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Our Case Studies

Real outcomes delivered for real clients. Explore how our cross-functional teams have solved complex supply chain, data, cybersecurity, and infrastructure challenges — producing measurable, lasting value across industries and geographies.

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Large automated warehouse with shelving rows and logistics operations Digital Supply Chain

Global Consumer Health Company

Mastering Supply Chain Cost Visibility with End-to-End Cost to Serve

A leading Global Consumer Health Company lacked visibility on end-to-end supply chain costs. Profitable product lines were assessed using manufacturing costs from ERP compared with net trade sales — an approach that missed a significant proportion of total costs, skewing decision-making and leaving opportunities for cost reduction on the table.

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The Challenge

Data required to build a Cost to Serve model was fragmented across many disparate systems — including 3rd-party providers — resulting in an incomplete, inconsistent, and unstandardised data landscape. The absence of a unified view made it impossible to compare cost structures by SKU, market, customer, or region.

What We Did

  • Led global leadership alignment on which cost components and features to include in the Cost to Serve model.
  • Conducted a Region-by-Region landscape assessment, capturing system and data requirements across North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific.
  • Created an integrated, incremental delivery plan for the Cost to Serve tool, releasing features by region.
  • Identified and onboarded new data sources — including Warehouse and Transportation data — from 5 ERP systems and 9 TMS/WMS providers.
  • Wrote Jira User Stories to specify transformation logic converting raw data into activity-based costs at SKU level.
  • Managed scrum teams through development, systems integration testing, business simulation testing, and User Acceptance Testing.
  • Delivered unified Power BI dashboards with extensive filter options, refreshed daily with automated quality health checks.

Key Benefits & Outcomes

$36.5m Forecast cost reduction over 3 years across go-to-market channels globally.
1 Integrated global Cost to Serve Outbound framework comparable by Product, Franchise, Market, Region, and Customer.
5 ERP Systems and 9 TMS & WMS providers consolidated into one Core Data Model.
Daily Dashboard refresh with automated quality health checks ensuring complete traceability of orders to final customer delivery.
SKU Level cost insight automated below grouped delivery costs, enabling deeper profitability analysis.
Digital padlock on illuminated circuit board representing cybersecurity protection Cybersecurity

UK Critical National Infrastructure Operator

Strengthening UK Critical National Infrastructure Organisational and Cyber Resilience

A UK Critical National Infrastructure operator — providing essential services vital to national security — needed to test and validate their organisational and cyber resilience capabilities. The operator faced complex operational challenges, international partnerships, and cross-border dependencies requiring coordinated efforts across frontline staff, incident responders, executives, and external regulators.

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The Challenge

The operator required assurance across operational, tactical, and strategic levels, robust evidence for audits and regulatory inspections, and validated coordination with external stakeholders and international partners — all while embedding continuous learning into live governance and command structures.

What We Did

  • Designed a bespoke tailored resilience programme aligned to the specific risk profile, critical services, and regulatory obligations of a UK CNI operator.
  • Aligned the programme with NCSC CAF (Cyber Assessment Framework), NIST CSF, and National Occupational Standards to ensure international consistency.
  • Developed a progressive exercise design spanning operational, tactical, and strategic levels using realistic cyber threat and sustained crisis scenarios.
  • Engaged participants from frontline staff to Board level, including external regulators and international partners, to test real-world communication and escalation paths.
  • Documented clear lessons and recommendations integrated directly into policies, training programmes, and governance frameworks.
  • Provided robust audit evidence supporting regulatory inspections and compliance confidence.

Key Benefits & Outcomes

Enhanced Operational capability — boosted confidence and skills among frontline responders with clarified roles during complex incidents.
Board Level governance strengthened — leadership understanding of assurance and oversight formally improved.
Audit Ready evidence pack delivered, integrating cyber resilience, business continuity, and crisis management.
NCSC CAF, NIST CSF, and NOS fully aligned — demonstrating organisational maturity to regulators and international partners.
Culture Of preparedness fostered — lessons embedded into operations for ongoing continuous improvement.
Data analytics dashboard showing charts and KPIs on multiple screens Data and Analytics

Global Consumer Health Company

Enabling a Single Source of Trusted Data through Data Lake Harmonisation

A leading Global Consumer Health Company had a data estate that had grown organically across potentially hundreds of sources owned by different business units and regions — from core enterprise platforms (ERP, CRM, WMS, HR) to locally managed spreadsheets and niche operational tools. Analysts spent disproportionate time cleansing data instead of generating insight, and executive reports conflicted between regions and functions.

