What we do (and don’t)

Strategy Consulting is a focused, time-boxed engagement: a senior analyst from Archive Partners embeds with your team for a defined period, builds an operational playbook against your specific use case, and leaves the playbook running before they exit.

We deliberately don’t do open-ended consulting. Every engagement has a fixed start, a fixed end, a fixed scope and a written deliverable. Engagements that grow scope mid-flight get re-papered as a new SOW, not bolted on quietly.

The use cases we run are tight, by design:

• Vendor-base rebalance. A procurement team has a Tier-1 supplier list that hasn’t been re-screened against current iXBRL signals. We rebuild the screen, score the population, identify concentration and stability flags, and leave behind a quarterly re-screening playbook.
• Origination factor builds. An M&A or growth-equity team wants a repeatable target screen, typically combining Zombie detection, threshold crossings, top-5%-margin and SIC-specific custom rules. We build it against the live population, validate against their last 12 months of closed deals, and deliver as a daily Pulse-driven workflow.
• Alt-data factor research. A quant fund wants to backtest a UK-private-company factor against the five-year point-in-time archive. We embed for 6-8 weeks, run the backtest under their research-compliance protocol, deliver the factor specification and the operational pipeline.
• Post-acquisition integration. A PE or trade buyer has just acquired a UK target and wants to operationalise stability monitoring on the existing supplier and customer base. We map the population, score the dependencies, identify the highest-leverage monitoring signals, and leave a Pulse-driven dashboard.

How a typical engagement runs

The standard arc, modulated for the use case, but the rhythm holds:

1. Week 1: Discovery. A senior analyst sits with your team, reads the existing process, maps it against the iXBRL signal inventory, and writes the engagement plan. Output: a one-page plan signed by both sides before any production work starts.
2. Weeks 2–6: Build. The analyst builds the deliverable, the screen, the factor, the playbook, the dashboard, using the Daily Signal API or a Custom Feed as the data layer. Weekly stand-ups with your team, fortnightly sponsor check-ins.
3. Weeks 7–8: Burn-in. The deliverable runs in parallel with your existing process for two weeks, with the analyst on hand for tuning. By the end of burn-in, your team is running the playbook unaided.
4. Week 9: Handover. The analyst writes the operational playbook (one document, no slideware), runs the handover session, and exits. Engagement ends.

Total typical duration is 8–12 weeks for a single use case. Multiple parallel use cases stretch to 16–20 weeks.

Who you’ll work with

Engagements are staffed against the use case:

• Procurement and vendor-risk engagements are led by an analyst with prior procurement-side experience at a FTSE-listed or PE-backed business.
• Origination and M&A engagements are led by an analyst with prior deal-side experience at a UK PE or M&A advisory firm.
• Alt-data and quant research engagements are led by an analyst with prior buy-side or sell-side quant research experience and academic credentials in the relevant discipline.

Every engagement has a named lead analyst, a named delivery sponsor on our side, and a written escalation path. There is no offshoring and no junior-only staffing.

Pricing

Engagements are scoped and priced on the SOW, not on a day-rate card. A typical fixed-scope engagement falls in one of three bands:

• Single use case (8–12 weeks, one analyst): £42,000–£68,000.
• Multi use case (16–20 weeks, lead analyst + part-time second): £85,000–£140,000.
• Embedded retainer (rolling 12 months, named analyst seconded part-time to your team): £180,000+ / year.

Every engagement includes a written scope, a written deliverable, and a 30-day post-engagement support window where the lead analyst is available for follow-up questions by email, included in the price.

What this is not

• Not open-ended advisory. We do not run rolling consulting relationships without a scoped SOW and a defined exit. Every engagement has a written end date.
• Not a body-shop arrangement. We do not place analysts on a per-day basis to backfill internal capacity. The deliverable is the contract, not the seat.
• Not legal, regulatory or tax advice. Engagements deliver operational playbooks against the data. Specific legal, regulatory or tax conclusions remain with your professional advisers.