Asked before every engagement. Answered in writing.
The 18 questions we are asked most, in 4 groups, answered the way we would answer them in the room. Every figure in an answer is one the site holds somewhere else.
The engagement
5 questions
How does an engagement start?
With the audit, four weeks, fixed fee, inside your operation. It produces the opportunity ledger, a costed twelve-month plan and the first business case, and its first recommendation can be that you do not need us. In nineteen of sixty-four audits so far, it was.
Do you advise, or do you build?
Both, in order. The audit and design stages advise; the delivery stage builds, in your environment, with your team in the room. We do not hand over a deck and leave; we do not build something your team cannot run.
What is “one measured outcome”?
One figure, with its unit, its baseline and the date it will be read, agreed in writing before the work starts. It is measured afterwards and published either way, twelve are on the site; two are smaller than the client hoped for.
How long does it take?
The method is twenty-eight weeks end to end (audit 4, design 8, delivery 12, handover 4) but each stage is bought on its own. Most clients buy the audit first and decide the rest on what it finds.
What happens when you leave?
The handover stage: an operating model with named roles, runbooks your team wrote, and a rehearsal, twice, the second time with us silent. Then a date after which we stop billing. Ninety-one per cent of what we have delivered is still in place a year later.
Fees
4 questions
How is the audit priced?
Fixed fee, quoted before we start, from a published band, £45–65k. Four weeks has a price, not a meter. The plan it produces prices everything after it, so no later stage is bought blind.
Why fixed fees rather than day rates?
Because a day rate pays the consultant to be slow. A fixed fee against an agreed outcome pays us to be right. Nobody at Tessel has a utilisation target, which is why nobody at Tessel invents a phase two.
Do you take a share of the outcome?
Where the client wants it and the figure is clean enough to bear it, part of the fee can be linked to the agreed outcome. See the engagement models on the fees page. Most clients prefer a plain fixed fee, and so do we.
What does a full programme cost?
It depends on the service and the scope, and the bands are published: from £60–90k for a six-week strategy engagement to £160–240k for a twelve-week delivery. The audit tells you which apply before you commit to any of them.
Still have a question?
Ask it in the first message. A partner reads every one, and you hear back within two working days, including when the answer is no.
Working with us
5 questions
Who will actually do the work?
The people you meet. Thirty-one practitioners, all salaried, no subcontractors, and the partner in the room at the pitch is the partner in the room in week nine.
Do you work on site?
For the measurement, yes, operations is measured on the floor, in the depot, in the queue, and a process map drawn in a meeting room is fiction. For design and delivery, a mix; for the board sessions, always in the room.
How much of our team's time will it take?
The audit needs two of ours and part of yours, a sponsor, a finance contact and access to the floor. Delivery is a joint team by design, because a system your engineers did not build is a system they cannot run.
Can we talk to a previous client?
Yes. Every published case offers a reference call with the client’s own team, and we will also arrange one for the two engagements that underdelivered, if the figure matters to your decision.
Which sectors do you work in?
Nine, and the counts are on the sectors page, financial services, insurance, energy and utilities, retail, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, public sector, and technology and media. The method is the same in all of them; the measurement is not.
Data, security and independence
4 questions
Whose data does the work touch, and where does it stay?
Yours, and with you. Work runs in your environment, under your access controls, in your repositories. We do not take data off your estate, and a first conversation needs no NDA because nothing specific is shared in it.
Which vendors do you resell or recommend?
None. We hold no reseller agreements, take no referral fees and carry no vendor certifications. It costs us the easy revenue and it is the only reason a build-or-buy call from us is evidence rather than a commission.
Are you independent of the firms you audit?
We do not audit statutory accounts and we do not take equity, options or success fees from any client. The one link between our fee and your outcome is the one written in the engagement letter.
How do you handle confidentiality on published cases?
Every published figure and quote is approved in writing by the client. Fifty-two of our sixty-four engagements are not published for that reason; we will talk about them, we just cannot print them.