Our 30+ year history

The story of how Catalyst got here, and why our experience matters

Browse our training

The challenge in 1995: fixing broken processes

When Catalyst Consulting began in 1995, “digital transformation” wasn’t a phrase anyone used. Offices typically ran on fax machines, landlines and filing cabinets. Email was arriving but treated with scepticism and mobile phones were bricks with aerials that belonged only to the lucky few.

The organisational issues of the day were not about technology at all. They were generally about waste. Processes had grown up over decades, with each department adding its own step, approval and form to be filled in. People rarely looked at the whole journey and viewing it through a customer’s eyes was rarer still.

Work sat in queues, in-trays and on pallets. Changes tended to be announced from the top with little consideration for the people doing the work.

These were the problems Catalyst was solving back then: bringing Lean and Six Sigma approaches to organisations that had never really measured their processes from a customer perspective or considered them end to end, and doing it in a way that brought people along rather than pushing them.

Seeing the flow and engaging the experts

At its core, Lean Six Sigma challenged organisations to look beyond departments and functions and understand how work truly flowed. By helping organisations see processes from a customer’s perspective, Catalyst enabled businesses to remove waste, reduce delays and improve the quality of service they delivered.

The focus was never simply on process maps and metrics. Sustainable improvement depended on engaging the people closest to the work and building improvement capability throughout the organisation.

Beyond process improvement: transforming organisations

As the world moved beyond Y2K, so Catalyst widened its ground. Lean Six Sigma remained the bedrock, but culture change, leadership development and enterprise-wide transformation became increasingly important.

Organisations were recognising that process improvement alone was not enough. Lasting change required strong leadership, engaged teams and a culture that supported continuous improvement. People-focused change and process improvement began working hand in hand.

The digital revolution changes expectations

The advent of the smartphone, and particularly the arrival of the iPhone, fundamentally changed customer expectations. Customers now expected the same instant, personal and seamless experience from their bank, utility company or public service provider as they received from online retailers.

At the same time, organisations were generating vast amounts of data but often struggled to turn it into timely insights or meaningful action. Increasingly, the challenge was not collecting information but knowing what to do with it.

The world was moving faster than organisations and their traditional planning cycles could respond to. Spending nine months designing a solution was no longer acceptable when both the problem and the solution could evolve during that period.

Adapting to a world that won’t stand still

Agile emerged as more than a software delivery methodology. It became a different way of thinking about change itself.

Where traditional approaches focused on lengthy planning and delayed implementation, Agile encouraged organisations to work in short cycles: try something, measure it, learn from it and refine it. Faster feedback led to faster improvement.

Catalyst expanded into agility, digital transformation and emerging technologies, increasingly helping clients answer a more challenging question: not simply what should we change, but how do we balance strategy and execution when neither is standing still?

From improvement consultancy to transformation partner

Today, Catalyst operates as a next-generation business transformation partner, supporting organisations from the boardroom to the operational front line.

Our services include:

Training in Lean, Lean Six Sigma, Agile, Change, AI Solutions and Design Thinking
Capability and culture assessments
Strategy and transformation planning
Value stream mapping
Intelligent automation
Senior leadership coaching
Change facilitation

While the tools and technologies have evolved dramatically, our focus remains the same: helping organisations deliver measurable, sustainable improvement.

Building tools for the next generation

We have not only advised organisations on transformation, we have built tools to support it.

CatStat, Catalyst’s AI-guided statistical analysis platform, combines the rigour of Lean Six Sigma with the speed and accessibility modern teams expect from technology. Built by practitioners for practitioners, it enables organisations to gain meaningful insights from data without needing advanced statistical expertise.

CatStat represents the natural evolution of Catalyst’s thinking: applying the proven disciplines of continuous improvement through technology that makes those capabilities available to more people, more quickly.

Why thirty+ years matters

Thirty years in business is about more than longevity.

It means we have seen multiple waves of management thinking, economic uncertainty, technological change and organisational transformation. We’ve worked through the rise of Lean, Six Sigma, Agile, digital transformation, automation and now artificial intelligence.

Many organisations are facing challenges that appear new on the surface but are rooted in familiar problems: disconnected processes, competing priorities, siloed teams, limited visibility and change that fails to stick. Three decades of experience gives us the perspective to recognise the difference between a genuinely new challenge and an old challenge dressed in new technology.

This perspective means our recommendations are grounded not in the latest trend but in what consistently delivers sustainable results.

Thirty years on, delivering greater impact

In 2025, Catalyst reached a significant milestone: thirty years of helping organisations improve, adapt and transform. Across the team, we bring hundreds of years of combined experience, while remaining firmly focused on what comes next.

The technology has changed beyond recognition since 1995. Artificial intelligence, automation and advanced analytics are creating opportunities that would have seemed impossible when Catalyst was founded. Yet many of the underlying organisational challenges remain remarkably consistent: silos, unclear priorities, inefficient processes and change that struggles to deliver lasting results.

Our advantage is having lived through both worlds. We understand the fundamentals that never change and the technologies that do.

That combination of proven experience and modern capability is what enables Catalyst to help organisations turn change into lasting improvement and build confidence in whatever comes next.

View our timeline