Costs creeping, service slipping, reporting nobody trusts — but no clear picture of why. I find the root cause, fix the system, and put in the reporting that stops it drifting back. No PowerPoint factory. No junior team.
Before anything changes, the job is to understand why things are the way they are. Every engagement moves through the same three roles — so you always know where I am and what's coming next.
You get clarity on what's actually happening versus what you thought. The workflow is mapped. The data is examined. No assumptions, no pre-baked answers.
You get a tested answer, not a hunch. A specific hypothesis, examined against data, ranked by evidence. The cause — not the symptom.
You get a redesigned system — new processes, cleaner metrics, reporting your team can trust. Change that sticks because the mechanism is right.
Every engagement starts with a diagnostic. What follows depends on what it turns up.
A structured 2-week investigation into one significant operational problem. You leave with a baseline, a ranked root-cause hypothesis, and a clear recommendation on what to fix first — regardless of whether we work together again.
When the diagnosis identifies fixes worth making, I scope a defined project to implement them — process redesign, KPI definition, the data work that makes it stick. Fixed scope, fixed price.
An ongoing relationship for founders who want a senior ops brain on call — without hiring one full-time. Two to four working sessions a month — reviewing your metrics, diagnosing issues, advising on decisions.
Every system is perfectly designed to deliver the result that it does. When the result is wrong, the system has to change.
For the first time we actually understood where our cost-to-serve was going. Within 90 days we had a 28% reduction in call volume and a control dashboard the ops team uses every morning.
Operations Consultant & Founder, Striding Edge
I've spent twenty years running operations — not advising on them. That distinction matters. Before starting Striding Edge I led operations roles at Amazon (8 million parcel shipments, £25M carrier spend), P&G, AnPost, and Square Mile Coffee Roasters, delivering measurable improvements in each. Which means when I walk into your business, I know what good looks like — and what it takes to build it.
I run a one-person business. I take on a small number of clients at any time. When you work with me, you work with me — not a partner who sells the engagement and an associate who delivers it.
Tell me what's slowing you down. I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right person to fix it.
I take on a small number of clients at any time. Every engagement starts with a diagnostic. What follows depends on what it turns up.
Best for: a specific operational pain — rising customer service volume, returns eating margin, delivery costs creeping up, reporting nobody trusts, an ops team that keeps firefighting.
A structured investigation into one significant operational problem. Five working days of effort spread over roughly two weeks: stakeholder interviews and data access in week one, analysis and hypothesis testing mid-engagement, then a written readout in week two.
Best for: you've had the diagnostic (from me or someone else), you know what needs to change, you want one person to come in and execute it cleanly.
When the diagnostic identifies fixes worth making, I scope a defined project to implement them. This is usually a mix of operational change — process redesign, KPI definition, decision rules, team training — and the underlying data work that makes it stick.
That data layer matters. Pulling messy spreadsheets into a central source of truth, building the reporting that lets you see what's actually happening, and where useful, lightweight automation. Fixed scope, fixed price, clear deliverables.
Best for: you're past the firefighting stage but you're still the person making every operational call, and you want someone to think with.
An ongoing relationship for founders who want a senior operations brain on tap. Two to four working sessions a month — reviewing your metrics, diagnosing new issues as they appear, advising on operational decisions.
Best paired with an earlier diagnosis so I already know the system. Not a retainer that books time and produces nothing — every session has a purpose and a clear output.
"Not sure which fits? Book a 30-minute call. I'll tell you honestly — and if I'm not the right person, I'll say so."
Most engagements begin with a 2-week Operational Diagnostic. It gives both of us clarity before committing to anything larger.
The improvements that actually last come from doing the hard part properly. The data foundations. The measurement rigour. The control plan. Most programmes skip it. I don't.
Every system is perfectly designed to deliver the result that it does. If your operation is producing delays, margin pressure, customer complaints, or reporting nobody trusts — that's not bad luck. Something in the design is producing that outcome. The job isn't to guess at solutions. The job is to understand the system, find what's actually causing the result, and change it.
Every system eventually produces new signals. The loop doesn't close — it feeds back into itself. That's how improvement becomes permanent, not a one-off project.
Illustrative data based on sanitised engagement. Chart shows weekly inbound call volume across the engagement timeline.
| What you need | Big consultancy | Boutique strategy | Data agency | Striding Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Has actually run operations | ✗ Typically analysts | ✗ Strategists | ✗ No | ✓ Amazon, P&G, AnPost, Square Mile |
| Rigorous diagnostic method | ✓ Yes, but expensive | ~ Frameworks only | ✗ No | ✓ Signal → Diagnose → Fix → Measure |
| Fixes the data underneath | ~ Expensive add-on | ✗ Not their job | ✓ Dashboards yes | ✓ Built into every project |
| Leaves a system, not a deck | ✗ Decks | ✗ Decks | ~ Dashboards only | ✓ Process + data + control plan |
| You work with the senior person | ✗ Partner sells, associate delivers | ~ Sometimes | ~ Variable | ✓ One person. It's me. |
| Priced for a £2M–£20M business | ✗ Not remotely | ✗ No | ~ Sometimes | ✓ Starts at £4–6K |
Book a 30-minute call. Bring your hardest operations problem. I'll map it to the diagnostic loop on the call — for free.
