Service families
Three things we are hired for
01 · Organizational change
Getting the organization to move with the system.
Operating-model design, role and ownership clarity, the works-council and procurement conversations that decide whether anything goes live. Transatlantic by default: German parent, US subsidiary, or the reverse.
Typical start: a merger, a US entry, or a technology program that keeps stalling for non-technical reasons.
02 · Project & program management
PMO discipline, run by people who have been accountable for the outcome.
Program setup and recovery, portfolio planning, vendor governance. Frances Brunner leads: PMP- and ITIL-certified, program manager of a $10M Workday transformation, PMO lead on a 100-acre data-center buildout. With the CIO, she turned Austin Community College’s $400M IT investment plan into a prioritized portfolio.
Typical start: the program is red, the vendor is blaming the client, and the steering committee wants a plan that holds.
03 · AI automation
Any workflow. Analyzed, automated, handed over.
Four capabilities, chosen per workflow. Agentic workflows carry a task end to end. A company brain searches your own documents and systems. Templated skills make recurring work repeatable. Trained specialty models step in where a general model is not good enough or not allowed.
Typical start: the demo worked, production never came.
Before we automate anything
Three questions, in this order
01
What can be automated?
We map how work actually flows: where it breaks, where it will not scale. Often it is the first true record of how your organization works.
02
What is worth automating?
Measured against the baseline, with kill criteria attached. Ranked by value.
03
Where must a human stay in the loop?
Explicitly, per step: what AI takes over, what stays human (judgment, relationships, accountability) and why. We design that human role in from the start.
How we build
The Westlake Method
01 · Testbed
Proves the mechanism, on your data, in your environment.
02 · Pilot
Proves net gain in one real workflow, measured against the baseline.
03 · Production
Earns the rollout. Team trained, systems documented, owners named.
Kill criteria agreed up front. Production, or stop.
Stop at any gate and keep everything learned.
“When the London Stock Exchange moved its market data from modems to multicast, the prototype flew over in Stefan’s luggage, and he installed it himself. We still work that way: the people who design it are in the room when it goes live.”
Engagements
How to hire us
Automation Readiness Assessment
Fixed fee
What you get
Where you actually stand (workflows, data, governance) and the three questions answered for a ranked list of candidates, kill criteria attached.
When to call
Before the board asks for an AI strategy, or after the first one did not survive real use.
Program Setup or Recovery
Milestone-based
What you get
A PMO that holds: charter, governance, vendor accountability, a plan the steering committee can steer by.
When to call
Before kickoff, or when the status report has been amber for three months.
Stack & Vendor Diligence
Fixed fee · build or audit
What you get
Every AI category has twenty vendors; hundreds have crossed our venture desk, and at SonicWall we ran the partner side with NVIDIA, Gigamon and Thales. We test which fit, connect, scale, and survive, and apply that filter to your shortlist.
When to call
Twenty demos in, no decision, or one signature away from a three-year contract.
Data Unification
Milestone-based
What you get
One record for each customer, student, product or portfolio asset, across the systems that hold a piece of it. We find the sources that matter and connect them, in whatever format each system or vendor provides. We clean up the data, match the records and load them into a graph database your reports and AI tools can run on. Every match keeps its evidence, and the matching rules are written down for your team to review. You run the graph database, or we do under contract; sensitive data stays in your own cloud.
When to call
When one person has a separate account in every department and nobody can answer a question that crosses departments.
The Westlake Method engagement
Milestone-based
What you get
Testbed → pilot → production. Gates, owners, numbers agreed up front: production or stop.
When to call
When the pilot has to become production this year.
Systems Documentation & Operations Manuals
Fixed fee
What you get
The first true documentation of how your operation works: the human steps and the automated ones.
When to call
When the process lives in three heads and a wiki nobody trusts.
Training & Workshops
Per session
What you get
Hands-on sessions for leadership and teams: what AI can and cannot do for you, how to use the tools you already pay for, and where people stay in the loop. Built on your own workflows, not on generic demos.
When to call
When everyone has an AI license and nobody works any differently.
Sovereignty
Your data stays yours.
CLOUD-Act exposure mapping before you commit to infrastructure.
Data residency designed in, not retrofitted.
Locally hosted models, trained on your core information.
EU AI Act and GDPR, both directions.
For European companies in the US, and American companies asking the same questions.
We plan our own exit. Team trained, systems documented, operation independent. Success is that you do not need us. A partner plans to leave; a landlord does not.
Next step
Bring your stalled pilot. Or your red program.
Thirty minutes. We will tell you whether it can reach production, and what it will take.