Meertec
Pre-Deal
Technical & Data Due Diligence
Independent assessment of technology estate, data assets and AI maturity ahead of investment, with a clear view of cost, risk and value-creation headroom.
Learn more →Meertec · Executive Transformation · Private Equity
Executive Transformation & AI Advisory for Private Equity
Dr Stephen D. Jones
Engaged directly by Boards, CEOs and Private Equity investors to realise deal theses across diligence, value creation plans, hold periods and exits.
Track record, by engagement
Value ledger
Headline totals are rolled up across the engagements that delivered them, reported against the work that earned each figure.
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Bain Capital · FedEx/TNT · BBC
Post-acquisition value creation
- £60M+ EBITDA improvement
- 2,800+ apps rationalised
- 20% cloud cost reduction
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NEOM · Marlink · Opus 2
Enterprise data & AI operating models
- $30M opportunity identified
- Production Data Mesh in 6 months
- Operating across 30 countries
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HSBC · Opus 2
Governance & operating model transformation
- 90% governance overhead reduction
- 450 architects, 3 geographies
- Full FCA/PRA compliance held
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DXC · UK Government
Critical national infrastructure
- £2.5Bn National Identity Consortium
- £400M Passport Service transformation
- AI-enabled fraud detection in CNI
£60M+
EBITDA improvement, post acquisition
£7Bn+
Transaction & programme value supported
2,800+
Applications in scope for rationalisation
20yrs
Executive leadership, PhD-trained in AI
What Meertec Does
Advisory across the PE lifecycle
Engagements are structured to the deal thesis, not a standard transformation template: retained, interim or advisory, from first diligence call to exit narrative.
100-Day Plan
Operating Model & Carve-Out Design
TSA/CSA planning, target operating model design and separation architecture, sized to the deal thesis rather than a generic transformation template.
Learn more →Hold Period
Interim CDAO / CIO / CTO
Retained executive leadership of technology and data functions during the hold period: stabilising delivery, resetting vendor relationships and rebuilding engineering credibility.
Learn more →Hold Period
AI & Data Operating Models
Design and stand-up of production data and AI capability (Data Mesh, governance and commercial data products) built for adoption, not slideware.
Learn more →Hold Period
Get Fit: IT Organisation Diagnostic
A structured evaluation of the IT organisation against the value creation plan: people, process, technology, data, AI and cyber scored against a consistent maturity scale, with a clear, sequenced view of the changes needed to deliver.
Methodology →Value Creation
Cost & Estate Rationalisation
Application and cloud estate rationalisation, FinOps discipline and vendor renegotiation, converting technical debt directly into EBITDA.
Learn more →Exit
Exit & Readiness Advisory
Technology and data narrative for sale processes, buyer diligence support and separation planning for carve-out or trade exits.
Learn more →Executive Expertise
Six disciplines, one operating view
01
Transformation & Technology Strategy
Leading technology-enabled transformation through strategy, architecture, operating models, information management and executive advisory, aligning technology investment with organisational and commercial objectives.
02
Commercial Transformation & Value Creation
Delivering large-scale transformation, integration and organisational change, combining commercial leadership, investment optimisation and governance to realise measurable business value.
03
Data, AI & Digital
Defining data and AI strategies spanning GenAI, Agentic AI, RAG, GraphRAG, Data Mesh, MLOps and AI governance, transforming information into scalable operational and commercial capability.
04
Governance, Risk & Executive Leadership
Board and executive engagement, governance, assurance and regulatory leadership across FCA/PRA, GDPR, AI governance, NIST, OWASP and GRC within highly regulated environments.
05
Platforms, Cloud & Modernisation
Modernising technology platforms through Azure, AWS, Lakehouse architectures, streaming platforms, DevOps, FinOps and cloud optimisation to improve resilience, agility and cost efficiency.
06
Strategy & Execution
Strategy built to be executed and proven by delivery, across retained multi-year engagements, so each cycle of strategy and delivery sharpens the next, aspiration honed by operational reality.