Striding Edge is new. The track record behind it isn't. What follows is twenty years of operational improvement across four organisations — named, with numbers, and honest about the distinction between prior-career work and current client work.
These outcomes are personal track record, not Striding Edge client work. I'm clear about the distinction because I think that matters. What they show is the methodology and the mindset in practice — applied at real scale, with real accountability.
Managed a regional delivery operation handling 8 million parcel shipments per year with £25M in carrier spend. Led a cost-per-delivery reduction programme using statistical process control — first time it had been applied systematically in the region. Sustained 12% improvement over a 12-month period.
Operational improvement project on a high-volume FMCG distribution line. Applied structured root cause analysis (drawing on continuous improvement principles) to identify three systemic causes of distribution cost variance. Delivered 18% reduction in cost-per-case with financial sign-off at divisional level.
Led operational work during a period of rapid volume growth (e-commerce surge). Designed and implemented a real-time sortation tracking system. Reduced mis-sort rate by 34% and cut the downstream customer contacts that followed from sorting errors by 27%.
Operations work at a founder-led specialty coffee business. Warehouse and despatch process design, carrier selection, and the reporting infrastructure to manage a fast-growing DTC and wholesale operation. The experience of working inside a founder-led product business — and understanding what the founder actually needs from an ops perspective — is directly relevant to how Striding Edge is positioned.
As client engagements complete and permissions are given, I'll add case studies here in the format: situation / what I did / result / what they kept. I'll lead with the number and be honest about what changed and what didn't. No anonymous testimonials. If someone is willing to be named, I'll name them. If not, I won't quote them.
If you're curious about a specific type of problem — contact volume, returns cost, carrier spend, unreliable reporting — book a discovery call and I'll tell you whether I've worked on it and what the outcome was.
What's the one thing you can't get to the bottom of? Costs creeping, volume spiking, reporting nobody trusts — 30 minutes to map it. No commitment, no pitch.
I spent twenty years running operations before I started advising on them. Which means when I walk into your business, I already know what broken looks like — and what it actually takes to fix it.
I'm Shaun Wilson. Before starting Striding Edge, I managed P&Ls, dealt with carrier failures at 2am, sat in the warehouses at 5am during peak, and faced the same frustration every ops leader faces: the improvement initiatives that made sense on paper but didn't stick in practice.
At Amazon, I ran a regional delivery network handling 8 million shipments a year and £25M in carrier spend. At P&G, I worked on supply chain projects where the discipline of structured root cause analysis produced results the business could sign off against real numbers.
At AnPost, I led parcel operations through Ireland's e-commerce surge — the kind of growth that exposes every weak point in a logistics network. At Square Mile Coffee Roasters, I worked inside a founder-led product business and understood, at close quarters, what a founder actually needs from an operations perspective — which is always different from what a consultant wants to sell them.
I founded Striding Edge in 2024 because I kept seeing the same gap. Consultancies that left a deck. Freelancers without the data tools. Agencies that built dashboards without fixing the operation.
I built the firm I wished I could hire.
Founder-led product businesses — £2M to £20M — are systematically underserved by the consulting market. Too small for the big firms. Too complex for a generalist freelancer. Too operationally focused for a data agency that can't read a P&L.
The result is an enormous gap: founders who know something is wrong — costs creeping, service slipping, reporting nobody trusts — but who can't find the right person to help them fix it properly. Not with a PowerPoint. With an actual change to how the operation runs.
Striding Edge exists for that gap. One person with twenty years of operator experience, a structured method for finding the real cause, and the data skills to make the fix permanent. No deck. No hand-off. No factory behind the curtain.
Striding Edge is a one-person business. I take on one or two clients at a time — enough to give each engagement the focus it deserves. Volume is how consultancies manage their margins. It's also how the work gets diluted.
When you work with me, you work with me. I don't subcontract work without telling you. I don't send in a junior to do the analysis while I show up for the readout. If I bring in specialist support — a developer to build a data pipeline, for instance — I'll name them, tell you why, and agree the arrangement with you before it starts.
That's the deal. This model won't scale — that's not an accident. It's the only structure that lets me do the work properly.
Every recommendation is backed by data. Every improvement is measured. I won't tell you what you want to hear if the data says something different.
I won't tell you what to fix before I understand what's actually broken. That sounds obvious. It isn't how most consultants work.
Most consulting models are built on your ongoing need. Mine isn't. The goal of every engagement is to leave you with a system that runs without me — and no reason to call me back.
No synergies, no transformations, no journeys. Short sentences. Specific numbers. If I can't explain it clearly, I don't understand it well enough yet.
Striding Edge is a knife-edge ridge in the English Lake District — the most demanding section of the classic route to the summit of Helvellyn. You can't go around it. You either commit to the crossing or you turn back.
That's the operating principle here. The improvements that last — the ones you can still see in the numbers a year later — come from doing the hard part properly. The data foundations. The measurement rigour. The control plan. Most programmes skip all three. I don't. That's why the results last.
No pitch deck. No junior consultant follow-up. A direct conversation about your specific problem.
"No pitch deck. I'll spend 30 minutes understanding your problem, and I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right person — and if not, who might be."
Free. No commitment. Direct with Shaun Wilson.
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A working library of process improvement tools — mapped to the six stages of the Diagnostic Loop. Each tool includes a working template and an animated walk-through.