The data and AI engagements, answered in full.
- questions in this group, each answered in full
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60 questions on the data and AI engagements, answered by Tenhaw, a UK AI consultancy and AI delivery partner based in London. Nothing here is a summary: each answer is the exact text from the page that owns it, and every group links back to that page for the context around it.
On this page
London specialty insurance market
Answered on London specialty insurance market, and rendered here in the same words.
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Why is the client in this case study not named?
Because the client has not consented to being named, and Tenhaw treats consent as binding. The engagement is with a business in the London specialty insurance market, and that is as specific as the page gets. The architecture in detail, the model and platform choices, the prompt and review approach and the working history of the fortnight all sit under client confidentiality alongside the name. That restraint is the point. If you engage Tenhaw, you should expect the same treatment of your name and your estate.
Is the twelve months to two weeks comparison fair?
Yes, provided you read it the way the case study frames it. The two-week proof of concept was greenfield. It began from a blank repository on Azure and replaced work that had stalled, so there was no running system with existing behaviour to preserve. The roughly twelve months is this client's own prior effort circling the same capability, getting information out of PDFs and turning it into business intelligence, without a working result. Same business goal, reached in a fortnight, under conditions that favoured speed. And the claim is a working proof of concept, not a production system.
What does the 70% figure in this case study mean?
It is the client engineer's own confidence, in their own words, that they could run the process without Tenhaw. The entire two-week build was pair-programmed with one of the client's engineers, because a proof of concept nobody internal can reproduce is a demonstration rather than a capability. At the end of the fortnight Tenhaw asked that engineer how confident they were that they could follow the process and deliver the next outcome unaided, and the answer was 70%. It is deliberately the softest number on the page and the one Tenhaw cares about most, because it marks the difference between buying a proof of concept and starting to acquire a capability.
Is the insurance proof of concept in production yet?
No, and the case study says so plainly. The two-week build is a working proof of concept inside the client's regulated estate: PDFs in, structured and enriched data out, business intelligence on a dashboard the business already uses. Month three of the engagement stands up an adjacent agent-led engineering team to productionise it against the organisation's security standards, on a four-to-six week target. When production lands, the result will be published on the page, dated. A proof of concept is labelled as one here until production is real.
What did month one of the insurance engagement involve?
Month one was an audit, and it went a long way past a readout. Tenhaw took on whatever was actually blocking delivery. That meant unblocking the data quality issues holding up development and testing, supporting disaster-recovery failover planning and release governance, and leading the migration from Azure DevOps boards to a GitHub-based delivery model with agent-assisted workflows. In parallel it contributed to the workshops shaping product vision, data strategy and the AI operating model, and produced the structured outputs defining MVP focus, data foundations and AI strategy. By the end of the month Tenhaw understood the estate from the inside, and that is what set up the month-two build.
What would this insurance engagement cost at published rates?
At Tenhaw's published pricing this maps to an Agentic Build Team at £70k–£85k per month, three people under partner oversight. A business that wanted the programme oversight without the build would be looking at Programme and Delivery Management at £18k–£35k per month. Both come off a published rate card. Partner £1,560 a day, senior practitioner £1,250, associate £950, excluding VAT, at twenty billable days a month. Stating the equivalence on a confidential case study is deliberate, because the pricing is not confidential. You can price the same shape of engagement for your own estate before a single call.
What happened before any code was written on the insurance build?
The requirements were engineered first. Every requirement, including PDFs, diagrams and images, was converted to structured markdown, AI built a knowledge map across the whole corpus, and a gap-and-contradiction pass surfaced ambiguities the business had not realised were ambiguous. Those went back to the subject-matter experts and got resolved in conversation, before they could turn into rework later. Only then did the build start, from a blank repository on Azure, with high-level prompts against the whole requirement set and a security review roughly every fifth prompt. That sequence is what Tenhaw calls its AI-engineering-first method, run here inside a regulated estate.
How does the pipeline decide which records a human reviews?
