The Challenge: A Scaling Business Trapped in Spreadsheets
Patrick J. O'Neill built a thriving consultancy, but the firm's success was beginning to outpace its infrastructure. Managing the technology evaluation lifecycle meant juggling spreadsheets, Word documents, and disparate data across dozens of past projects. When Patrick wanted to leverage past work, he had to dig through Excel files from 50 different engagements just to find a starting point.
Beyond internal inefficiencies, the disjointed workflow impacted the customer experience. While the consulting process was highly interactive during initial discovery, clients were largely left in the dark as requirements were built out, waiting passively for draft reports. Patrick knew he needed a system to scale his repeatable frameworks, but the software market offered little relief. Existing tools were completely misaligned with how a consultant actually operates, forcing the firm to bridge the gaps with manual workarounds.
“The challenge for consulting firms like ours is that software solutions in the RFP space are solely focused on procurement—and I would say even more on the seller side than on the buyer and consultant side. There's so much work that goes into getting to that point, from discovery to needs assessments to requirements and then ultimately to the RFP process, and those needs weren't being met for us.”
The Solution: Centralizing the Consulting Lifecycle
Redhand Advisors found their answer in Olive, adopting the platform to move their entire process—from discovery and needs assessments to RFP development—into a single, unified system.
The transformation started with their data. Patrick consolidated 1,500 requirements gathered over 10 years into Olive's library. Now, instead of starting from scratch, the firm can instantly pull a specialized area of focus as a baseline. Olive’s built-in AI capabilities further streamlined this, replacing the tedious process of exporting notes to standalone AI tools and pasting the results back into reports. Beyond internal efficiencies, Olive fundamentally changed the customer experience by bringing clients directly into the collaborative workflow.
“Something completely new through the Olive portal is that I invite my clients to participate in the process. Once I have the shell of a project and start to organize the requirements, I invite them in. We use the survey capabilities to help rank requirements. We get a lot of feedback from different key stakeholders, and the survey tool allows the client to provide feedback on what the higher or lower priorities are.”
The Results: Faster Projects and Productized Services
By moving away from manual spreadsheets and adopting a purpose-built platform, Redhand Advisors has dramatically accelerated its delivery. The firm has successfully reduced the time it takes to get from initial discovery to a finalized RFP by 30%, cutting typical project timelines from 12 weeks down to just eight.
“With the initial projects that we've utilized Olive for, we've reduced the time from Discovery to RFP by approximately 30%, and that's a pretty conservative estimate. It really takes a big burden off of the steps in between requirements gathering.”
This newfound efficiency hasn't just improved Redhand's bottom line; it has unlocked entirely new avenues for growth. Historically, the heavy administrative lift required to start a project meant Redhand had to turn away smaller, "downstream" clients whose budgets couldn't justify the consulting hours. By leveraging their centralized library and automated frameworks, Redhand has significantly lowered its cost-to-serve, removing the barriers that previously limited their market reach.
“One of the things I'm most excited about with Olive is the opportunity to productize our offering. It's going to give us the ability to go after clients that we would not have been able to provide consulting services to in the past. We're doing that through more repeatable and automated frameworks and processes.”
Today, Redhand Advisors is no longer constrained by manual overhead. With a streamlined workflow, a highly engaged client base, and the ability to confidently scale their team, they are delivering faster, more cost-effective solutions to a broader market than ever before.
