Rhys Lancaster
Chief Operating Officer candidate
SC + NPPV3 CLEARED
Operating plan, first 12 months
Cloudscaler

You asked for someone who would rather show a dashboard than write a paragraph, so here is the dashboard. A cleared operator who builds the operating model and ships the automation, into exactly the regulated and secure environments Cloudscaler grows in. Your six outcomes are on the left. Flip the right-hand column between what I have already done and what I would deliver for you. Three of the six I have proven, three I would be building, and I have not pretended otherwise.

Your 12-month outcome
ISO accreditation and every regulatory obligation held without friction.
Live accountability under the Telecoms Security Act at an OFCOM-registered telco, delivery into MOD, Police and NHS, and a CNI programme whose governance I rebuilt. Clearance you do not have to wait months for.
Walk in already cleared and run your regulated obligations as a standing discipline rather than a scramble before each audit, holding ISO and your Home Office, defence and finance commitments without slowing a single delivery.
TSA + OFCOM live · SC + NPPV3
AI and automation embedded across all functions.
I build and run this personally, not just slideware. Includes a revenue-forecasting agent on Microsoft Fabric, a data agent that surfaces misposted credits, MS Agent 365 governance layer, and a Data Champions programme that teaches non-technical staff to self-serve rather than queue for IT.
Put working automation into your finance, hiring and compliance functions inside year one, and stand up a Data Champions programme so the whole company self-serves rather than waits on a central team.
agents in production · staff self-serving
Every core process documented, owned, and automated where it pays to be.
Process before technology is the conviction the rest of my work hangs off. Lean Six Sigma, and provisioning automated at Tata to take human error out of onboarding.
Document each core process as it actually runs, give every one a named owner, and automate only where it pays, so the model carries you to 500 without scaling the headcount that runs it.
onboarding 5–8 mo vs 12–18 industry
Headcount past 200, infrastructure intact, culture still recognisable.
Founded and grew a business from zero to around twenty across the UK and India, including a wholly-owned subsidiary. Built and scaled global delivery teams at Tata. I know what snaps at 150 because I have assembled the parts that snap.
Build the operating infrastructure to carry you past 200 with the culture intact, fixing what breaks at 150 before it breaks rather than after, having felt that break from the founder's seat myself.
0 → ~20 staff, 2 countries, founder
Month-end close under seven days, forecast accuracy within two percent.
Governance I have run, and forecasting tools I have personally built before. Fabric agents that now catch what a human misses, lifted one contract from one to sixteen percent EBITDA through governance and commercial grip.
Tighten month-end close to under seven days and bring forecasting inside two percent, with the reporting built so leadership sees the truth weekly rather than chasing it once a month.
EBITDA 1% → 16% · forecast agent live
Agency dependency substantially gone, direct hiring the default.
As founder I owned recruitment, contracts and cross-border hiring directly, and built teams at Tata without an agency crutch.
Stand up an in-house hiring engine that sustains fifteen-plus hires a month and makes direct hiring the default, weaning the business off agency fees as it doubles.
UK + India hiring, in-house, owned

● already delivered a version of this   ◐ would be building this on foundations I have laid before

First 90 days, three moves

01

Baseline the model as it runs

Map finance, HR, compliance and delivery as they actually work today, not as the wiki claims, and find where each one will give way at 200.

02

Instrument it

Stand up weekly reporting that tells leadership the truth on close, forecast, pipeline-to-hire and utilisation, so calls run on evidence rather than anecdote.

03

Automate the first thing that pays

One real bottleneck, automated end to end, as proof the operating model accelerates the business rather than fencing it in.

Dashboard built by Rhys Lancaster for Cloudscaler COO Application
rhys@lancaster.me +44 7500 102123 linkedin.com/in/rhyslancaster