Three things go into a confidence score on each record. Where the enrichment came from, how certain the model itself reports it is, and what an independent search-based check makes of the value produced. The score drives routing and is never simply displayed. Review is routed by confidence and consequence together, so a low-confidence field on a high-consequence record reaches a human first, and a high-confidence field on a low-consequence record does not generate work. The case study is explicit that this is a routing rule, not an assurance framework, and it has not been through a regulator or an audit.
Who owns the business rules in the document pipeline?
The client does, by design. Extraction to markdown, narrowing to key fields, normalisation, enrichment against third-party APIs and semantic grouping are all plumbing. The business logic layer sits on top of them and runs the client's own rules over each enriched record. The case study calls that layer theirs, not ours, and it is the layer that changes most often, so it should not belong to a supplier. Output then lands in an internal dashboard the business already uses. Built to leave applies to the architecture, not just the contract.
Can AI validate entity resolution output automatically?
On this engagement, yes, at proof-of-concept level. Alongside the main document pipeline, a separate AI data-quality proof of concept on Azure OpenAI showed that entity-resolution output could be validated and scored automatically, with human review prioritised rather than queued. The practical difference is who waits. The scoring decides which matches need human eyes first, so people are not working down a queue of every matched record. This was demonstrated on a live engagement in the London specialty insurance market, and like the main build it is a proof of concept, not a production deployment.
How does a specialty insurance AI implementation run month by month?
Monthly, and each month has to end in something measurable. Month one of this specialty insurance AI implementation was an audit that behaved like ownership, taking on whatever was actually blocking delivery and producing the operating-model outputs on MVP focus, data foundations and AI strategy. Month two was the build. A working proof of concept in a fortnight, PDFs in and business intelligence out on a dashboard the business already uses. Month three stands up an adjacent agent-led engineering team to productionise it against the organisation's security standards, on a four-to-six week target. One senior person has been accountable since month one.
What does a London specialty insurance AI strategy need beyond tool licences?
Something the business can build against. This client's leadership wanted a London specialty insurance AI strategy that amounted to more than a set of tool licences, so month one produced the structured outputs defining MVP focus, data foundations and AI strategy, alongside the workshops shaping product vision and data strategy. Month two then tested it by building. A working proof of concept in two weeks, PDFs in, structured and enriched data out, business intelligence on a dashboard the business already uses. The order is the point. The people who wrote the strategy had to deliver against it a month later. That is a harder test than a slide review.
How was security handled on a two-week AI build in a regulated estate?
Roughly every fifth prompt, a security review ran across the whole system, inside the build rather than after it. The fortnight started from a blank repository on Azure inside the client's regulated estate, with high-level prompts against the whole requirement set. Reviewing at that rhythm keeps each review small enough to act on while the code is still cheap to change. Security was already a live programme concern when we arrived, with a gate approaching and no coordination owner, and month one picked that up. The cadence is a build practice. Sign-off comes with productionisation against the organisation's security standards.
Why move delivery from Azure DevOps boards to GitHub?
The delivery tooling was split across both, so no single place showed the state of the work. Month one led the migration to a GitHub-based delivery model with agent-assisted workflows. That puts the delivery record next to the code the agents are working in, so nobody has to keep a separate system in step by hand. The same month also covered the data issues holding up development and testing, plus disaster-recovery failover planning and release governance. Read it as the right call for this estate. It is not a general instruction to leave Azure DevOps behind.
Why not just send whole PDFs to the model?
Because carrying whole documents through every stage is expensive and hard to check. Each source document is converted to markdown first, so what the model actually read stays inspectable by a human instead of disappearing into an embedding. The markdown is then narrowed to the fields the business needs, so whole documents are not carried forward and paid for at every later step. Normalisation, enrichment against third-party APIs with the provenance of each source attached, and semantic grouping all run on that narrow record, and the client's own business rules run last. Keeping the markdown means a person can still see where an answer came from.
If the sources do not answer it, a call will.
Talk it throughHSBC AI Voice Insights
Answered on HSBC AI Voice Insights, and rendered here in the same words.
