Why did you set up Buvalo?
Because technology should make work better, not create more complexity.
I founded Buvalo to help organisations make clearer technology decisions, improve the value they get from existing investments, and turn transformation plans into practical business value outcomes (or BVOs) - which is what Buvalo stands for.
Our work sits at the intersection of technology strategy, service management, organisational change, and commercial execution. I help technology leaders understand where they are today, decide what needs to change, and create a realistic path from ambition to measurable results. And yes, you can go to the Big 4 for that, but the key difference is in the time to value.
We believe businesses should no longer accept 6 months wait for a report that only confirms what they already know. They need tangible results, understand what will make the biggest positive difference to their organisation, and have access to industry experts that can action the findings. All of that in weeks, not months.
How is what Buvalo does different to other consultancies in the market?
Our approach is vendor-independent, practical, and focused on outcomes rather than technology for its own sake. We focus on the impact the chosen technology direction will have not just on the functionality, stability, and security of our customers’ technological ecosystem, but also on the employees inside and outside of IT. At the end of the day, we believe the purpose of IT is to serve the business. Unfortunately, we see quite often that businesses talk about “being customer obsessed,” yet design their services and technology as if the only people ever using it were going to be technology experts.
What are the types of challenges customers want Buvalo to solve?
Businesses may be trying to decide which technology or supplier is right for their organisation. With the AI noise in the market, it’s really difficult to tell, whom to believe. What tech is truly intelligent or innovative? How easy is it to adopt? What is the guaranteed return on investment?
Therefore, businesses reach out to us when struggling to demonstrate the value of an existing investment, improve tech adoption, prepare an RFP, give their service more human face, or create a clearer route from strategy to delivery. Whatever the starting point, we help our customers understand the wider challenge, identify the practical options, and move forward with greater clarity.
Buvalo’s customers can benefit from our ability to help with:
Strategic advisory and technology alignment to BVO’s
Assessment of current status quo of Service Delivery maturity, generating reports with immediately actionable next steps
Enterprise service management advisory
Vendor selection, requirements definition, and supplier evaluation across ITSM, ITOM, ITAM, ITXM, DEX, HRSD, FSM, CRM…including business case and investment priorities support
Referrals to the most suitable technology implementers
Operating model improvement and service performance monitoring
Identification of the most suitable provider of specialist professional services (e.g. ITOM on ServiceNow)
Optimising transformational roadmaps to be built around BVO’s
Emerging Technology advisory (AI in ITSM, Intelligent Automation, iPaaS, AIOps, Observability etc.)
Organisational change, stakeholder engagement, and technology adoption
Executive workshops to drive alignment (e.g. what is AI)
Simulation workshop facilitation and customisation
Delivering training to drive best practice adoption (ITSM, DevOps, Agile etc.)
Product and service proposition development
Project, programme, and delivery governance
Producing and sharing thought leadership
The biggest benefit? We are honest - meaning we are happy to simply point customers in the right direction if we are not the best fit.
That sounds like a lot - which one of these matters the most?
Buvalo’s work is grounded in a simple principle: any technology investment has to be delivering against business value outcomes (BVO’s).
That means:
Increasing productivity
Reducing operational and/or technology risk
Improving business resilience
Optimising costs
Making better use of data and automation
Improving employee and customer experience (talent retention/attraction)
Increasing adoption of existing platforms
Creating greater confidence in investment decisions
Helping technology become a true business partner
Everything else is effectively service lines that help deliver projects against what the business needs and expects the most out of the technology teams - BVO’s.
Where should customers start?
That’s an obvious one - talk to us. First, we help customers define what success should look like before significant decisions are made. From there, we can establish the current status quo, appropriate measures of success, identify the barriers to delivery, and create the governance and improvement plan needed to track progress.
Done optimally, it’s a collaborative, human-led approach though, that involves bringing multiple parties together, and that is often the most important bit - not forgetting that it’s much more about humans and trust, than it’s about technology.
Transformation is not delivered by technology alone. It depends on people understanding the reason for change, having confidence in the new approach, and being supported as they develop new skills and behaviours.
That is why our work places considerable emphasis on facilitating alignment, creating buy-in, and shared understanding. We use industry’s most innovative, but proven approaches to conduct interviews, workshops, assessments, and practical storytelling to bring different perspectives together and make complex subjects easier to absorb.
Ultimately, the best solutions are rarely created in isolation. They emerge when business leaders, technology specialists, suppliers, and users have a clear view of the problem and are able to work towards the same outcome.
What do you bring to Buvalo, and therefore to its customers?
With more than 15 years’ experience working in technology, it’s become clear that organisations are still struggling with the same basics in service management they struggled with all those years ago. Plus, pace of change and AI amplifying it. However, with the right leadership alignment, focus, people, and levels of technology adoption, you can see businesses change what seemed impossible - “that’s never going to work here”.
In my role as Chief Technologist, I advised customers on challenges including siloed operations, automation, self-service, workflow efficiency, tool integration, IT and business alignment, employee experience, resilience, risk reduction, and return on investment. I also worked with stakeholders ranging from senior executives to delivery teams and end users, translating complex technology issues into practical choices and next steps.
However, the biggest value was helping organisations connect their technology investment with business value, whilst applying human-centred design. IT should be supporting the business as a business partner, not be seen as a cost centre!
Outside of Service Management and Buvalo’s main business, what else can you do?
My background also includes managing consultative sales, business development, propositions, partnerships, and teams in start-ups or global Fortune 500 or S&P businesses. Those experiences helped me understand the commercial realities surrounding technology decisions. How suppliers position their services, how proposals are developed, how procurement exercises become unclear, and where gaps can appear between a sales promise and operational delivery.
Therefore, I can help customers improve their own commercial outcomes, including:
Creating clearer technology sales propositions
Improving sales and delivery alignment
Strengthening RFI and RFP responses
Optimising sales processes, pipelines, and forecasting
Improving product and sales enablement
Connecting customer needs to measurable business value
Using highly interactive simulation workshops to shorten sales cycles and increase product adoption
The focus is not on the technology itself. It is on helping organisations communicate value clearly, prioritise better, and deliver what customers and users actually need.
To summarise, in your view, what are the key things Buvalo can help with?
Buvalo provides focused consultancy and advisory support across:
Strategic advisory.
Technology and service management assessments.
Vendor selection optimisation.
Business value outcomes and KPI design.
RFI and RFP design.
Technology adoption and change enablement.
Sales and go-to-market optimisation.
Productisation and proposition development.
Training, coaching, and experiential learning.
Project and delivery optimisation.
Thought leadership and executive facilitation.
Engagements can be structured around a focused assessment, a defined improvement initiative, or ongoing strategic support.
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