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The Challenge

Ingestion methods were inconsistent (APIs, flat files, JSON, raw text feeds), data quality was poor, and there was no consistent governance framework. These inconsistencies created material business impacts: a lack of trust was developing in performance metrics that formed the basis for strategic decisions.

What We Did

  • Conducted a structured Data Landscape Assessment covering all data sources, ingestion pipelines, duplication, semantic layers, and governance gaps.
  • Designed a Standardised Core Data Model with consistent naming conventions and common definitions for key entities and metrics, with controlled regional variation where required.
  • Delivered Data Lake Harmonisation — a consistent and simplified view of data from varying sources with different levels of detail, presented side by side.
  • Developed Data Quality and Health Check rules on raw and curated datasets to proactively identify issues at source before they reached reports or dashboards.
  • Established a Governance and Operating Model defining data ownership, stewardship, quality standards, and lightweight change control to prevent future fragmentation.

Key Benefits & Outcomes

Single Trusted source of truth for global insight, reporting, and AI adoption — replacing hundreds of fragmented pipelines.
Faster Time-to-insight for analysts — less time on data cleansing, more time on value-generating analysis.
Reduced Risk from duplicated pipelines and inconsistent semantic layers eliminated through governed harmonisation.
AI-Ready Data foundation established — centralised, standardised data enabling data science and AI model development.
Proactive Quality health checks catching issues at source before they surface in executive reports or dashboards.
Large construction site with cranes and steel framework for major infrastructure project Capital Projects

Major UK Infrastructure Programme

ETRIE: Comprehensive Data-Driven Solutions for Major Infrastructure Capital Projects

Large-scale capital projects face chronic challenges: fragmented operational systems, complex multi-stakeholder landscapes, unclear contracts, inconsistent reporting, and data integration gaps. Leading Talent's ETRIE methodology integrates fragmented operational systems into a cohesive, insight-driven engine — giving leadership teams clarity, assurance, and predictable delivery outcomes.

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The Challenge

Capital projects involve contractors, clients, regulators, and supply chain partners with competing priorities. Without a unified data capability and transparent cost model, project leaders faced budget uncertainty, compliance vulnerabilities, overbilling risk, and an inability to make confident, evidence-based decisions quickly.

What We Did

  • Applied the ETRIE Plan–Analyse–Design methodology to define technology frameworks, map business functions and data flows, and build integration models across all operational domains.
  • Developed a comprehensive Transparent Cost Model capturing every required service and item — validating the initial budget of £9.7m against evidence and revising it to £62.3m.
  • Conducted a Security Assessment across 81 kilometres of active construction, revealing compliance and tap-in issues and strengthening project security posture.
  • Integrated real-time data to validate labour charges and ensure contractors were accurately billed, preventing overbilling and enhancing accountability.
  • Mapped and catalogued operational data gaps in plant and material tracking, enabling cost avoidance by preventing unnecessary investments in immature technologies.
  • Engaged multiple stakeholders — from frontline workers to Board members — through inclusive requirements capture, building trust and transparency.

Key Benefits & Outcomes

£62.3m Budget accurately validated — creating a new standard for evidence-based accountability in large infrastructure projects.
81km Active construction assessed for security compliance, identifying and resolving tap-in and access issues proactively.
Zero Overbilling — real-time labour data integration ensured contractors justified all charges before payment.
Cost Avoidance enabled — data gap identification prevented investments in immature plant-tracking technologies.
Innovation Enablement — clear data catalogue gave leaders confidence to make fast, evidence-based decisions fostering long-term value.
Delivery truck on the highway representing last-mile logistics and supply chain fulfilment Digital Supply Chain

Global Health Company

Driving Customer Satisfaction through On Time and In Full Delivery (OTIF-D)

A leading Global Health Company was experiencing rising costs from fines and penalties with key customers due to incomplete deliveries and deliveries arriving outside allotted windows. Fragmented visibility, inconsistent reporting, and a limited Unit Fill Rate metric meant the business had no view of end-to-end supply chain performance — from order placement to final customer delivery.

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The Challenge

The existing UFR metric was limited to inventory management insights and failed to capture front-end order management or last-mile logistics performance. Senior Leadership recognised that understanding whether the customer received the "Right Product, in the Right Quantity, at the Right Time" required a fundamentally different, globally aligned measurement approach.

