Defined scope. Fixed fee. Known timeline. No surprises.
A transformation project is not an open-ended retainer dressed up as a project. It has a defined scope — agreed before work begins. A fixed fee — structured across milestones, not billed monthly. And a known timeline — from six months to two years depending on the complexity of what needs to change. You know what you’re getting, what it costs, and when it will be done. We know what we’re accountable for. Everything else follows from that clarity.
transformation projects
6
Months — the minimum duration of a Cerebratum transformation project. Transformation cannot happen faster than this.
0
Scope changes after the project begins. What is agreed at briefing is what is delivered. Additional scope is a separate conversation.
100%
Of project fees structured across defined milestones — no monthly billing, no open-ended invoicing, no surprises.
the methodology
Five stages. Every project, every time.
The methodology doesn’t change. The scope, the timeline, and the milestones are specific to each project — but the way we run every engagement follows the same five stages.
01
brief & discovery
We begin with a structured briefing — your business situation, what needs to change, why it hasn’t changed yet, and what success looks like at the end. We ask the uncomfortable questions at this stage rather than six months in.
02
scope & proposal
We define the scope precisely — what is included, what is not, and why. The proposal specifies every deliverable, every milestone, the timeline for each, and the fee attached to it. Nothing is vague. Nothing is open to interpretation.
03
strategy & architecture
The first milestone covers the strategic layer — the diagnosis, the framework, and the design of what needs to be built or changed. This is the phase where we do the thinking that makes the execution possible.
04
implementation
We execute what we designed. Each subsequent milestone covers a defined body of work — a phase of the rebrand, a market entry, a system built and tested. Progress is visible. Accountability is clear. Milestones are either complete or they are not.
05
handover & closure
The final milestone is handover — the capability, the system, the assets, and the knowledge transferred to whoever owns it internally going forward. The project closes. The organisation carries what was built.
Fixed fee. Milestone payments. No monthly billing.
Every transformation project is priced as a fixed fee — agreed in full before work begins. The fee is not an estimate. It is not subject to variation unless the scope changes. It is the number we are both accountable to.
That fee is structured across milestones — typically three milestones for a six-month project, six for a year-long project. Each milestone has a defined deliverable and a defined payment attached to it. You pay when the milestone is complete, not before — and not on a calendar that has nothing to do with the work.
| SIX-MONTH PROJECT | |
| Milestone 1 | Brief, discovery, and strategic framework — Month 2 |
| Milestone 2 | Implementation phase complete — Month 4 |
| Milestone 3 | Handover, closure, and final delivery — Month 6 |
| ONE-YEAR PROJECT | |
| Milestone 1 | Brief, discovery, and diagnostic — Month 2 |
| Milestone 2 | Strategic architecture complete — Month 4 |
| Milestone 3 | Phase 1 implementation complete — Month 6 |
| Milestone 4 | Phase 2 implementation complete — Month 8 |
| Milestone 5 | Integration and testing complete — Month 10 |
| Milestone 6 | Handover, closure, and final delivery — Month 12 |
| Milestones are defined in the proposal. The above are illustrative — actual milestones reflect the specific scope of each project. | |
project types
What a transformation project can cover.
These are not the only projects we take on — but they represent the kinds of transformation where a fixed-scope, fixed-fee, principal-led approach delivers the most.
in practice
Building an identity from nothing. The CClyticx brand project.
A captive analytics unit inside a large US bank. Spun out as an independent firm. No identity. No market presence. No name in the market. Six months to change that.
| CLIENT | CClyticx — a specialist analytics and advisory firm serving the US financial services industry, spun out from a captive analytics unit inside a major US bank |
| PROJECT TYPE | Brand identity — full scope, from positioning through visual identity system |
| DURATION | Six months |
| MONTH 1–2 | Research & Discovery
Every brand identity project begins the same way — with a structured effort to understand what the organisation is, what it is not, and what the market needs it to be. For CClyticx, this meant understanding the analytics and advisory landscape in US financial services: who the competitors were, how they positioned themselves, where the white space was, and what a credible new entrant needed to say to be taken seriously. It also meant understanding CClyticx’s own capability — the depth of the collections and CX analytics expertise, the methodology that had been built inside the bank, and the specific client problems it was uniquely equipped to solve. The research phase produced a clear brief for the positioning work that followed. WHAT IT PRODUCED |
| MONTH 2–3 | Positioning & Brand Architecture
With the research complete, the positioning work began. The central question was: in a market populated by large decisioning platforms, AI voice vendors, and strategy consultancies, where does a specialist methodology firm sit — and how does it describe itself without sounding like any of them? The answer was the strategy-and-method layer: the white space between the tool vendors who sell software and the large consultancies who sell people. CClyticx’s positioning was built around this gap — a firm that documents the method, not just delivers the project, so that what it builds for clients compounds over time. Brand personality, tone of voice, and the messaging hierarchy followed from this positioning anchor. WHAT IT PRODUCED |
| MONTH 3–5 | Visual Identity System
The visual identity was built to signal credibility in a conservative financial services market while remaining distinctive enough to stand apart from the institutional look of the banks CClyticx had come from. The colour palette retained CClyticx Orange as the primary — bold, energetic, and unmistakable — anchored by Anchor Grey and supported by Ember Crimson and Solar Amber as accents. Typography was set in Montserrat — clean, modern, and legible at every size. The logo system, the icon set, and the layout grid were all designed to work across the full range of contexts a financial services firm operates in: pitch decks, reports, digital, and print. WHAT IT PRODUCED |
| MONTH 5–6 | Brand Guidelines & Handover
The final milestone was documentation and handover. A brand identity is only as good as its consistent application — and consistent application requires clear rules. The brand guidelines covered every element of the system: how to use the logo, what the colour combinations are, how typography is applied across document types, what the tone of voice sounds like in practice, and what to do when the guidelines don’t cover a specific situation. The Office suite templates — PowerPoint, Word, and Excel — were built to the brand standard so that every document CClyticx produces from day one carries the identity correctly. The project closed with a firm that had a complete, market-ready brand — and the tools to use it without coming back to us for every application. WHAT IT PRODUCED |
A brand identity project is complete when the organisation can use it without the people who built it. Every element of the CClyticx identity was designed to be owned, not maintained.
This model is right for you if…
- You have a specific, bounded problem that needs solving
- You want to know the cost, the scope, and the timeline before work begins
- You need senior hands on a high-stakes initiative — a launch, a rebrand, a recovery
- You’ve done the internal thinking and need someone to take it through execution
- Your board or investors need an external perspective with defined deliverables
- You want a project that ends with capability inside your organisation, not dependency on ours
And not right for you if…
- The brief is likely to change significantly once work begins
- You need ongoing leadership of the function after the project ends — that is fractional CXO or outsourced function
- You want a recommendation document rather than an implemented outcome
- You’re looking for a shorter engagement — transformation takes a minimum of six months and there are no exceptions to this