FLAIR
  1. Foundation
  2. Leverage
  3. Activation
  4. Iteration
  5. Realisation
One-Page AI PlanChapter 5

Marlow's One-Page AI Plan

Marlow Partners is the composite professional services firm followed through the book. This is the Plan as its leadership team filled it in at the end of their first Leverage session, six weeks after the Foundation work moved the Scorecard from 11 to 14.

Marlow Partners, One-Page AI Plan, cycle one (post-Foundation)Scorecard 14 / 25. Stage 2, Emerging. Binding constraint: Leverage. Maximum two initiatives.
The business

Ambition (three years): the first-call advisory firm for mid-market clients in its three markets.

Priorities:

  1. Grow new-business revenue in mid-market accounts.
  2. Protect delivery margin as headcount grows.
  3. Lift retention in the top-50 accounts.

Numbers that matter:

  • Win rate on qualified bids 22%.
  • Delivery margin 31%.
  • Net revenue retention 96%.
Where AI moves them
  • P1: bid response workflow (workflow layer).
  • P2: onboarding pack assembly (task layer); delivery-risk decisions (decision layer, deferred to Foundation).
  • P3: renewal and QBR preparation, parked.

Credibility: eroded by the retired QBR assistant; revisit in cycle three with the trust repair done first.

This cycle’s commitments
  1. Bid response drafting assistant. Matrix 12/15. £110,160 honest annual value. Serves P1.
  2. Onboarding pack auto-assembly. Matrix 12/15. Serves P2.

Not committed: delivery risk rebuild (Readiness) and marketing variant generator (adoption 0.3).

Accountability and rhythm

Bid response:

  • Process, Head of Pre-Sales. Data, Knowledge Manager. Logic, Platform Lead. Outcome, COO.
  • Lands in the live-opportunity folder within ten minutes of the RFP being logged; linked from the CRM record.
  • Monthly Iteration Review.

Onboarding:

  • Process, Head of Delivery. Data, Ops Lead. Logic, Platform Lead. Outcome, Head of Customer Success.
  • Lands in kickoff preparation, the working day before the kickoff call.
  • Monthly Iteration Review.
Proof

Bid response:

  • Net bid-lead hours recovered per response (baseline 90 minutes saved per use, reabsorption measured at month three); win rate on qualified bids 22% to 26% by year end.
  • Kill switch: used on fewer than half of qualified bids at month three, or two consecutive reviews with unresolved drift, then pause and return to Foundation.

Onboarding:

  • Pack assembly time 6 hours to 2 hours; error rate in packs at kickoff.
  • Kill switch: assembly time above 4 hours at month three, or packs bypassed on more than a third of kickoffs.

One page. A name and a number in every cell. A department is not a name and “productivity” is not a number. Empty cells are the work. Rewrite every cycle.

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