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Is voice analytics experience relevant to building AI agents?
Yes, the engineering transfers even though the product differs. The HSBC Voice Insights work applied natural language processing, sentiment analysis and entity recognition to enterprise voice data inside a regulated bank, with innovation, operations and risk in the room from the start. Those are disciplines agentic systems still stand on: extracting reliable structure from messy language, keeping privacy and accuracy intact at scale, and building alongside the people who own the controls. What does not transfer is production evidence. The platform reached proof of concept, so treat the study as engineering pedigree in a regulated environment, not as a claim that this system runs anywhere today.
Is the 1.5 million hours a year figure at HSBC a real saving?
It is a projection, and the study labels it as one. The proof of concept demonstrated that natural language processing, sentiment analysis and entity recognition could remove manual administration, note-taking and summarising across millions of hours of recorded calls and meetings, and 1.5M+ hours a year is what that removal was projected to be worth at HSBC's scale. Nobody has banked it. The platform reached proof of concept and stopped short of production, so it is potential shown, not a saving audited. A projection labelled as a projection is worth more to you than a banked-sounding number nobody can stand behind.
What did the HSBC voice insights proof of concept actually build?
Working prototypes, not slideware. The build combined natural language processing, sentiment analysis and entity recognition over enterprise voice data, and shipped prototypes that auto-generated meeting summaries, detected emerging themes across conversations, and surfaced real-time dashboards. The point was to turn millions of hours of captured but unanalysed calls and meetings into usable intelligence, with privacy, accuracy and scale treated as requirements rather than afterthoughts. The study's own label for it is a proof of concept shipped, not theorised.
Did HSBC's voice insights platform go into production?
No. It reached proof of concept, and nobody has run it at scale. The work did prove that voice data could become a new source of business intelligence inside a regulated bank, which is why it still earned a place in HSBC's thinking on AI platforms. Tenhaw writes every case study this way. Where an engagement ended at a pilot or a proof of concept, the study says so, because a prototype described honestly tells you more about how a consultancy will report to you than a rollout implied and never delivered.
How was privacy handled when analysing HSBC's voice data?
Privacy was in the task definition from the start, not retrofitted. The brief was to turn recorded calls and meetings into usable intelligence with privacy, accuracy and scale intact, so the constraint sat alongside the capability and never arrived as a late objection. In practice that meant coordinating innovation, operations and risk throughout the build, so the people who would have to approve adoption were shaping the work while it was being made. The detailed controls are HSBC's own. The operating pattern is the part that travels. In a regulated estate, adoption readiness gets built with the risk function, not presented to it.
What insight is hiding in a bank's recorded calls and meetings?
Customer insight, operational inefficiency and risk signals, in HSBC's case buried across millions of hours of voice data that was captured but never analysed. Every call and meeting held information about what customers wanted, where processes were failing and where risk was emerging, and none of it was reachable because the only extraction method was a person taking notes. That is the shape of the problem in most large organisations: the data already exists and is already being recorded, so the cost is not collection but analysis. The HSBC proof of concept showed the analysis could be automated with natural language processing, sentiment analysis and entity recognition.
Why involve risk and operations before an AI prototype is finished?
Because a prototype that risk sees for the first time when it is finished is a prototype that stalls. On the HSBC Voice Insights work, innovation, operations and risk were coordinated throughout the build, so the platform was moving towards adoption readiness while it was still being made rather than queuing for approval afterwards. In a regulated bank that is the difference between a demonstration and a candidate for deployment. Tenhaw carries the same pattern into agentic work now. The people who own the controls are in the room from the start, because retrofitting their requirements is slower than building to them.
Can voice data become a source of business intelligence?
Yes, and the HSBC proof of concept demonstrated it inside a major regulated bank. Applying natural language processing, sentiment analysis and entity recognition to enterprise voice data produced auto-generated meeting summaries, emerging-theme detection and real-time dashboards, turning a passive archive of recorded calls and meetings into intelligence the business could act on. At HSBC's scale the projection was 1.5M+ hours a year of manual administration removed. If your calls and meetings are already recorded then the raw material exists. The analysis layer that reads it can be built and shipped, and three months at HSBC produced one.
