Data, automation and intelligence for UK businesses

Large companies have a data department.
I can be yours.

I connect the systems you already run — accounts, ERP, CRM, stock, jobs and spreadsheets — into one reliable picture of your business. Then I automate the reporting, checking and chasing your people do by hand.

• Working results in weeks, not a six-month project.
• No new software for your team to learn.
• No data team to hire.

Book a 20-minute call with me →Casual, exploratory, no sales pitch.

Based in Essex, working across the UKRead-only access to startYou own what I buildNo account managers

The problem

Your business is running on people doing work that software should be doing.

Your information is spread across your accounts package, your ERP or job system, your CRM, supplier and customer portals, email inboxes — and a lot of spreadsheets.

SageXeroDynamicsSAP Business OneERP and job systemsCRMStock and warehousePower BISpreadsheets

And somewhere in the middle, good people are:

• exporting reports and reconciling one spreadsheet against another
• building the management pack by hand every week or month
• copying the same information from one system into another
• chasing numbers that do not agree
• answering the same questions from the MD every week
• maintaining Excel workbooks that only one person understands
• making decisions on figures that are days or weeks out of date

That costs you three ways: hours of skilled people's time every week, decisions made on old or wrong numbers, and money quietly leaking in places nobody has time to look.

The usual answers are expensive. Hire more analysts. Commission a consultancy. Buy another piece of software and hope it fits.

I think there is a better option.

Tell me what is taking too long →

The capability big companies take for granted

Large companies employ whole teams of data engineers and analysts. Their job is to join up the systems, check the numbers, and turn them into decisions and automation.

Most businesses with 50 to 500 people cannot justify that team. So the work lands on finance, operations, and whoever is good with Excel.

I have spent twenty years doing that job for large companies and startups. Engineers like me are not normally available to a business your size — until recently it did not make commercial sense. I think it does now.

What you get:

• An engineer working on your real problems — not a consultant with slides.
• One joined-up picture of how your business actually runs — every order, job, customer, supplier and pound, connected.
• One version of the numbers that the MD, finance and operations all trust.
• Automation that acts on it — the reports, checks, alerts and reconciliations that currently need a person.

Your data team, without hiring one.

What I do

Management information that produces itself

Your weekly and monthly packs — sales, margin, cash, stock, debtors, pipeline — built automatically from your accounts, CRM and operational systems. Ready on Monday morning, not Thursday afternoon.

Find where money is leaking

Margin erosion, unprofitable customers and products, slow payers, billing errors, stock that is not moving, jobs running over. Found across all of your systems, not just one.

A live view of operations

Orders, stock, production, deliveries, purchasing and customers in one place, so problems show up today rather than at month-end.

The weekly spreadsheet job, automated

If someone downloads three spreadsheets every Friday, joins them, checks them and emails the result around the business…

that is probably software. I build it, and they get their Friday back.

Your existing systems, working together

Keep your ERP, CRM and accounts package. You do not need to rip anything out. I make the systems you have already paid for work together — including the Power BI dashboards nobody quite trusts yet.

Businesses like yours

I work with established, growing businesses in traditional industries. If questions like these are hard to answer quickly and confidently, I can probably help.

• Manufacturing and engineeringWhich products and customers actually make money once scrap, rework and overtime are counted?
• Wholesale and distributionHow much stock has not moved in six months — and which customers cost more to serve than they are worth?
• Construction and contractingWhich jobs are running over their quoted hours and materials right now, not at the end of the job?
• Logistics and transportWhat does each delivery really cost, by customer, route and vehicle?
• Professional servicesWhich clients are profitable once write-offs, overruns and late payment are included?
• Food, farming and processingWhere are yield, waste and price changes eating into margin, batch by batch?

How it works

From first conversation to working solution in weeks.

1. 01
   A 20-minute conversation

   You tell me what takes too much time, costs too much money or needs too many people. I tell you honestly whether I think I can fix it.

2. 02
   Read-only access

   I connect to the systems involved. It usually needs a couple of hours of your team's time. I do not change anything in your systems.

3. 03
   Findings in plain English

   I show you what your data says: where the gaps, errors and leaks are, and what I would build first. No jargon, no 80-page report.

4. 04
   A working solution

   The first report, automation or tool goes live and your team starts using it — in weeks, not months.

5. 05
   Keep improving

   Once the first problem is solved, we move to the next. Your team gets a working environment to explore the numbers themselves, without waiting on IT.

You get the outcome. I deal with the machinery.

What this looks like in practice

Examples of the kind of work I do. Businesses and figures are illustrative.

