Productising Data Transformation: The Datalab Proposition
USD 50M+ annual recurring business impact for the consultancy; several billion in client impact.
Theme Revenue Growth & Sales Performance · Also Strategy
In brief
Situation. The consultancy I worked at served large global CPG clients. Each was investing heavily in data and digital transformation, but the investments were fragmented, funded piecemeal, run by different departments, with no shared infrastructure or methodology.
Complication. Fragmentation meant duplicated cost, slower delivery, and less compounding learning. A productised offering was needed: a way to package data transformation into a coherent, repeatable, scalable engagement that clients could buy as a single thing.
Resolution. I developed the conceptual framework, infrastructure requirements, operational methodologies, and execution strategy for what became the Datalab, a signature consultancy offering. Datalab functions as an embedded digital transformation accelerator inside a client. It consolidates fragmented resources, implements robust big-data infrastructure and governance, applies advanced data science and ML, and rapidly experiments with field tests of new processes, strategies, and offers.
Impact. Generated over USD 50 million in annual recurring business impact for the consultancy. Generated several billion dollars of impact for the client companies that adopted it. Continues to be a flagship offering.
The longer story
The transition from selling consulting hours to selling productised offerings is the single most underrated commercial move a services firm can make. Hours are linear; products compound.
The trick is that productising a service is not about taking the consulting work and wrapping it in a box. It is about asking, ruthlessly: what is the smallest set of things this engagement does that delivers most of the value, and can we standardise those things while leaving everything else flexible?
Datalab was that exercise. We standardised the infrastructure setup, the governance framework, the experimentation methodology, the team topology, and the engagement rhythm. We left flexible the client-specific problems and the people doing the work. The result was an offering that delivered measurable value within months, fast enough that clients renewed, scaled, and recommended.
The USD 50 million annual impact line is the consultancy’s number. The few-billion-dollar impact line is the clients’. Both are real. Productised services are a force multiplier; the maths is simply different from selling hours.