How long did the HSBC voice insights proof of concept take?
Three months, from James joining HSBC's Innovation Portfolio to a shipped proof of concept with working prototypes over enterprise voice data. For comparison, Tenhaw's current Agentic Proof of Concept is a fixed £20k–£55k and runs two to four weeks, a pace today's models and tooling make possible. What has not changed is the shape of the outcome. Both end in a working system you can judge with your own eyes, not a paper recommending one.
Can one proof of concept change a bank's AI strategy?
It did at HSBC. The Voice Insights proof of concept proved that voice data could become a new source of business intelligence, and that evidence shaped the bank's strategic direction on AI platforms. It carried that weight because it was shipped, not theorised. The case rested on working prototypes running over real enterprise voice data, and innovation, operations and risk had been coordinated throughout the build, so the result arrived with adoption readiness attached instead of a queue of unanswered objections. A working prototype changes a strategy conversation in a way no deck can. That is why Tenhaw's own AI Readiness Audit ends in working prototypes.
Why not just use the meeting summariser in our conferencing tool?
For a single meeting, use it. The HSBC AI Voice Insights proof of concept sat a layer above that, applying natural language processing, sentiment analysis and entity recognition across an estate where millions of hours of calls and meetings were captured but never analysed, and shipping prototypes that auto-generated summaries, detected emerging themes and surfaced real-time dashboards. A built-in summariser tells you what was said in the room you were already in. Reading the whole archive tells you what customers keep raising, where processes are failing and where risk is building. The study describes that as the insight buried in voice data. Both are uses of personal data, so the smaller tool does not remove the privacy work.
Why analyse recorded calls when we already survey our customers?
Because the conversation happens first, and almost none of it reaches you. At HSBC, millions of hours of calls and meetings were captured but never analysed, with insight about customers, inefficiency and risk sitting inside them, unreachable because the only extraction method was a person taking notes. A survey gives you the people who chose to answer, after the event, in your words. The recorded estate is everyone who called, in theirs. What the proof of concept established is that voice data could become a new source of business intelligence, with natural language processing, sentiment analysis and entity recognition doing the reading no team could do by hand.
What does entity recognition actually do on a customer call?
It turns the specifics of a conversation into things you can count. Natural language processing gives you structure and sentiment analysis gives you tone, but entity recognition is what pulls out the names, products, amounts and references a call contains, so a stretch of speech becomes something you can group, filter and trend. At HSBC the three were used together over enterprise voice data. That combination is what made emerging-theme detection and real-time dashboards possible. Without it you have a searchable pile of words. The same extraction lets a write-up be generated instead of typed, and that is where the projected 1.5M+ hours a year of manual administration sat.
Should we start with meeting summaries or trend dashboards?
Summaries, usually, because that is where the removable administration sits and the people whose calls are analysed feel it immediately. The HSBC figure of 1.5M+ hours a year came from manual note-taking and summarising, and it remains a projection. That platform reached proof of concept and went no further. Themes and dashboards are worth more over a longer run, since they tell you what is rising across the whole estate and not just what happened in one conversation, but they only pay if someone in operations has already decided what they will do with the answer. At HSBC all three shipped inside a three-month proof of concept, so sequencing is rarely the real constraint.
Do you need to analyse every call, or is a sample enough?
A sample tells you what was happening. The whole estate tells you what is changing. Emerging-theme detection, one of the prototypes the HSBC proof of concept shipped, only means something if new themes can be spotted as they rise, and that needs continuous coverage. A quarterly slice will not do it. Scale sat in the brief for that reason, alongside privacy and accuracy, because the value was locked in millions of hours of calls and meetings that were captured but never analysed. Sampling is still the sensible way to start, on your own recordings, while you test whether the analysis holds up before you commit to the full pipeline.
If the sources do not answer it, a call will.
Talk it throughAnglo American
Answered on Anglo American, and rendered here in the same words.
