Work

The situation

A UK-based consumer-product development and sourcing business managed a complex operational workload spanning multiple product categories, suppliers and markets. The company managed the full product lifecycle — from concept and design through sampling, compliance, purchase orders, logistics and retailer delivery — working with manufacturing partners across multiple global regions.

The problem

Products, projects, suppliers and customer relationships were tracked across a combination of spreadsheets, shared folders, email threads and general-purpose tools. Each managed a different part of the process. There was no single view of where every product stood, what approvals were outstanding, which compliance documents were in place or what the current critical path looked like.

Operational information existed — it was just distributed across files, inboxes and individuals rather than in one structured, visible place. As the business grew, this created compounding problems with visibility, consistency and knowledge concentration.

The approach

Matthew worked with the business to understand how it actually operated before proposing any solution — mapping the real end-to-end product lifecycle, identifying points of friction, reviewing existing data and tools, and understanding what management needed to see and do. The goal was not to replicate the existing process in software, but to design a system that reflected and improved how the business worked.

What was built

A structured internal platform that brought the key elements of the product lifecycle into one place. The system gave the team a consistent, organised way to manage products, projects, suppliers, compliance and operational workflows — and gave management direct visibility of activity and status without requiring manual reporting.