Analytics consulting is great work. Now turn it into a great business.
I advise analytics consultancies and agencies on the commercial side of the practice: packaging, positioning, cost-effective delivery, and team structure. The stuff that turns great work into a great business.
Practical, useful and agenda-free advisory from someone who's already completed the journey.
Analytics practices tend to be built up around technique and expertise. Either they grow around a practitioner that starts a consulting business, or they grow around a talented person or small team that started delivering what clients ask for.
My advisory helps you put commercial and operational structure around technical delivery, to make sure it scales profitably and sustainably.
Packaging and pricing. How do you sell your services? How do you determine pricing, and how do you get clients to agree to it without putting up a fight? How do you define services in a way that prevents leakage, prevents scope creep, and ensures you stay profitable? How do you decouple pricing from labour, so it reflects the delivered value rather than the consumed hours?
Positioning. What’s the specific expertise that your practice is known for? What problems do you solve, for whom, and in what manner do you deliver them? How do you talk about your commercial offering in the market? How do you shift from being an order-taker of occasional implementation work into a valued strategic partner?
Team and operations. Who does the work? Who makes sure the trains run on time? Who makes sure the delivery team doesn’t get burned out? Who is responsible for making sure your technical abilities stay current in the face of a shifting market? And can you answer all these questions without the founder being the bottleneck?
M&A preparation and advisory. Build the right practices, systems and relationships to create an analytics business that gets acquired.
How we work together.
Advisory Retainer
Regular monthly advisory for growing analytics businesses. The Advisory Retainer suits founders and operators of solo practices, small teams and established agencies. We have an advisory call each month, with support via email, voice and web call in between for issues that might come up. Some people want me In The Room (where I'm on call for advice and support), and others want me On The Journey (where I'm more closely aligned to steering decisions). The Advisory Retainer typically covers pricing, positioning, team structure, operations, and how to navigate specific client relationships. The result is a clearer set of decisions and next moves for your practice.
Practice Builder
How do you build or rebuild an analytics function that can sell clearly, price profitably and deliver without depending on one person? Practice Builder is a structured twelve-month programme for consultancies building an analytics function, or rebuilding one that no longer fits their commercial goals. It connects your offer, positioning, pricing, team, and operating model. Over the course of a year, we work through four connected decisions: define the analytics offer and positioning; make pricing and packaging decisions; define the team and delivery structure; and set an operating plan with implementation support. In practice, building or rebuilding the function means deciding what it sells, who delivers it, how work gets delivered, and what the business does next.
Practice Diagnostic
What is holding your analytics practice back, and which decision should you make first? Practice Diagnostic is a fixed-fee review of the commercial state of your practice. I review your offering, pricing, pipeline and delivery, then give you a written findings report and a short list of decisions worth making in sequential order. The diagnostic gives you an outside view of the issues affecting the practice, and a sensible order for addressing them. It is a focused starting point when you need to understand the commercial state of the business before committing to a larger change.
Advice from someone who has run the business you're building
I founded Data Runs Deep, and grew it from a solo-operator freelance operation, then to a small team, and then into the largest GA360 Reseller in Australia and New Zealand before selling the business to Jellyfish.
I now advise people running businesses at various stages throughout the same journey, aiming to be the one thing I never had while I was building: unbiased, effective advice from someone who’s done it before.
Thoughts on the business of analytics consulting.
I post on LinkedIn now and again, thinking about the commercial patterns under analytics practices. For longer, more considered, less frequent and (hopefully) still useful stuff, subscribe to my newsletter by adding your email address in the box to the right.
The same thinking, out loud.
I’ve spoken at industry-leading analytics events across APAC, the US and Europe, including Superweek, MeasureSummit and Emetrics. My speaking focuses on the commercial side of analytics consulting: how practices get built, priced, sold and scaled.
If you’d like this thinking on your stage, on your podcast, or in front of your team, get in touch.
Start a conversation.
Tell me a bit about your practice and what prompted you to write. I read everything and reply personally, usually within a couple of business days.
I’m based in Naarm / Melbourne, and spend a few months a year in the UK. I work remotely with clients anywhere in the world.
Prefer LinkedIn? My DMs are open ↗