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What did Tenhaw do for Anglo American?
Over 18 months we set up and ran the digital teams inside Anglo American's internal hydrogen startup, three disciplines covering Data, Simulation and DevOps. The venture existed to prove that mining operations could run on hydrogen-powered trucks with hydrogen produced on-site. It needed a digital framework that would hold up under scrutiny, with decisions made on data and teams aligned across three continents, and there was no precedent to copy from. The work underpinned a £40bn business case and produced the decisive insight that hydrogen trucks were not yet cost-competitive. The internal startup later spun out as First Mode, now a leader in heavy-industry decarbonisation.
Did Anglo American prove hydrogen-powered mining was viable?
Yes, and with an honest economic edge. Anglo American's internal startup existed to prove mining operations could run on hydrogen-powered trucks with hydrogen produced on-site, and the digital teams Tenhaw built and ran over 18 months proved it, underpinning a £40bn business case. The same work also produced the decisive insight that hydrogen trucks were not yet cost-competitive, so leadership could invest with eyes open rather than on optimism. Viability and economics are different questions, and a delivery engine built on throughput data and Monte Carlo forecasting is what let the venture answer both without flattering itself.
What is First Mode and where does Tenhaw fit in its story?
First Mode is the heavy-industry decarbonisation company that began life as Anglo American's internal startup, formed to prove mining operations could run on hydrogen-powered trucks with hydrogen produced on-site. Tenhaw's role came before the spin-out. We built and ran the venture's digital teams across Data, Simulation and DevOps for 18 months, installing the delivery engine that let it make decisions on data and stand up to scrutiny. The work underpinned a £40bn business case, and the venture subsequently spun out as First Mode, now a standalone leader in its field.
How do you run delivery when there is no precedent to copy?
Eighteen months, three teams, three continents, no precedent to copy. At Anglo American's internal hydrogen startup we stood up Data, Simulation and DevOps, kept them aligned across the UK, Australia and the USA, and put forecasting on a measured footing. Throughput data fed into Monte Carlo simulations. Outcome-based milestones took the place of traditional project plans, so the largest risks were attacked first. The venture got its answer, including the unwelcome finding that hydrogen trucks were not yet cost-competitive, and it later spun out as First Mode.
How do you stand up a delivery function when there is no precedent to copy?
You attack the largest risks first and let data replace opinion. At Anglo American's hydrogen venture we installed a lightweight, scalable agile blueprint so specialists could onboard fast and stay aligned. Outcome-based milestones took over from traditional project plans, so the riskiest assumptions were tested earliest, and throughput data fed Monte Carlo simulations so forecasts came from evidence. The framework stayed lightweight on purpose. It had to hold up under scrutiny without smothering specialist work. That balance matters most when nobody has built the thing before and the plan cannot be copied from a previous programme.
How did the hydrogen programme stay aligned across three continents?
Delivery ran async by necessity, with teams in the UK, Australia and the USA, so alignment could never depend on everyone being in the same meeting. A lightweight, scalable agile blueprint let high-calibre specialists onboard fast and stay aligned. Throughput data fed Monte Carlo forecasts, so every location worked from the same evidence. Outcome-based milestones replaced conventional project plans, and everyone knew the priority. Attack the largest risks first. When the shared reference point is data and not a meeting, time zones stop being the constraint they first appear to be.
Why replace a project plan with outcome-based milestones?
Because on a programme with no precedent, a traditional plan is guesswork presented with false confidence. At Anglo American's hydrogen venture the milestones were outcome-based instead, so the largest risks were attacked first. The programme existed to find out whether hydrogen-powered mining was viable, so every milestone was framed around answering that question rather than completing tasks in sequence. The approach showed in the result. The venture produced the decisive insight that hydrogen trucks were not yet cost-competitive, and leadership could invest with eyes open instead of discovering the economics at the end.
Why was finding hydrogen trucks not yet cost-competitive a good outcome?