150-person distributor

The weekly sales and margin pack took two people most of Friday. Now it builds itself overnight from the accounts and ERP, and flags customers whose margin has slipped.

90-person engineering firm

Jobs were only costed after they finished. Now quoted and actual hours and materials are compared every day, so overruns are caught while they can still be fixed.

300-person manufacturer

Stock, purchasing and production lived in three systems. One joined-up view exposed slow-moving stock tying up cash, and stopped duplicate reordering.

Talk to me about your problem →

Why I am faster than a consultancy

You do not buy another piece of software.

You get an engineer and the technology to solve your problem.

Behind the scenes I use my own data platform and engineering tools, built over years — you can see some of them in the open source projects on this site. They connect to the mix of systems a growing business runs, work out how the data fits together, keep up when it changes, and keep a clear record of where every number came from — so you can trust it and check it.

That means I never start from zero. It is why I can deliver in weeks, and why it costs a fraction of a traditional data project.

The result sits between software and consultancy: an engineer who solves your problem, with software economics underneath.

Why this is different

Traditional consultancy

Meetings → requirements → architecture → six months → a PowerPoint and an invoice

Traditional software

Buy it → configure it → integrate it → train everyone → discover it does not quite fit

Working with me

Your problem → your data → a working solution

I combine my own technology, automation and AI-assisted engineering to shorten the distance between “this is a problem” and “here is the solution.”

About me

You work directly with the engineer who builds it.

Paul Hudson

Engineer · Founder, Upfoundry

I have spent 20 years building the systems that businesses run on — joining up data, making slow processes fast, and making sure the numbers can be trusted.

I have built and shipped more than 100 software projects, founded a software agency, led engineering in startups and large companies, and worked directly with senior stakeholders.

• Cut a company's cloud costs by 50%, worth six figures every year (Intelematics).
• Helped take a new platform from nothing to live across 65 stations and 15 trains, and supported major new-business tenders.
• Helped architect the platform and engineering practice of a venture-backed startup through rapid growth (CloudCycle).

There are no account managers and no juniors learning on your time. The person you talk to is the person who builds it. I trade as Upfoundry. Book a time and you will get a calendar invite with a Google Meet link.

I still write the code. That is why I move fast.

Your data, your systems, your call

• Read-only to start. I do not change anything in your systems unless you ask me to.
• You own what I build. The reports, automations and data models are yours.
• Confidential by default. Happy to sign your NDA before I see anything.
• No lock-in. Everything is documented, so you are never dependent on me.
• UK-based. I am in Essex and work with businesses across the UK.

Questions I am often asked

Our systems are old. Can you still work with them?

Usually, yes. If your data can be exported, queried or reached through a login, I can normally work with it — Sage, Xero, Dynamics, SAP Business One, bespoke databases, even Access and Excel.

Our data is a mess.

That is normal, and it is where I start. Part of the work is finding the gaps, duplicates and errors, and fixing them so the numbers can be trusted.

We do not have an IT department.

You do not need one. I need someone who can give me access and someone who can explain how the business works.

Do we need to buy new software?

No. I work with the systems you already have.

How much does it cost?

It depends on the problem. After the first conversation we agree a fixed price for the first piece of work before I start, so there are no surprises. It is typically far less than hiring an analyst or commissioning a traditional data project.

How quickly will we see something?

You will usually see first findings within a couple of weeks of me getting access, and a working solution within weeks rather than months.

You are one person. What if something happens to you?

A fair question. Everything I build is documented and lives in systems you control, so another engineer could pick it up.

Who I work with

I am a good fit if…

• You have 50–500 people and have outgrown spreadsheets.
• Your business runs on several systems that do not talk to each other properly.
• Your finance or operations people spend more time preparing numbers than using them.
• Your management information takes heroic manual effort.
• You suspect money is leaking somewhere but do not have the people to find it.
• You do not want to spend two years and a fortune on a data project.
• You have a specific, expensive problem you would like gone.

I am probably not a good fit if…

• You want another generic dashboard.
• You are looking for a six-month requirements exercise.
• You already have a large in-house data team.
• You want someone to write a strategy document and leave.

Let's start with your biggest problem

No transformation programme. No data strategy. No new software budget. Just the one job that costs you the most time, money or people — and a straight answer from me on whether I can fix it.

20-minute call with me

Talk it through

• An honest view on whether I can fix it
• Roughly what it would take
• What it could be worth to your business

Pick a time →Video call · No sales pitch · No obligation

Prefer to write it down?

Describe the problem

Email me at paul@paulhudson.me or message me on LinkedIn. I read every message myself and reply personally.