The client
The firm delivers complex infrastructure projects for some of the largest names in its sector. After two decades and a near-perfect repeat business rate, it sits in a market growing around 14% a year. The ceiling on growth was never demand. It was the ability to scale the systems that find talent, win work, and free senior people from admin.
The challenge
Recruitment was the number one pain point. The firm hires around 30 people a year through agencies, at contingent fees of 15 to 25% of first-year salary. For senior roles that runs to a six-figure annual cost. Business development ran almost entirely through one person's network, and customer data lived across scattered spreadsheets with no CRM.
The starting point
Overall 4 / 10 · Exploring tier
A sequenced plan, not a tool wish-list
We ran the AI Readiness Diagnostic, scored the business across six dimensions and pressure-tested the findings against the wider market. The lowest scores were Process at 1 out of 5 and Data at 2 out of 5, the two things holding everything else back. So the sequencing tackles the high-volume manual work first, before layering on anything more advanced.
AI talent intelligence tools that replace agency fees with a proactive bench of pre-qualified contractors, ready to deploy. This answers the number one pain point and pays for itself within months.
HubSpot as the single source of truth for every client relationship, conversation and pipeline opportunity, with Breeze AI embedded for contact enrichment and follow-up.
A LinkedIn programme producing three quality posts a week that don't read like AI wrote them, tied to the existing marketing workload rather than adding to it.
AI-powered prospect research, personalised pre-event outreach and structured follow-up, layered on top of the industry events the team already attends.
Microsoft Copilot properly rolled out across project management, commercial and operations, unlocking value from a licence stack they most likely already own.
Initiatives 01 and 02 both handle personal data, so each was mapped against a minimum viable governance framework. Talent sourcing and contact enrichment stay inside UK GDPR from day one, not bolted on later.
"Justin did this for us earlier this year and it was way beyond what we expected. He benchmarked us properly against a real competitor in our space, sized the recruitment cost problem with actual numbers rather than vague promises, and built a 90-day plan with named owners and budgets against every line. The ROI case was specific and grounded, not the usual generic stuff. If you're thinking about whether this is worth doing, do it."