The venture's job was to establish the truth about viability, not to confirm a hope. Its digital teams produced the decisive insight that hydrogen trucks were not yet cost-competitive, so Anglo American's leadership knew the economics before the money was committed. Tenhaw applies the same principle to AI work today. A recommendation to stop is a valid outcome, and an honest number beats a flattering one. The finding did not kill the venture either. It spun out as First Mode and now leads in heavy-industry decarbonisation.
How can delivery data underpin a £40bn business case?
By giving every forecast an evidence trail. The Data, Simulation and DevOps teams gave Anglo American's hydrogen venture a digital framework built to hold up under scrutiny. Throughput data fed Monte Carlo simulations, forecasts carried probabilities rather than a single guessed date, and decisions were made on data. A £40bn business case attracts hard questions, and answers grounded in measured delivery survive them in a way estimates on a slide do not. Tenhaw forecasts client delivery from throughput history today for the same reason, so nobody has to trust a date on faith.
Can agile work for PhD-level specialists?
Yes, if the framework is lightweight enough to serve the work rather than dominate it. Anglo American's hydrogen venture brought high-calibre specialists, Cambridge PhDs among them, into Data, Simulation and DevOps teams, and the agile blueprint Tenhaw installed was deliberately lightweight and scalable so those specialists could onboard fast and stay aligned without ceremony for its own sake. Specialists do not resist structure, they resist structure that wastes their time. Give them outcome-based milestones, honest throughput data and async ways of working that respect colleagues on other continents, and the discipline protects the research instead of interrupting it.
Where does a mining AI digital transformation usually stall?
In delivery, almost never in the models. A mining AI digital transformation tends to put specialists, sites and decision makers on different continents, offers no precedent to copy, and hangs off capital decisions too large to settle on opinion. That was the problem at Anglo American's internal hydrogen startup. Over 18 months we set up and ran Data, Simulation and DevOps teams across the UK, Australia and the USA, replaced traditional project plans with outcome-based milestones so the largest risks were attacked first, and fed throughput data into Monte Carlo simulations so forecasts came from evidence. That footing is why the £40bn business case underneath the venture held up under scrutiny, and why a programme of that size stalls without it.
Why did the Anglo American engagement run for 18 months?
Because the venture was building a delivery function from nothing, not tuning one that already existed. Anglo American's internal hydrogen startup had no precedent to copy, so across those eighteen months we set up and ran three disciplines, Data, Simulation and DevOps, with high-calibre specialists spread across the UK, Australia and the USA, and produced a digital framework that held up under the scrutiny a £40bn business case attracts. Length like that is earned month by month. Engagements today are retainer-shaped, with an exit date agreed at kickoff and 30 days' notice either side, so you judge each month on the value it delivered.
What goes wrong when a big company launches an internal startup?
It inherits the parent's delivery machinery, and that machinery assumes somebody has done this before. Anglo American's hydrogen venture needed the opposite: a framework light enough that high-calibre specialists, Cambridge PhDs among them, could onboard fast and stay aligned, yet credible enough to survive the scrutiny a £40bn business case attracts. The move that mattered was pointing every milestone at the question the venture existed to answer, whether mining operations could run on hydrogen-powered trucks with hydrogen produced on-site, so answers arrived while they could still change the investment. That included the unwelcome one, that hydrogen trucks were not yet cost-competitive. The failure mode to avoid is a venture that reports beautifully and learns slowly.
What should we ask a partner before a first-of-a-kind programme?
Three things, all about evidence. First, how will you forecast when there is no history to forecast from? At Anglo American's hydrogen venture we fed throughput data into Monte Carlo simulations as it accumulated, so forecasts rested on measurement rather than optimism. Second, what are your milestones pointed at? Ours were outcome-based and replaced traditional project plans, so the largest risks were attacked first instead of tasks being completed in sequence. Third, will you tell us something we would rather not hear? That venture's decisive insight was that hydrogen trucks were not yet cost-competitive. Leadership could then invest with eyes open, and the startup went on to spin out as First Mode.
How do we test the economics before funding a big AI programme?
