Business Design
The Discipline That Turns Ambition Into Reality
In a world where markets shift overnight, customer expectations evolve daily, and technology opens possibilities faster than organisations can absorb them, the question is no longer “what’s your strategy?” but “how will you make it real?”
That’s where S&A’s Business Design community helps bring the future to life.
Business Design is about shaping how your organisation creates value, bringing together strategy, innovation, creativity, culture, and execution in one discipline. It doesn’t stop at imagining the future; it designs the operating models, experiences, architecture and structures that make the future deliverable. We see it as the bridge between boardroom ambition and frontline reality.
- Strategy meets experience: defining new business models, services, and customer or employee journeys.
- Culture meets ways of working: ensuring people, teams, and leadership behaviours are aligned with the change.
- Vision meets architecture: using enterprise and solution design to translate bold ideas into scalable, executable models.
What our Business Design group provides to clients
Contextualised, validated and curated Insight and Advice
AI-powered research combined with practitioner business design expertise provides leaders with clarity on market shifts, customer expectations, and organisational challenges.
Our insight is grounded in evidence and experience, so choices about models, portfolios, and architectures are made with confidence and pace
Outcome focused Consulting
Our consulting approach turns ideas into tangible designs and prototypes that leaders can see, test, and refine.
We move from ambition to models, portfolios, and architectures that are executable and scalable, always focusing on practical outcomes rather than reports. Each cycle leaves behind not just deliverables but also the capability for teams to keep designing and improving on their own.
Dynamic, flexible Resourcing
Business Design needs the right blend of skills, from service designers to enterprise architects to business analysts and finance modellers.
Our resourcing model brings both individual proven practitioners through to blended squads within days, supported by AI tools to speed up analysis and design. Teams are structured to co-create prototypes, test options quickly, and adapt as the design matures.
Personalised Talent Development and Upskilling
Business Design only succeeds when people have the skills to create and deliver new models.
We embed AI-supported, personalised learning into live projects so leaders and teams build capability while they design and test prototypes. Development happens in the flow of work and grows alongside the design itself.
Core services and key expertise
It is important to remember that the majority of these services, other than independent assurance and health checks, can be addressed in different ways via the four lenses of S&A Transform from Insight, Advisory and Consulting through to Resourcing and Talent Development and Upskilling.
Design Governance & Independent Assurance
Objective oversight from senior business design practitioners who have shaped complex design-enabled change programmes. We assess design quality, feasibility, and coherence across business model, customer and employee experience, operating model, and architecture.
Our experts include
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Former CIOs, CHROs, CFOs COOs
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Human Centred Design Specialists
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Enterprise & Business Architects
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Independent Transformation Advisors
Rapid Diagnostic Reviews
Independent, time-boxed assessments of designs, options, and assumptions. We test customer value, operational viability, data and tech implications, and readiness to move from concept to prototype or pilot.
Our experts include
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Programme Directors from FTSE 100 firms
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Service Design Leads
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Data & AI Strategists
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Benchmarking Specialists
Business Model Innovation & Roadmapping
We help shape business model choices, value architecture, and revenue models, then translate this into a sequenced roadmap across experience, operations, data, and technology. Portfolio alignment ensures investment flows to the initiatives that matter most.
Our experts include
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Strategy & Innovation Directors
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Business Architects
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Enterprise Architects
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Business Case Specialists
Experience & Process Design
Designing customer and employee journeys, end-to-end processes, and service blueprints that connect ambition to delivery.
Our experts include
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Service Designers
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HCD Consultants
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Business Process Improvement Specialists
- Business Analysts
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Systems Thinking Specialists
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Lean Six Sigma Experts
Enterprise & IT Portfolio Architecture
Defining enterprise and business architecture, and shaping IT portfolios that align with strategy and enable scalable change.
Our experts include
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Enterprise Architects
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Solution Architects
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IT Portfolio Managers
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Target Operating Model Designers
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Technology Strategy Consultants
Prototyping & Venture Building
Cross-functional squads turn concepts into tangible prototypes and pilots. We test desirability, viability, and feasibility, capturing early evidence and de-risking scale.
Our experts include
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Product Managers
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Service & Product Designers
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Solution Architects
- Senior Developers
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Data & ML Engineers
- AI Engineers
Benefits & Value Realisation
Define the metrics that matter before you build. We craft value hypotheses, baselines, and test plans that link design choices to financial and non-financial outcomes.
Our experts include
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Benefits Realisation Managers
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Finance Specialists
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Independent Value Modelling Experts
Business Design Capability Building
Developing lasting skills in design thinking, architecture literacy, portfolio management, and evidence-led decision making through the S&A Academy.
Our Experts include
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HCD Experts
- Portfolio Managers
- Design Thinking Experts
- EA/BA practitioners
- Systems Thinking Specialists
What makes our Business Design service different
Business Design is about turning ambition into reality in a way that is imaginative, rigorous, and executable. For us, it means bringing together design thinking, enterprise architecture, and value-led roadmapping so strategy is not just a vision but a model that can scale. It’s not about producing glossy concepts or theoretical frameworks. It’s about shaping models, experiences, and operating structures that work in practice and can evolve as conditions change.
Our ability to blend insight, advice, consulting, resourcing, and learning creates a distinctive proposition, designs that are grounded in evidence, accelerated by AI, delivered by experienced practitioners, and sustained by the capabilities we leave behind.
Why it matters
In today’s fast-moving markets, strategy alone is not enough. Without clear models, aligned processes, and robust architectures, even the best ideas stall before they reach customers or employees. Business Design bridges the gap between ambition and execution, combining design thinking with enterprise and solution architecture so choices about models, experiences, and operating structures are practical, coherent, and scalable. It gives leaders the confidence that their strategy is not only bold but also buildable.
Business Design in practice
For a UK logistics firm, Business Design meant reshaping end-to-end processes and prototyping new customer journeys. By aligning these designs with IT portfolio decisions, we ensured investment flowed to the initiatives with the greatest impact on client experience and operational efficiency.
For a niche telco provider, the challenge was stagnating growth in mature markets. We helped them reimagine their business model around new digital revenue streams, mapped value pathways, and created a scalable operating model that linked product innovation to data and customer insight.
For a UK energy provider, Business Design focused on simplifying a fragmented operating model. We developed a new enterprise architecture, redesigned core processes, and established governance that balanced regulatory requirements with the flexibility to innovate.
The end result
Business Design only delivers value when ambition becomes executable reality. At S&A Transform, we bring together design thinking, business model innovation, and enterprise architecture to create strategies that are bold, coherent, and scalable.
From business models and experience design to portfolio roadmaps and prototyping, we help organisations imagine the future, design it in ways that work in practice, and build the internal capability to keep designing and evolving long after we step away.