What Actually Happens in a Digital Consultation (And Why It Works in One Day)

People are skeptical when they hear “results in one day.” I get it. The consulting industry has spent decades training people to expect timelines measured in months, deliverables measured in slides, and invoices measured in… well.

So here’s what actually happens. No mystique, no trade secrets. Just the methodology — because if this approach is right for you, you’ll know it by the end of this article. And if it’s not, I’d rather you find out here than after booking.

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Before the session: you do almost nothing

I send a short questionnaire — maybe 15 minutes of your time. It covers the basics: what your company does, how many people, what tools you use, where the friction is.

That’s it. No “discovery phase.” No week of email ping-pong. The questionnaire gives me enough to arrive prepared, but the real work happens live.

Why so little prep? Because in my experience, the most important insights don’t come from documents. They come from the conversation you have when someone asks “why do you do it that way?” and you pause, and then say ”…I actually don’t know anymore.”

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Hour 1: Understanding the landscape

We start with a structured walkthrough of your current digital landscape. Not just the tools you’ve bought — the actual flows: how information moves through your business, where decisions happen, who touches what.

This isn’t an interrogation. It’s a conversation. I ask questions like:

• “Walk me through what happens when a new customer comes in.”
• “What does your team spend the first hour of every day doing?”
• “If one person left tomorrow, what would break?”

Most leaders haven’t done this exercise recently. The act of mapping it out loud — with someone who’s seen hundreds of other companies — is where the first “aha” moments happen.

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Hour 2: Pattern recognition

This is where 12+ years of experience compounds.

I’ve sat in rooms at IKEA where a team of 200 struggled with the same information-flow problem that a 15-person agency has. I’ve seen ING’s digital banking transformation and a Fahrschule’s booking system — and the underlying patterns are remarkably similar.

The common ones:

• The Copy-Paste Tax: data that exists in one system but gets manually re-entered into another. Every. Single. Day.
• The Tribal Knowledge Trap: critical processes that live in one person’s head and nowhere else.
• The Tool Graveyard: software that was bought, half-configured, and abandoned.
• The Approval Bottleneck: every decision routes through one person, who becomes the slowest link.

By hour two, we usually have a clear map of which patterns are costing you the most — in time, money, and morale.

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Hour 3: Solutions architecture

Now we get concrete.

For each problem we’ve identified, I sketch out practical solutions. Not “you should digitise” (thanks, very helpful) — actual tool recommendations, workflow changes, and implementation sequences.

This looks different every time:

• For one client, it was replacing a 6-tool chaos with two integrated platforms.
• For another, it was a single automation that saved 8 hours per week.
• For a third, it was the honest advice that they didn’t need new tools at all — they needed to actually use the ones they had.

I don’t sell tools. I don’t have partnerships with vendors. My only incentive is giving you the most honest recommendation, because that’s what turns a one-time session into a long-term relationship.

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Hour 4: Prioritisation and next steps

Four hours of analysis produces a lot of insight. The danger is overwhelm — “great, now I have 15 things to fix and no idea where to start.”

So the last hour is about triage. We rank everything by:

1. Impact — how much time/money/friction does this save?
2. Effort — how hard is this to implement?
3. Dependencies — what needs to happen first?

The result is a prioritised action plan. Not a wish list — a sequence. “Do this first, then this, then this. Here’s what you can do yourself, here’s where you might need help.”

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After the session: the deliverable

Within two working days, you receive a written action plan. It contains:

• A map of your current digital landscape (the problems, clearly named)
• Prioritised recommendations with specific tools and approaches
• A realistic implementation sequence
• Rough effort estimates for each step

It’s written in plain language. No jargon, no consultant-speak. Your operations lead should be able to read it and say “yes, I understand exactly what to do next.”

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Why this works in one day

Three reasons:

1. Pattern recognition beats analysis paralysis. Traditional consulting spends weeks “discovering” what an experienced consultant can recognise in hours. Not because I’m smarter — because I’ve seen the patterns before. A doctor doesn’t need six weeks to diagnose a broken arm.

2. Focus creates clarity. Four uninterrupted hours with the decision-maker is worth more than ten scattered meetings over six weeks. There’s no context-switching, no “where were we last time,” no momentum loss.

3. Constraints force honesty. When you only have one day, you can’t hide behind process. Every recommendation has to be concrete and defensible. “We need more research” isn’t an option — and honestly, it rarely is a genuine need. It’s usually a symptom of not having someone in the room who’s seen enough to know what’s going on.

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When it’s NOT the right fit

Transparency goes both ways. The Digital Sprechstunde is not right if:

• You need someone to implement the changes (that’s a project, not a consultation)
• Your challenge is primarily organisational politics, not digital processes
• You’re looking for a second opinion on a decision you’ve already made (though I’m happy to give one — just set expectations)

For the first case, CDiT offers workshops and project work. The Sprechstunde is specifically for diagnosis and direction — the “what” and the “why,” not the “doing.”

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The investment question

€995. Paid before the session. If you later book a workshop or project, the full amount is credited.

Is that a lot? For four hours? Maybe. But consider what you’re actually buying: not four hours of my time. You’re buying clarity that would otherwise take months of internal fumbling, three failed tool purchases, and two rounds of “let’s hire a consultant.”

The companies I work with don’t come back because I’m cheap. They come back because the first session saved them from spending ten times that amount in the wrong direction.

And if you’re still not sure — that’s fine too. Clarity about whether to invest is also a valid outcome of reading this.