About
Aldermere Advisory Quarterly
We were tired of the deck.
Nora Aldermere spent twelve years inside large firms, writing reports that clients thanked her for and then did not use. In 2011 she left, took a desk above a print shop in Bristol, and made herself one rule: every piece of work ends with a plan the client can run without her.
Priya Nair and Tomas Hale joined in 2014, one from a housing trust’s finance office and one from a food manufacturer’s factory floor. It is why our advice sounds like people who have carried the same bags.
Fifteen years on there are six of us, still above the same print shop. We still write everything in plain English, and we still say no to about a third of the work we are offered.
Four rules
How we work, in four sentences.
1
Say it plainly
If a sentence needs a glossary, we write it again.
2
Show the evidence
Every claim in a report points at something you can check.
3
Fix the price first
You know the fee before you say yes, and it does not move.
4
Leave nothing behind
We finish when your team can run it without us.
Exhibit 5 · Our time
Where the time goes in a six-week engagement.
Most firms spend the time writing. We spend most of it measuring, because that is where the answer comes from.
Listen · 15%
Measure · 35%
Decide · 20%
Write · 15%
Hand over · 15%
The six
The people you will actually work with.
NA
Nora Aldermere
Founding partner
Strategy and pricing. Formerly twelve years in large firms.
PN
Priya Nair
Partner, finance
Models and boards. Formerly finance lead at a housing trust.
TH
Tomas Hale
Partner, operations
Flow and waiting. Formerly a factory floor manager.
IC
Ines Calloway
People lead
Managers and hiring. Formerly head of people at an engineering firm.
OM
Owen Marsh
Associate
Analysis and models. Joined from a university statistics unit.
SD
Sadia Dunmore
Practice manager
Keeps every engagement on time, and every invoice on the quote.
Fifteen years
A short history.
What clients say
In their words.
We had been told for years that the delay was the ovens. Aldermere showed us it was an approval step nobody owned.
Ruth Stott
Managing Director
Harlow & Stott
The reps stopped negotiating against themselves. The new price page is short enough to explain from memory.
Dev Kaplan
Chief Revenue Officer
Northfold Software
For the first time the trustees asked about the plan instead of the spreadsheet.
Marian Oyelaran
Chair of Trustees
Tidewell Housing Trust
We stopped losing good engineers to bad management. They wrote it down, trained us, and left us to run it.
Sam Achterberg
Operations Director
Copperline Engineering
The plan now tells us on Monday what would have gone wrong on Friday. I did not expect a spreadsheet to feel calm.
Callum Greer
Head of Operations
Ferryman Coaches
They quoted a price for the first step and kept to it. When I said I could take it from there, they said good.
Hattie Oakhurst
Owner
Oakhurst & Daughter