About us

PI Advisory provides structured communication services and training. We help people turn expert knowledge into something a board, a client or a room can understand and act on.

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What we do

1. The Board Brief. Our key offering.  We help CIOs get major technology investments approved by the board, first time. By applying our top down thinking metholodgy, SCQA.

2. The Board Brief for SMEs. The same method for owners and leadership teams making a big ask, whether to investors, a bank or a client pitch. 

3. The Board Readiness Review. The starting point. You send your draft paper, we score it, and we tell you what to change before the decision-makers see it. It's the initial review of your ask.

4. The Art of Speaking. A two-day course for Directors on being heard, trusted and seen as the expert when the stakes are high. By teaching our top down thinking methodology, SCQA.

5. The Confident Voice.  Helping young people, aged 18 to 22, find their voice as they start work.

 

Why the people behind it matter

CIOs who bring us in have already done the analysis. The programme is sound, the numbers work, the business case is complete. What fails is translating it into something a board without a technical background can act on. We know because we’ve been the ones responsible for building that translation, under pressure, with real money on the line. We also know that delay has a cost, in lost revenue, in execution risk that compounds the longer a decision drags, or in company risk that grows the longer the business runs on ageing IT foundations.

 

Meet the team

Iain Maclean, Programme Delivery and Executive Advisory (LinkedIn)
30 years accountable for delivering programmes that require board approval.

• Interim Head of IT Delivery, IAG Global Business Services. Full accountability for a £650m portfolio of 50+ programmes, reporting directly to the Group CIO.

• Led the $1bn Etihad Airways PSS transformation, migrating the airline’s core reservation, inventory and departure systems from Amadeus to Sabre. Delivered on time, on budget, with zero operational disruption.

• Portfolio Manager for British Airways’ PSS migration to Amadeus Altéa, the platform underpinning all reservation and departure control globally.

• Recovered a 150-project aviation portfolio running three years behind schedule. Delivered in eight months.

• Developed our communication method over 25 years and has taught it to over 1,000 consultants at a leading consultancy.

• 12 years at PA Consulting, working at the intersection of IT delivery and business leadership.

 

Paul Walton, Business and Board Communication (LinkedIn)
25 years appointed repeatedly to one role: translate IT into language boards and senior business leaders act on.

• On the IT leadership team at DTZ when a £26m programme submission became £2m. That experience is the reason The Board Brief exists.

• At Accenture, managed communication through a live £232m finance issue and a daily £40m exposure across 250 Sainsbury’s stores during the national chip and pin rollout.

• IT Client Engagement Director, Prudential. IT Business Relationship Manager, Avios. Head of IT Business Relationships, Berkeley Group and Square Enix. Each role centred on senior stakeholder alignment and board-level communication of complex IT decisions.

• Earlier career at PwC and Ernst & Young, operating at the same intersection of IT delivery and business leadership.

 

Why this matters to you

Between them, Paul and Iain have sat on both sides of the table: building the programmes that need approval, and building the case that gets them approved. Everything we offer, from board submissions to speaking courses, rests on one method, SCQA and top-down thinking: put the answer first, then the reasoning. It comes from 25+ years of pattern recognition in what makes a board say yes.