Name the decision the money turns on, then buy the cheapest honest test of it. Anglo American's hydrogen venture worked that way. Its milestones were framed around whether mining could run on hydrogen-powered trucks with hydrogen produced on-site, so the economics surfaced early enough to act on, including the finding that hydrogen trucks were not yet cost-competitive. Leadership could invest with eyes open instead of meeting the numbers at the end. For AI the equivalent is the AI Readiness Audit: four weeks, £44,000 fixed, ending in working prototypes, with no obligation to continue. A recommendation to stop is a valid outcome, and it is far cheaper than learning late.
If the sources do not answer it, a call will.
Talk it throughGlobelynx
Answered on Globelynx, and rendered here in the same words.
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What did Tenhaw do for Globelynx?
Globelynx is a UK media and broadcast technology business, and the engagement ran nine months across 16 client deliveries and one internal change project. We introduced iterative planning, stand-ups and retrospectives, coordinated timelines and dependencies across the workstreams, renegotiated supplier engagements, and continuously collated operational data into trends leadership could act on. Within six months delivery lead times had fallen by 60% and client satisfaction had risen, and £100k of supplier savings were negotiated.
How did Globelynx cut delivery lead times by 60%?
By changing working practices, not by buying anything. Iterative planning, stand-ups and retrospectives went in across 16 client deliveries and one internal change project. Timelines and dependencies were coordinated across the lot rather than per team, and supplier engagements were renegotiated to improve performance as well as cost. Those practices produced comparable delivery data, which gave the improvement a measured baseline, and the 60% reduction was measured against it with the client over six months. Teams that previously could not prioritise effectively got operational data to prioritise with, and decisions across Operations, Partnerships and Client Management, which had lacked actionable data, got sharper.
Is a 60% reduction in delivery lead times believable?
Yes, and the working behind the number is the part that matters. The reduction was measured with the client from their own delivery data over six months, against a baseline the agile practices themselves created. Iterative planning and retrospectives across 16 deliveries produced comparable data before any improvement was claimed. The limit is worth stating. This is our measurement of our own work, and it has not been independently audited. Most of the AI business cases we are shown fail earlier than that, on the missing before. A number with a measured baseline and a stated limit is a different class of claim from a number alone.
What transfers from a delivery engagement into agentic work?
Two habits transfer straight into agentic work. The first is baselining a process before you claim an improvement to it, and the 60% on this page is quotable because there was a measured before. The second is counting the running cost of a change as well as the cost of building it, which is what the supplier renegotiation exercised. Nine months of agile delivery, supplier negotiation and operational reporting across 16 client deliveries and one internal change project is where both were learned. Those two habits are where the AI business cases we are shown most often fall over.
Where did the £100k of supplier savings at Globelynx come from?
From renegotiating supplier engagements to cut cost and improve performance at the same time. Nothing technical about it. The outcome records supplier relationships strengthening alongside the price coming down. It sits in this study because an AI programme's cost line is never only the model, and a delivery partner who has had to defend a supplier line in a profit and loss account reads a vendor contract differently from one who has not. The commercial work is part of the delivery work, not an extra.
Why do AI business cases quietly fail in year two?
Usually because the case presented a build cost and omitted the running one. Inference has a monthly bill, the vendor contracts around it renew, the human reviewers the system now needs are salaried, and the tooling nobody cancelled keeps charging. None of that appears in a business case built around the cost of reaching a working demo, so year one looks like success and year two's profit and loss tells a different story. Catching it is a commercial habit more than a technical one. Someone has to own the supplier lines, the way the Globelynx engagement did when £100k of savings came from renegotiation.
What would the Globelynx engagement be sold as today?
Programme and Delivery Management, at £18k–£35k per month at published rates. That band means you can price the equivalent engagement rather than guess at it. The Globelynx shape is what that service covers: agile delivery and operational insight across many parallel workstreams, with operational data collated into trends leadership can act on. The price derives from a published rate card at twenty billable days a month, the same arithmetic behind every engagement price on the site.
