All Case Studies

Curzon’s first task was to accurately diagnose what had gone wrong — and to resist the temptation to simply accelerate a methodology that wasn’t working. Our assessment concluded that Agile, while theoretically appropriate, was not suited to the organisation’s current capabilities and ways of working. We recommended a deliberate shift to a traditional Waterfall approach — a pragmatic call that prioritised delivery over methodology orthodoxy, and one that immediately created the structure needed to start clearing the backlog.

With the delivery approach reset, Curzon turned to the backlog itself — analysing it systematically to identify quick wins that could be delivered rapidly and visibly, and defining which items needed to be prioritised to get the programme back on track. Alongside this, we worked to rebuild the team’s capability through targeted, structured hiring aligned to the Data Strategy target operating model.

Equally important was the reputational dimension. Curzon ensured that the Data team’s progress and achievements were made directly visible to senior leaders — giving the C-suite genuine line-of-sight into the recovery effort and rapidly rebuilding the trust and credibility that had been lost. By making the team accountable to leadership in a transparent and structured way, we turned visibility from a risk into an asset.

Curzon began by creating a definitive spend cube — consolidating fragmented data into a single, authoritative picture of procurement spend across the business. This was the essential foundation: without it, there was no way to identify where the real opportunities lay or to build a credible case for action.

With a single set of numbers agreed, we conducted both a top-down and bottom-up analysis of spend at the detailed category and supplier level — identifying impactable spend and prioritising opportunities by size, speed, and deliverability. A structured implementation plan was developed and executed, with benefits closely monitored and recorded as they were realised to ensure traceability directly into business unit P&Ls.

In parallel, Curzon redesigned the procurement and supply chain organisation — bringing in the necessary skills and expertise to ensure the new operating model was not only installed but capable of sustaining the gains independently. The focus throughout was on in-year delivery: every workstream was sequenced and resourced to ensure that savings were cash-realisable within the financial year, not deferred to future periods.

Curzon began with several weeks of research to build a grounded, evidence-based picture of the growth landscape before bringing the leadership community together to act on it. The centrepiece of the engagement was a two-day Venkat workshop involving approximately 50 Managing Directors and Finance Directors from across the business, designed to generate genuine alignment at the top of the organisation around a shared vision and a prioritised set of growth opportunities.

This was not a presentation exercise. The workshop was structured to surface real options, stress-test assumptions, and produce agreed decisions that the full leadership group owned and could act on. From it, a shortlist of growth opportunities was agreed, including a number with cross-business potential that no single business line could pursue independently.

Teams were tasked with developing plans for each opportunity, and a Business Model methodology was deployed to work through the structural and capability implications of the new markets being targeted. New markets were defined, selected, and readied for launch, and a redesigned organisation to support the new model was designed and put into implementation.

Curzon applied a structured, fact-based diagnostic across the full breadth of the business — examining product, people, customers, regulation, operations, and supply chain through the Curzon framework. This comprehensive view of the organisation provided the solid foundation needed to develop a credible set of options rather than defaulting to an obvious but potentially suboptimal solution.

From the diagnostic, we developed an options-based operating model to serve as an anchor point for scenario evaluation across three primary lenses. Rather than presenting a recommendation and seeking sign-off, we worked interactively with key stakeholders from across the business — testing the practical feasibility of each scenario and building the ownership that would be essential for successful implementation.

Priority options were then subject to extensive assessment, including a detailed financial evaluation conducted in close cooperation with the client’s finance function, to identify the configuration that best balanced profitability with the ability to capture future market opportunities. The resulting recommendation was not only financially robust — it was structured to be self-funding, with a clear two-year payback that removed the need for external capital commitment.

Curzon began by establishing the size of the prize — quantifying the addressable improvement potential across the site using an 80/20 approach to focus effort where it would have the greatest impact. This gave the client a clear, evidence-based view of what was achievable and formed the basis of a structured implementation plan.

A unified maintenance spares planning process was developed and implemented across the site — replacing the patchwork of individual practices with a single, coherent methodology. Critically, this process differentiated between planned and unplanned maintenance articles, allowing stock levels to be set with genuine precision rather than as a blunt hedge against uncertainty.

To manage the risk of site-wide rollout, Curzon piloted the new processes and management approach in two units first — validating the methodology and refining it before scaling. KPIs were defined and implemented to give operational units the visibility and accountability they had previously lacked, and a centralised planning function was established for freely available articles used across multiple plants.

Underpinning all of this was a shift from reactive order processing to proactive inventory management — embedding a continuous improvement mindset that would sustain the gains beyond the life of the project itself.

Curzon moved at pace — conducting a rapid but comprehensive assessment that covered the internal landscape, the external market, and the delivery partners operating across the programme. The work was structured around four interlocking activities.

First, a productivity management capability framework was developed to provide a consistent, organisation-wide lens through which digital solutions could be understood and compared. Second, stakeholder interviews were used to map the current-state usage of digital solutions across the business — creating, for the first time, a single consolidated picture of what was in use, where, and to what effect.

Third, a rapid assessment of the external landscape was conducted — including a digital maturity assessment of key delivery partners, external case studies of industry-leading solutions, and a market assessment of tools with potential for adoption. This external perspective ensured the organisation was benchmarking its digital ambition against the best available, not just against its own prior practice.

Finally, a standardised prioritisation methodology was applied — assessing each solution across four dimensions: value-add, deliverability, scalability, and alignment to industry direction. The result was a prioritised digital portfolio with clear implementation sequencing, grounded in objective criteria rather than internal advocacy or historical momentum.

Curzon took a data-centric approach from the outset — recognising that the fragmented analytical landscape was the root cause of most of the operational problems, and that sustainable improvement required a single, integrated planning foundation rather than another layer of process on top of existing dysfunction.

A Minimum Viable Product model was designed and implemented first — proving the approach at smaller scale before committing to full rollout. This disciplined sequencing reduced implementation risk and built the internal confidence needed to scale. The product hierarchy structure was scrutinised and rationalised to form a credible basis for S&OP planning, complemented by value chain analysis across key product lines to identify the highest-impact improvement opportunities.

All demand signals were mapped against available capacity — creating reliable utilisation plans supported by historical Demonstrated Capacity data. Inventory consumption plans were developed, integrating future buying patterns and opportunities for strategic procurement across 3,000+ components at an aggregated value of £4.7 million. Seamless S&OP review cycles were established, with detailed objectives and long-term performance measures giving the organisation the ongoing discipline to sustain the gains.

The result was a business that moved from reactive operations managed by instinct to proactive planning managed by data — with the visibility, controls, and processes needed to serve its customers reliably and its contracts confidently.