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Data-led business improvement

Understand your data. Drive measurable improvement.

Hickling Consulting helps companies understand their data and use it to drive measurable improvements — combining extensive operational experience, Lean & Six Sigma tools, IT knowledge, industry-leading software and agentic AI to improve decision-making and deliver lasting operational and financial benefits.

Services for businesses Services for consultancies
Descriptive analytics Predictive analytics Prescriptive analytics Agentic AI Lean & Six Sigma
25+
years of practical experience across technology, industry and management consulting
£500m+
of measurable benefits delivered through increased sales, productivity and cost reduction
30 countries
where projects have been delivered for clients across many sectors
20 yrs
specialising in analysing operations, identifying opportunities and supporting delivery

For businesses

Achieve your business objectives

Hickling Consulting helps your organisation achieve its business objectives, with proven experience supporting businesses to deliver lasting bottom-line results.

Proven outcomes

  • Improve EBIT
  • Free up capacity
  • Increase service level
  • Reduce quality defects
  • Release working capital

How we deliver them

  • Process improvement — streamlining operations to remove waste and lift performance
  • Strategic roadmaps — prioritised plans that turn objectives into sequenced action
  • Lean & Six Sigma — proven methodologies for quality and efficiency
  • Change management — embedding new ways of working so improvements last
  • Digital transformation — modernising systems, data and reporting
Financial performance charts illustrating measurable business results Measurable results
Analytical reports and charts under review Deeper, faster analysis

For consultancies

Give your consultants more time with the client

We reduce the time it takes to analyse data and increase the depth of that analysis — so your consultants spend more time with the client and less time wrangling spreadsheets.

Data analysis services

  • Identify and extract the right data with the client
  • Review current performance measures and data quality
  • Analysis, with clear issues & recommendations
  • Visualisation — report, presentation or dashboard tools
  • Reporting support during implementation

Financial benefit support

  • Review and sign-off of the benefits case — including outcomes-based agreements
  • Set-up of base and evaluation method with the project team
  • Benefits measurement and tracking through the project

Data modelling

  • Capacity — volume change, product moves, efficiency gains
  • Cost to serve — supply-chain cost across channels
  • Financial — test hypotheses and demonstrate impact
  • Footprint — optimise sites; investment / divestment scenarios

How we work

An approach focussed on measurable benefits

We work through a continuous improvement lifecycle — with the flexibility to support the whole journey or focus on the elements where you need us most.

The business improvement lifecycle shown as a continuous cycle of seven stages
The business improvement lifecycle

A continuous cycle of insight and action

Our approach is focussed on achieving measurable benefits for your organisation. We make sure you have the right information and reporting — either using existing systems and internal IT, or introducing best-in-class technology and services.

Using insights from descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics, and a real understanding of your business, we work together to identify the actions that will improve performance — then support selection, prioritisation, implementation and benefits tracking.

The seven stages in detail

Identify business objectives

Start from the outcomes that matter to your organisation.

Identify data required to understand performance

Pinpoint the data that reveals how you are really performing.

Maturity assessment & gap analysis

Assess current data and reporting, and find the gaps to close.

Develop or refine reports / dashboards

Build the right reporting — on your systems or best-in-class tools.

Analysis of data

Apply descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics.

Develop roadmap of actions & targets

Translate insight into prioritised, quantified actions.

Review progress against plan

Track delivery and benefits — then begin the cycle again.

Continuous improvement

Each cycle deepens understanding and compounds the benefits.

Right information

Reporting you can trust

Using existing systems and internal IT, or introducing best-in-class technology and services.

Full analytics stack

Descriptive → prescriptive

Insight from descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics, grounded in an understanding of your business.

End to end

Selection to benefits tracking

Support in initiative selection and prioritisation, implementation, and benefits tracking.

Why Hickling Consulting

Flexible, focussed, and built around value

We have experience in all phases of the business-improvement lifecycle — so we can support you throughout the whole process or provide focussed help for individual elements.

A value-based proposition

Flexible and cost-effective engagement, developed with you into an attractive, value-based commercial arrangement — up to and including outcomes-based agreements.

Whole lifecycle or single steps

Experience across every phase of business improvement means we can lead the full programme or slot in exactly where you need extra capacity or capability.

Operational depth meets analytics

Extensive operational experience combined with Lean & Six Sigma tools, IT knowledge and industry-leading software — analysis that connects to what actually happens on the ground.

Measurable benefits, tracked

A relentless focus on measurable results — with base-lining, evaluation methods and benefits tracking built into the work from the start.

Hickling Consulting at a glance

Specialist data & business-improvement consultancy
  • 25+ years of practical experience across technology, industry and management consulting
  • Two decades specialising in analysing operations and supporting implementation
  • Projects delivered for clients across 30 countries
  • Over £500m of measurable benefits delivered

About the practice

Experience that turns data into results

Hickling Consulting is a specialist consultancy that helps companies understand their data and use it to drive measurable improvements. We combine extensive operational experience with Lean & Six Sigma tools, IT knowledge and industry-leading software to improve decision-making and deliver lasting operational and financial benefits.

Built on over 25 years of practical experience across technology companies, industry and management consulting, the practice has spent the last 20 years focused on analysing business operations, identifying opportunities and supporting their implementation.

Work delivered across 30 countries has generated over £500m of measurable benefits through increased sales, improved productivity and cost reduction — the standard we hold every engagement to.

Track record

Trusted by leading organisations

A selection of previous clients across industry, energy, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, packaging and services.

Get in touch

Let's find the measurable benefits in your data

Whether you're a business looking to improve performance or a consultancy that needs deeper, faster data analysis — let's talk about where the opportunities are.

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