have built, or they cannot run what they have sold. If your problem is neither, we will say so.
Revenue
Business development
Finding the budget line before writing the collateral. We test the offer and the price with real buyers, write down what they said rather than what we hoped, and build a motion your team can run without us in the room.
- · Named buyers and blockers, not personas
- · A price tested by asking for it
- · Evidence on demand within five to seven weeks, including evidence there is none
Operating model
Management consulting
The join between strategy and Tuesday. We map how the company actually operates rather than how the org chart says it does, then fix the places where the two disagree and it costs you money.
- · Decision rights written down for the decisions that currently stall
- · Processes reworked in the real business before being generalised
- · Ownership assigned to named people before we leave
Management consulting
Operating model, decision rights, and the processes that quietly cost you.
Digital product delivery
Built, shipped and operable by the people who own it afterwards.
Technology strategy
Build, buy or stop. Costed, with the assumptions visible.
Compliance and operations
Filings on a calendar with an owner, and records that support them.
Portfolio
Three businesses we own, including one we stopped.
Each has its status stated at the top and ends with what we would do differently. Easy Tax Digital is finished software that never launched, and it is on the site for the same reason the other two are.
QAI Labs
qailabs.io
An applied AI engineering practice that puts production AI on infrastructure the client controls, together with the agentic frameworks that make those systems auditable.
Read the write-upSkipHireCompare
skiphirecompare.com
A UK skip hire comparison directory built on geospatial search, with a paid listings model and direct debit collection for suppliers.
Read the write-upEasy Tax Digital
easytaxdigital.com
Making Tax Digital filing software for sole traders and landlords, engineered against the live HMRC API surface, with launch deferred on commercial grounds.
Read the write-upHow we engage
Four phases, and an exit agreed at the start.
Frame → Prove → Build → Hand over
We write the handover criteria during Frame, before the work begins. It changes what gets built, and it means the engagement has a defined end rather than a renewal conversation.
Notes
We write up what we learn, including what did not work.
- Insight · 8 August 2026Validating the regulation is not validating the customerWe built Making Tax Digital filing software against a compulsory obligation with a hard deadline, and it still did not reach launch. The mistake was treating a mandate as evidence of demand.3 min
- Insight · 1 August 2026Build the hard side of a marketplace first, by handWe shipped a skip hire comparison site with production geospatial matching and two payment paths before proving a single supplier would pay for a listing. What we would do instead, and how to tell which side is the hard one.3 min
- Insight · 21 July 2026Find the stage that leaks before you change the one that is loudestMost pipeline problems get worked on at the stage that generates the most noise rather than the stage where the drop-off actually happens. A short method for telling the two apart.3 min
Start with what is in the way.
Most of this work is shaped by the obstacle rather than the ambition. A deal that keeps stalling at the same stage, a process nobody owns, a product that will not sell, a decision that has been open for months. Tell us yours and we will say honestly whether we are the right people for it.