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Independent operations and AI strategy for businesses of 20 to 500 people

Know what your manual work costs before you spend on AI.

We measure where your business loses time and money today, then cost each fix against its return, so you can see where automation and AI will pay and where they will not. We sell no software and take no fees from anyone who does.

Book a 20 minute call See the three week Diagnostic

Most recent engagement

EUR 25m multi-country distributor

Operations & AI Strategy delivered in 2026. It identified recurring annual cash savings of more than four times its fee, and the executive team adopted the three-year programme that came out of it.

“What differentiated LatenZ for me was Jeremy’s ability to bridge the gap between a technical assessment of what could be automated and the commercial reality that automation is an investment that must be justified.”
Managing Director, multi-country distribution group

The problem we price

The costliest work in your business was never budgeted.

We work with established distribution, wholesale and service businesses that are profitable and busy, and want certainty on where modernisation should start. The same four kinds of work tend to grow up around their systems.

Re-keying

Orders, stock and invoices typed out of one system and into another.

Waiting

Approvals that sit in an inbox for hours when the decision takes minutes.

Checking

Reports rebuilt by hand because nobody trusts the version the system produces.

Head knowledge

Steps only one person knows, which stop when that person is away.

None of it appears as a line on the P&L, which is why software and AI get bought before anyone has priced the problem. We price it first.

The work

Two fixed-fee engagements, and most clients start with the first.

Start here

Operations Diagnostic

Three weeksFixed fee EUR 8,500

It prices the problem. We take one core process end to end, map how it really runs, and put a euro figure on the manual work inside it.

What you hold at the end

  • A ranked register of the 12 to 15 biggest time drains, each costed per month and per year
  • A clear call on every line: cut it, redirect it, automate it or leave it alone
  • Quick wins you can act on straight away
  • A short roadmap, walked through with you

Delivered remotely. If you go no further, you still know in your own numbers what the friction costs.

The full picture

Operations & AI Strategy

Eight to ten weeksFrom EUR 25,000

It decides what to do about it. The full audit across your key flows, built on structured interviews and your own system and finance data.

What you hold at the end

  • Process maps of how the work runs today and of the designed future state
  • A benefit model validated line by line with your finance team
  • A stay-or-go verdict on your core platform, with total cost of ownership
  • A phased 12 to 36 month roadmap and a decision pack ready for your board

Half the Diagnostic fee is credited against a Strategy commissioned within 90 days.

Both are fixed scope as well as fixed fee, quoted once the brief is understood. Travel, where it is needed, is quoted separately. The findings are yours in full, whoever does the building.

Book a 20 minute call

Results

What the work has produced.

Client engagement, 2026

EUR 25m multi-country distributor

A full Operations & AI Strategy, including a benefit, cost of ownership and return model built from the client’s own finance data. The executive team adopted the three-year programme that came out of it.

Over 4xthe engagement fee in recurring annual cash savings identified, on the conservative floor
About 2 yearspayback on the full programme, counting cash savings only
480 to 5 minpurchase order approval cycle in the designed future state
24 to 8 hoursorder to invoice, as the target in the designed future state

A written reference from the Managing Director is available under NDA.

Where the method comes from

Four years as Group COO of a multi-country IT services group

Before LatenZ, Jeremy led the transformation the method is built on, from inside the business as its operations chief.

34 to 19roles, through efficiency and natural attrition, with no redundancy programme
+70%revenue over the same four years, on higher delivery volume
0.8%measured failure rate on a flagship contract that everyone believed was failing 8 to 12 percent of the time
10 hoursof manual work removed every day once the real problem was fixed
Read the one-page case study (PDF)

How we work

The advice has exactly one customer.

We represent no vendor, platform or tool. The recommendation is whatever fits the job, including the recommendation to change nothing.

No vendor pays us

We take no commission, referral fee or reseller margin. Where a vendor offers one, we turn it into a discount for you and tell you.

Measured, not benchmarked

Every benefit figure traces to something observed in your business, with each assumption labelled so your finance lead can test it.

Governance built in

Data protection impact assessments, records of processing and supplier due diligence are part of the work wherever it needs them.

Yours on completion

Act on the findings with us, with your own team or with another provider. There is no lock-in.

After the roadmap

Where the strategy justifies a build, we select the tools and manage the suppliers from your side of the table, or build it ourselves to a fixed scope. Retained advisory is available on defined days over a defined term.

Who we are

A small practice by design.

Jeremy Thorburn

Jeremy Thorburn

Founder

Twenty years building, running and modernising operationally complex businesses, first as CTO and then as Group COO of a services group working across six countries. Jeremy leads every engagement, so the person who defends the strategy to your board is the person who specified the systems behind it.

Jeremy on LinkedIn
Carita Hemsley

Carita Hemsley

One-to-one AI coaching, evidence and reporting

Carita coaches people and small-business owners to get real, lasting value from AI. It is one to one, over four weekly sessions built around examples from their own week. She spent more than 15 years in research, quality control and financial analysis before working as an environmental scientist and operations manager, and she brings the same care for accuracy to the evidence behind every finding we report.

Carita’s AI coaching, on LinkedIn

Published

“You Are Budgeting for Tools Before You Have Priced the Problem”, lead story in What’s New in Publishing, August 2026.

Read the article

Book a 20 minute call.

There is no pitch deck. We talk through the question on your desk and whether a Diagnostic is the right first step. If we are not the right fit, we will say so and suggest who might be.

jeremy@latenz.io linkedin.com/in/jeremythorburn

Based in Portugal, UK-registered company. We work remotely by default and travel when the work needs it.