Service
Business Model Disruption
Business model disruption is not a competitor being cheaper. It is the expensive part of your work ceasing to be expensive. A consultative engagement that rethinks how your business makes money once AI and automation change what things cost.
Problems it addresses
If any of this sounds familiar, it is worth a conversation.
A competitor has started offering something you cannot match on price, and you suspect their cost base is different rather than their margin being thinner.
You have been buying software for years and the business still makes money in exactly the same way it always did.
Customers are starting to expect things your current model cannot deliver, like an instant answer or a self-service view.
You can see AI changing your industry eventually, but not whether that is a two-year problem or a ten-year one.
What we deliver
A working outcome, not a slide deck.
One fixed-scope engagement, run with your leadership rather than your IT function. Every artefact is yours, written in plain language, and useful whether or not we do any of the work that follows.
Business Model Review
A written account of what your customers actually pay for, what it costs you to deliver, and which parts of that are genuinely defensible rather than simply habitual.
Cost-to-Serve Map
Where the money and effort go across delivering your core offering, broken down far enough to see which steps AI and automation could change and which they cannot touch.
Disruption & Threat Assessment
Your revenue lines tested against the four patterns that actually disrupt a business model, plus what a new entrant without your legacy could do to your pricing, and what you could do first.
Sequenced Plan
What to change, in what order, with the do-nothing-yet option costed honestly alongside the rest rather than quietly left off the page.
The engagement
What's involved
A fixed-scope engagement. Here is what is involved, activity by activity, so you can see what the process covers before committing to it.
| Activity | What's involved |
|---|---|
| Preparation and industry read | Review of your market, your competitors and the material you supply |
| Leadership sessions | Working sessions on what you sell, who buys it and why |
| Cost-to-serve mapping | Following one unit of work end to end with the people who do it |
| Economic analysis | Testing each step against what AI and automation can actually change |
| Disruption pattern testing | Each revenue line against the four patterns, with the exposure named |
| Competitive modelling | Building the case a new entrant would put to your customers |
| Decision workshop | Separating model change from efficiency work, with your leadership |
| Plan and handover | Writing the sequenced plan and walking your team through it |
Any build work that follows is scoped separately once the plan is agreed.
Delivery process
How an engagement runs.
What you actually sell
Not the service description. What the customer is really buying, why they chose you over the alternative, and what they would miss if you stopped. This is usually less about the product than people expect.
Cost to serve
We follow one unit of work from enquiry to payment and record where the time, the people and the rework actually go. Most businesses have never written this down end to end.
Where AI moves the economics
Step by step against that map: which costs AI and automation genuinely remove, which they only shift, and which they leave exactly where they are. Being specific here is what separates this from a trend presentation.
The four disruption patterns
Your revenue lines tested against each one: the cost floor dropping so work you decline becomes profitable, billing for effort that is no longer needed, work you interpret becoming self-service, and a one-off sale becoming an ongoing service.
The competitor’s view
We sit on the other side of the table and work out what somebody with your customers and none of your constraints would build. It is uncomfortable and it is the most valuable hour of the engagement.
Decide, sequence and hand over
A working session with your leadership to separate what is worth doing now from what is worth watching, then the plan, the order, the owners and a plain statement of what each step assumes.
Pricing approach: discovery is a fixed fee. Build work is quoted as a fixed scope and price once discovery is complete, so you decide with the numbers in front of you. Ongoing support is a monthly retainer you can stop at any time.
Questions
Frequently asked.
What do you actually mean by business model disruption?+
Not a competitor undercutting you. Disruption is when the expensive part of your work stops being expensive, which changes what you can charge and who you can afford to serve. It shows up in four recognisable ways: the cost floor drops, so work you used to decline becomes profitable; you were billing for effort that is no longer needed; something you interpreted for customers becomes self-service; or a one-off sale becomes an ongoing service because watching something continuously got cheap. We test your revenue lines against all four, and in plenty of cases none of them apply yet, which is a useful finding in itself.
How is this different from Digital Transformation?+
Digital Transformation changes how the work gets done: off paper, off spreadsheets, onto connected systems. This asks whether the work itself is still the right work. One is an operations programme and the other is a conversation about pricing, offering and customers. Most businesses need the first. If you are not sure which you are looking at, say so on the call and we will tell you.
How is this different from AI Consulting?+
AI Consulting asks where AI fits inside the business you have and hands you a roadmap for building it. This asks whether the business you have is the right shape in the first place. They overlap at the edges, and plenty of clients only need the first one.
What if the answer is that nothing much needs to change?+
Then that is the finding, written down with the reasoning so you can revisit it in a year. We would rather deliver a short answer you can trust than pad it into a programme. It has happened more than once.
Do you need our financials?+
We need enough to understand cost to serve, which is usually a breakdown of how time is spent and roughly what the delivery side costs. We do not need your full accounts, and anything you do share stays in your own systems where we can work on it without copying it out.
Who needs to be involved from our side?+
Whoever can actually decide to change the offering. This does not work if it is delegated to an IT manager, because the questions are about pricing, customers and what the business is for. Expect a few sessions with your leadership.
Does anything get built?+
Not in this engagement. It is deliberately consultative: you end up with a decision and a plan, not a system. If something does need building, it is scoped separately through whichever service fits, so the thinking is never padded out to justify a build.
What happens after the engagement?+
You own the plan and can run it with anyone, including your existing suppliers. If you want us to build the parts that need building, that is scoped separately rather than bundled in here.
Further reading: When AI changes what you sell, not just how you work · 9 minute read, How AI disrupts a business model: four patterns · 8 minute read
Related services
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Getting the work out of paper, spreadsheets and email threads and into systems the whole business can see. Done a stage at a time, while you keep trading.
Business Process Optimisation
Your team is busy but throughput is low. We map how work actually flows, find the duplication and bottlenecks, and tell you what to eliminate, simplify, standardise, and only then, what to automate.
Is this a business-model problem, or three processes that need fixing?
We will tell you honestly whether this is the right answer for it.
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