Representative Engagements
Trusted by Boards and Executive Teams
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Bain Capital
Post-acquisition transformation, Kantar Media
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HSBC
Architecture governance & DevOps transformation
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FedEx / TNT
Acquisition technology strategy & integration
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BBC
Enterprise architecture, technology carve-out
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Kantar
CTO, post-acquisition transformation
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NEOM
Sovereign data strategy & architecture (NEOS)
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UK Government
National Identity Consortium, Passport Service
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Astorg / Five Arrows
CTO advisory, Opus 2 LegalTech
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Providence
Digital capability roadmap, Marlink Group
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DXC Technology
CTO, EMEA infrastructure & CNI programmes
Career
Experience, condensed
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2014 – Present
Interim Chief Data & AI Officer / CIO/CTO Advisory
UK / EMEA / APAC
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2013 – Present
Founder
Meertec: Enterprise Technology & Innovation
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2011 – 2013
Solution & Strategy Director, Field CTO APAC
Hewlett-Packard
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2007 – 2010
CTO / Solution Director
DXC Technology (Government & Business Services)
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2006 – 2007
Chief Architect
Steria: Criminal Justice IT
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2004 – 2006
Programme Architect, Enterprise Transformation
Siemens: BBC IT Carve-Out
Before The Boardroom
Early career & foundations
Postgraduate research in AI led into early leadership roles spanning financial services, industrial automation and the space sector, the foundations later applied to enterprise data and executive technology leadership.
AXA
Enterprise Architect
Led integration, compliance and technology modernisation within a highly regulated financial services environment.
C-Bridge Internet Solutions
Head of Architecture & Engineering
Directed architecture and engineering for a wealth management platform, establishing scalable technical foundations for financial services clients.
Science Systems Space Division
Head of Mission Planning & Scheduling
Led development of commercial AI applications for mission planning and optimisation within the space sector.
Intelligent Automation Division
Senior AI Consultant
Advised industrial clients on artificial intelligence and real-time control systems, one of the earliest foundations for a career centred on AI-enabled transformation.
Beyond Retained Mandates
Side projects & ventures
Technology built and run alongside executive appointments.
GlobalSouthIT
BuildingCo-Founder
An international technology partnership spanning the UK, US and Morocco, combining executive leadership with global engineering capability. Supports ERP transformation across the US and Morocco, and leads technical architecture for an intelligent retrofit platform integrating AI, IoT, edge intelligence and smart building management for large-scale cooperative housing.
Denied Party Screening & Pre-Clearance
BuildingArchitect
Target Operating Model and High-Level Design for large-scale border and customs processing. Optimising the shipping process means ensuring every declaration is compliant with international standards that vary by jurisdiction: a conversion engine was needed to reconcile them. Denied-party screening is nation-to-nation and dependent on context and the bill of shipping: be clear on what is being shipped, and the screening implications follow.
Secure Factory: IT/OT Integration
BuildingCTO
Secure Factory concepts applying Industry 4.0, Zero Trust, and combined IT/OT security principles to manufacturing environments, developed for a pharmaceutical plant. The principles were rolled out to a model facility.
AI in Enterprise Architecture
BuildingEnterprise Architect
Enterprise Architecture is a document-centric discipline (numbers as supporting evidence, graphs showing the relationships between components across domains) and one that benefits directly from AI and LLMs, particularly in building business capability models and mapping between domains. A proof of concept used GenAI and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to translate existing documentation and interview transcripts, cataloguing applications and the roles they played in the business to generate mappings into the capability, data and technology domains.
ESG Cloud: Visibility & Optimisation
BuildingCTO
ESG-focused cloud optimisation combining FinOps with sustainability and carbon-reduction objectives: a serverless solution built on cloud service provider (CSP) reporting data, overlaid with a reporting structure to direct investment. The same CSP reporting doubled as a data source for enterprise architecture infrastructure modelling.
Insights
Articles & LinkedIn
A running record of writing on PE value creation, AI operating models and technology transformation.
Don't Fight the Fire, Read the Smoke: Why the Best PE Operators Know When to Let Go
Fire Chiefs read Volume, Velocity, Density and Colour before tackling a blaze; the best PE operating partners know that fixating on the fire in front of them loses the peripheral read that shows where the burn is heading. On the Management Uncertainty Principle — you cannot hold micro-detail and a clear view of the horizon at the same time — and why an interim who does the close reading lets the fund stay macro.
When Expertise Doesn't Leave With the Expert
Every portfolio has an "Alex": the critical person whose tacit knowledge and well-honed judgement holds it all together — the exceptions no one wrote down, the forgotten trade-offs and workarounds. Agentic AI doesn't remove that dependency, it changes where it lives, with implications for technical due diligence, succession planning and the next generation of AI governance.
Enterprise Architecture (EA) and Technology Due Diligence (TDD): Two Sides of the Same Coin?
EA and technical due diligence draw on the same data room but ask different questions: assurance before you buy, enablement once you own it. The two converge in the technology thread of a Value Creation Plan.
Get In Touch
Considering a diligence call, an interim mandate,
or a value-creation review?
Prefer the full picture before reaching out?
Download Full CV (PDF)Meertec Ltd, 18 Holly Road, Guildford, GU14 0EA, United Kingdom