Leadership & management consultancy
Hillier’s advisory proposition is grounded in first-hand experience: starting companies, scaling operations, navigating regulation, protecting payroll through crisis, redesigning business models and preparing ventures to succeed beyond a founder or transaction.
The proposition
The value is not another report that describes the problem. It is a clearer route from diagnosis to action.
Hillier’s strongest contribution is to founder-led and owner-managed businesses at an inflection point: rapid growth without enough infrastructure, underperformance that has become normalised, a regulatory change that threatens the old model, a crisis that compresses decision time, or an exit that exposes how dependent the company remains on one person.
The work is direct, commercially focused and implementation-aware. Financial information, customer reality, people capability, process and risk are considered together — because real turnarounds fail when one of those elements is treated as someone else’s problem.
Where he adds value
An engagement can be a focused diagnostic, a defined transformation programme, a board-advisory role or hands-on support through a critical period.
Establish what is genuinely happening to cash, margin, delivery and customer confidence — then create a recovery plan that the management team can execute.
Create a small number of reliable facts, a faster decision rhythm and communication that keeps staff, customers and funders aligned.
Clarify what the company sells, why customers should choose it, where margin is created and which legacy activity no longer deserves resource.
Translate founder knowledge into processes, systems, data and management capability that allow the company to grow without becoming brittle.
Use regulation as a design constraint and a trust advantage, rather than treating it as a late-stage legal check.
Reduce dependency on the founder and improve the qualities that make a business transferable, financeable and capable of thriving after a handover.
The operating method
Not every assignment follows a neat sequence, but the discipline prevents activity from being mistaken for progress.
Protect cash, service, payroll, key people and critical customer relationships.
Replace assumptions with a small set of commercial, operational and risk facts.
Choose the priority market, product, process and decision structure. Stop work that dilutes the recovery.
Give named leaders clear outcomes, deadlines, measures and authority to act.
Embed the systems, governance, management depth and evidence that keep the gains in place.
Evidence from experience
These are not invented consultancy case studies. They are episodes in businesses Hillier founded and led.
RACS developed from a small education-payroll venture into a multi-sector group with bespoke software, specialist departments, substantial premises and a national client base. The 2016 biography records turnover above £150 million and more than 100 staff at that point. S1
Advisory insight: founder intensity creates the first growth. Systems, management information and trusted leaders create repeatable growth.
When tax changes threatened a core payroll product, the response was to redesign the proposition around what remained lawful and valuable, supported by legal input, technology, training and a sustained communication programme. S1
Advisory insight: do not confuse a familiar product with the customer need it was originally created to serve.
People Group reports that it moved into CJRS support within a week, advanced weekly payments, processed more than £12 million and passed audit. The operational challenge combined technical interpretation, funding and communication to thousands of people. S4 S19
Advisory insight: a crisis plan is credible only when policy, cash and delivery reach the customer at the same time.
COVID-19 and furlough
Survival measures matter. So does using the crisis to improve the business that emerges.
Business exits and succession
The TWH Holdings-supplied biographical account records several successful business exits and transitions, with successor operations continuing to trade. The identities, transaction values and detailed terms of private deals have not been published in the sources reviewed for this website, so they are not presented as independently verified case studies.
The useful lesson is nevertheless clear. A durable exit is built before the buyer arrives. It requires a company whose value is not trapped solely in the founder’s memory, personality or personal relationships.
The current role
Hillier’s value is strongest where a business needs a practical route through a difficult turn: stabilising cash, redesigning operations, strengthening management information, responding to legislation, preparing for succession or converting a crisis into a better operating model.
The TWH Holdings brief also records several completed business exits and transitions whose successor operations continue to trade. Private transaction details are not reproduced as public case studies without documentary support or permission.
Working style
The approach is energetic and candid. It is designed for organisations that want movement, not theatre.
What are we protecting? Where is the cash? Which customers create value? What decision are we avoiding? Who owns the next move?
A small, trusted dashboard beats a large presentation. Measures must connect to cash, customer outcomes, risk and execution.
Assumptions are tested, circular conversations are shortened and the group is brought back to the commercial decision.
The plan is translated into workstreams, owners, dates and dependencies rather than left at the level of recommendation.
Teams are trusted with responsibility and expected to report progress plainly. Support and challenge are applied together.
Private transactions, client circumstances and personal information remain private. Published claims are separated from confidential experience.
TWH Holdings Limited
A useful first conversation should identify the decision, the evidence already available, the people affected and the cost of waiting.