Has Tenhaw worked with media and broadcast companies?
Yes. Globelynx is a media and broadcast technology business in the UK, and the engagement there ran nine months: agile delivery across 16 client deliveries and one internal change, a 60% reduction in delivery lead times, and £100k of supplier savings negotiated. James also ran the visual rebrand team on the Discovery+ launch, which hit its CEO-set date, and Sky and F1 sit in his delivery and transformation background.
How do you give leadership operational data they will actually act on?
Collate it continuously into trends. Do not wait for someone to ask for a report. At Globelynx, decisions across Operations, Partnerships and Client Management lacked actionable data, so operational data was gathered continuously and turned into trends leadership could act on, and the outcome credits that insight with sharper strategic decisions. The mechanism matters. A one-off report describes the past, while a maintained trend line changes the next decision. It is also the discipline an automation programme needs later, because a business that has never measured a process cannot report a saving from changing it.
Should we time a process before automating it?
Yes, before anything else. The most common gap in the AI business cases we are shown is a firm proposing to automate a process it has never timed, then proposing to report the saving. The Globelynx 60% is quotable because there was a measured before, with comparable delivery data in place before any improvement was claimed. The cheapest week of an agentic programme is the one spent measuring the process you are about to change, and our four-week audit exists partly to close that gap before a build starts.
How do you stop internal projects being starved by client work?
Put the internal work on the same plan and the same cadence as the client work, so it gets traded off in the open and does not slip quietly. Globelynx ran 16 client deliveries and one major internal change project together. Iterative planning, stand-ups and retrospectives covered all of it, and timelines and dependencies were coordinated across the whole set. Operational data was collated continuously into trends, so leadership could see what the internal project was costing and what it was worth, and choose deliberately. Within six months delivery lead times had fallen by 60% and client satisfaction had risen, with the internal change moving alongside the client work.
Does client satisfaction drop when you speed up delivery?
It went the other way at Globelynx. Delivery lead times fell by 60% within six months and client satisfaction rose over the same period. That is what happens when the speed comes from coordination. The changes were iterative planning, stand-ups and retrospectives across 16 client deliveries and one internal change project, timelines and dependencies coordinated across the whole set, and supplier engagements renegotiated to improve performance as well as cost. Clients experience that as dates that hold and fewer late surprises. Satisfaction suffers when speed comes from cutting the checks, not when it comes from removing the waiting between them.
Can we take on more client work without hiring more people?
Often yes, when the limit is coordination rather than hands. Globelynx had long delivery timelines, inconsistent coordination and little operational insight, and teams that could not prioritise effectively. What changed that was iterative planning, stand-ups and retrospectives across 16 client deliveries and one internal change project, coordinated timelines and dependencies, and operational data collated continuously into trends leadership could act on. Lead times fell by 60% within six months, which is capacity you are already paying for coming back into the business, and the study records the result as positioning Globelynx for scalable growth. If your delivery is already coordinated and instrumented, then the honest answer is headcount.
Should the person running delivery also negotiate with suppliers?
Yes. Delivery and supplier negotiation are the same problem seen from two ends, and one engagement can carry both. At Globelynx supplier renegotiation sat with the delivery work and produced £100k of savings alongside the 60% reduction in delivery lead times, and supplier relationships came out stronger rather than soured. Someone coordinating 16 client deliveries knows which supplier is actually holding up which date. That is leverage a price-only conversation never has. Those renegotiations cut cost and improved performance at the same time. It carries into AI work directly, because an AI cost line is never only the model, and someone has to own the contracts around it.
How do you spot a dependency before it wrecks a delivery date?
Look across the whole portfolio, not down one project. At Globelynx timelines and dependencies were coordinated across 16 client deliveries and one internal change project together, and that is where a clash actually becomes visible. Inside a single project the dependency looks like someone else's problem right up until the week it lands on yours. The other half is data. Operational information was collated continuously into trends, so a stretched team or a slipping supplier showed up as a trend before it showed up as an apology. Delivery lead times fell by 60% within six months once that coordination was in place.
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