What We Did

  • Defined the high-level vision for OTIF-D, including 5 primary points of failure across the order lifecycle.
  • Established a Global Governance Board with ownership from Regional and cross-functional excellence teams.
  • Analysed business processes and standard practices across North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific to understand regional nuances.
  • Aligned globally on one single definition of OTIF at Delivery, including measurement of 5 primary failure points to ensure successful on-time, in-full delivery.
  • Identified and ingested data from new sources — including Warehouse and Transportation data from 5 ERP systems and 9 TMS/WMS providers and Control Towers.
  • Managed scrum team development and End User Acceptance Testing of the full OTIF-D algorithm and unified dashboards.

Key Benefits & Outcomes

4.9–11.1% OTIF-D performance improvement across different markets, reducing fines and penalties with key customers.
1 Global OTIF-D Framework producing a consistent performance view by Product, Franchise, Market, Region, and Customer.
Automated Reason coding analysis reducing manual effort to determine root causes of product availability failures.
Real-Time Proof of delivery data improving Transportation management with complete order traceability to final customer destination.
Daily Dashboard refresh with automated quality health checks ensuring dashboards remain fully operational and error free.
Leadership team reviewing plans around a large conference table IT Divestiture

Large Enterprise — Corporate Divestiture

Delivering Day-One Operational Independence in a Complex IT Divestiture

A large enterprise undertook the strategic divestiture of a significant business unit. The IT estate was deeply entangled — shared Active Directory, co-located infrastructure, and mixed data ownership — with hundreds of users needing to transition to new identities, platforms and tools without loss of productivity, all against a non-negotiable legal deadline.

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The Challenge

The carved-out entity had no existing IT function to absorb the new environment, and ownership of data across ERP, CRM and collaboration platforms was unclear. Missing the legally mandated completion date carried significant contractual liability and operational continuity risk for both organisations.

What We Did

  • Ran full asset discovery and infrastructure dependency mapping, managing server decommissioning through to new environment build-out.
  • Delivered Active Directory separation, email and M365 platform migration, access rights realignment, and end-user training and support.
  • Extracted, transformed and validated data across ERP, CRM and collaboration platforms, delivering clean, authoritative data sets to both parties.
  • Provided senior programme governance — RAID management, steering committee support, and progress reporting aligned to legal milestones.
  • Ran requirements definition and competitive procurement for the newly independent entity's new systems, chosen for fit rather than inherited by default.

Key Benefits & Outcomes

Day 1 Operational independence achieved for both organisations, with clean infrastructure and separated identities.
Clean Governed data sets delivered to both parties, with resolved ownership and lineage across all core platforms.
Fit-for-Purpose New systems selected through competitive procurement for the carved-out entity, not inherited by default.
Zero Missed legal milestones — the mandated completion date was met with continuity maintained throughout.
IT support team working across modern monitors and collaborative workspace EUC & Windows 11

FTSE-Listed Enterprise

Enterprise Windows 11 Transformation Across a 45,000-Endpoint Estate

A FTSE-listed enterprise engaged Leading Talent after an internal audit exposed significant Windows 10 end-of-support compliance gaps, with fewer than 18 months to the October 2025 deadline. The in-house IT team lacked the programme governance capacity to run a migration of this scale while maintaining business-as-usual operations and regulatory obligations.

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The Challenge

A complex, heterogeneous estate of legacy hardware and mixed managed/unmanaged devices, live application compatibility gaps, and no single delivery owner meant the business had no board-level risk visibility — while GDPR, PCI-DSS and Cyber Essentials obligations tied compliance directly to patch currency.

What We Did

  • Completed a full endpoint inventory, hardware scoring, and compliance gap report within 3 weeks of mobilisation.
  • Ran automated and manual application compatibility scans, scoping and vendor-triaging the remediation backlog.
  • Designed the Windows 11 baseline, Intune/Autopilot configuration, and CIS benchmark hardening.
  • Delivered risk-stratified, phased migration waves — pilot, department, remote/VIP — with rollback maintained throughout.
  • Ran weekly SteerCo governance with a RAG dashboard and board-ready reporting from week one.
  • Provided 4-week hypercare per wave, with a full runbook and knowledge transfer to the in-house team.

Key Benefits & Outcomes

45,000 Endpoints migrated to Windows 11, six weeks ahead of the October 2025 deadline.
99.6% First-time migration success rate across all waves, with zero unplanned business disruption.
Cyber Essentials Plus And ISO 27001 alignment fully restored, with a board-level compliance dashboard live from week six.
847 Applications remediated for compatibility, with 12 requiring bespoke remediation builds.
£2.1m In extended-support licence costs avoided through on-time, phased wave delivery.

Ready to unlock value in your organisation?

At Leading Talent, we bring cross-functional expertise in Digital Supply Chain, Data & Analytics, Cybersecurity, and Capital Projects to deliver sustainable, measurable outcomes.

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