Areas of work
What I work on
Six areas, usually in combination rather than one at a time. Every engagement produces something written that the client can act on and keep.
- Product portfolio
- Margin, volume trend and remaining life cycle, line by line. Which products still earn their place, which are carried out of habit, and where replacement revenue can realistically come from before the old range runs out.
- Distribution and channel
- Channel structure by territory, partner performance, and the commercial terms of the supplier and distribution agreements a business depends on. Concentration risk gets named rather than assumed away.
- Procurement and inventory
- Supplier concentration, purchasing terms, lead times and stock levels — including what current product, packaging and supply chain regulation is quietly adding to the cost of carrying a range.
- Organisation and resourcing
- What each role is actually for, where the business is one person away from a problem, and how functions should be divided between a company and the group around it.
- Cash and financing
- Rolling liquidity planning, working capital tied up in stock and receivables, banking terms, and preparing the conversation with the bank well before it becomes urgent.
- Group service relationships
- For companies inside a group: whether the services bought and sold between the entities are described, priced and allocated in a way that stands up to outside scrutiny.
Fit
Who I work with
Businesses that make something or move something, where the owner is still close to the operation and the next decision is large enough that getting it wrong would be felt for years.
I am not the right person for a business looking for a brand strategy, a marketing plan or a software project. I am useful where the product is physical, the margins are thin enough to matter, and someone needs to work out what the numbers are actually saying.
Most engagements start because something has changed: a supplier, a shareholder, a key person, or a market that is smaller than it used to be.
Typical engagement
- Sector
- Manufacturing, distribution, technical products
- Size
- Owner-managed businesses and small groups
- Working with
- The owner, the managing director, or both
- Shape
- A standing arrangement of a few days a month
- Basis
- Hourly, against a monthly timesheet
- Location
- Remote from Hampshire, occasional site visits
Starting points
The questions I usually get asked
Not a service list. These are the sentences clients actually open with.
- Our biggest product line shrinks every year. What replaces it, and how long have we got?
- We are profitable on paper but there is never any cash. Where is it?
- One supplier accounts for most of what we sell. What happens if that relationship ends?
- Two people are retiring and nobody else knows how half of this works. Where do we start?
- We charge each other for services across the group, but nobody can explain how the numbers were arrived at.
- The bank wants a plan by the end of the quarter and we do not have one.
Method
How an engagement starts
The first four weeks follow the same shape, whatever the question.
-
Conversation
An hour on the phone to establish what the problem actually is and whether I am the right person for it. No charge.
-
Read the business
Accounts, product and customer data, contracts, and the things nobody has looked at in a while. Questions in writing so they can be answered properly.
-
Options paper
What the numbers say, the realistic options, what each would cost and take, and a recommendation with the assumptions stated openly.
-
Then decide
Either the work stops there because the question is answered, or it becomes a standing arrangement. Both are fine outcomes.
Background
Where this comes from
A career spent inside the businesses, not alongside them.
I started at Micro Peripherals Ltd straight from school, at the point when computer peripherals were moving from specialist supply into volume distribution. That is where I learned how a distribution business really works: stock turns, supplier terms, and the difference between revenue and margin.
Over the following years I worked with and advised a range of companies, from established manufacturers to early-stage ventures — including an online grocery business in its startup phase, where the hard problem was fulfilment rather than software.
I then ran my own business: a precision CNC machining company producing components to tight tolerance, including parts for aerospace and defence programmes. Owning it meant carrying every side of it at once — quoting, capacity, quality approval, payroll and the bank. That is the experience clients are buying.
Basing Consulting works with a small number of clients at a time, mostly remotely from Hampshire, with occasional time on site. I take on work where the question is commercial and operational rather than legal or accounting — those I leave to the people qualified to answer them.
Terms
How engagements run
By the hour
Charged in quarter-hour units against a monthly timesheet, so a client can see exactly what was worked on and decide what to stop.
Continuing, not one-off
Most work is a standing arrangement of a few days a month over a year or more. Shorter assignments are possible where the question is well defined.
Written outcomes
Analyses, option papers and working models, with the assumptions stated. Advice you cannot re-read six months later is not much use.
Confidential
Client names are not published and are not used as references without written permission. What is discussed stays inside the engagement.
Independent
No commission, no referral fees, nothing to sell you. The only thing I am paid for is the time and the judgement.
Insured
Professional indemnity cover is in place and evidence is provided to clients on request.
Contact
Get in touch
A first conversation costs nothing and usually establishes within half an hour whether I am the right person for the problem.
Jason Hawke, Director
Basing Consulting Ltd
4 The Street, Basingstoke
Hampshire RG24 7BH, United Kingdom
Useful to include in a first email: what the business makes or sells, roughly how large it is, and the decision that is coming up.
I reply to everything, normally within two working days.