Berry Bros. & Rudd—one of the UK’s oldest and most respected wine merchants—had just kicked off a major e-commerce and CRM transformation programme, integral to their 5-year growth strategy to double EBITDA to £18m.

I was brought in as Delivery Director at the early inception stage to provide leadership across delivery assurance, stakeholder alignment, and commercial readiness. The vision was bold, but there was little structure in place—delivery partners hadn’t aligned on approach, internal teams were unclear on priorities, and there was no shared definition of success across business and IT.

My role was to build clarity, trust, and momentum from day one—creating a delivery framework the board could believe in, while also giving internal teams the confidence and direction to execute.

The risk wasn’t failure—it was drift. My job was to avoid that by setting strong foundations fast, without overwhelming the organisation.

The first thing I did was simplify. I engaged all key stakeholders—marketing, operations, finance, digital, and tech—and facilitated a strategic alignment workshop that answered one critical question: What does success actually look like? That surfaced hidden assumptions early and gave us a joint narrative to work from.

I then created a lightweight governance model focused on three pillars:

Customer impact – what experiences we wanted to enable

Commercial contribution – how the tech would drive margin

Delivery confidence – how we would track and manage progress

I brought delivery partners into that model early—so they felt accountable with us, not to us. To build early momentum, I pushed for two fast-track deliverables: a prototype of the CRM-driven customer segmentation and a data dashboard aligned to trading KPIs. Those gave internal teams a tangible sense of progress within the first 6–8 weeks.

We launched the programme with strong alignment, clear governance, and visible traction—early deliverables were used by the trading team in live decision-making, and the executive team began referencing programme outputs in commercial meetings.

That early credibility created space to tackle more complex parts of the transformation later. Ultimately, we delivered the foundational platform components on time, and the business stayed on track for its EBITDA doubling strategy.

What made the difference was starting as we meant to go on: with shared ownership, commercial clarity, and quick wins that built belief early.

SO WHAT?
“This reinforced what I’ve seen time and again: transformation gains momentum when you make it real—fast.

You don’t need big bang moments. You need believable progress. That’s how I operate—simplify the noise, build quick wins into strategic momentum, and create trust by delivering something that matters early.

• Due Diligence
• agile
• TOM (Target Operating Model)
• Delivery management
• Customer Relationship Management
• digital transformation
• Corporate Governance

• Accelerated Solution Delivery
• Organisational Agility & Effectiveness
• Digital Enablement

• Retail and Consumer