BL.

AI consultant for operational businesses

Consult, Build, Buy, or Implement

I study how your company actually works, then build, or source and implement, the right tools to make it more efficient.

Benjamin Laval, head and shoulders, glasses, navy shirt, photographed outdoors.

8 years building internal software tools

I've run product, written software, and run operations. I see where work is slow, and stay until people are using what we buy or build.

Previously

Head of Product, Software Engineer, and Head of Operations.

Get to the next step with AI

Find your step

Every company sits somewhere on these nine steps. My job is to find where you are today, pick the next step that pays off, and get you there safely.

    Find where you are

    I look at the tools your people use today, what they cost, and where your data goes.

    Pick the next step

    One step at a time, chosen for what it saves. Not every company needs to reach step 9.

    Get you there

    I build or buy the tools, set them up safely and train the team. I stay until people use them.

    Consult. Then Build, Buy, Implement.

    Consult

    Understand the company, and highlight the opportunity.

    AI optimisation
    Which teams could be using AI more or better.
    Internal efficiency
    Where work is slow, costly, or waiting on people.
    Build vs buy decisions
    Analyse whether we should buy off the shelf or build ourselves.
    AI governance
    Ensure AI governance with new EU regulations.

    Build, Buy, Implement

    Make the decision, and implement the roll out.

    Internal tools and automation
    Build or buy new tools and automations.
    AI culture
    Embed a culture of strong AI usage in your company.
    Rollout and implementation
    Roll out the latest and greatest tools so people actually use them.
    AI tool training
    Train the teams on how to use tools, and run workshops.

    Recent work

    Spare AI Voice: a rider books a trip by phone, the conversation and agency view shown beside the call.

    AI voice agent

    • AI voice agent built and launched, which handles 250,000 calls per month.
    • Saving companies 6,250 human hours and over $150,000 in hiring costs every month.
    Electric cars charging at on-street Connected Kerb points.
    Full story

    App & CPMS

    • Buy vs build decision for mobile app + CPMS.
    • Led the project to build both internally and migrate 6,000 EV charging sockets to the internal system.
    • Total software licence savings to Connected Kerb of £150,000 / year.
    Kleene data platform graph view.

    Internal Integration Tooling

    • Discovery and prioritisation of an internal integration tool.
    • The tooling sped up the delivery of client integration by 2x.
    • This sped up client onboarding, and therefore the date of first invoice, from months to weeks.

    “Ben is a future leader in Technology and a real rockstar to watch!

    His technical abilities set him apart from traditional product owners giving him broad technical skills across Data, product development, process automation and innovation. He has fantastic skill to translate this technical knowledge into insight and direction for all business functions including the leadership.

    His curiosity, diligent quality in his work and superb team leadership set up Ben well for a very successful career in technology.

    It is a privilege to work with him and benefit from his direction, as a safe pair of hands, that can be relied on.”

    Ben Boutcher-West CTO, Connected Kerb

    “Me and Ben started at Connected Kerb a few months apart and given that Ben had not come from eMobility previously, the pace at which he familiarised himself with technical terminology, the technology itself and other facets of the industry was extremely impressive.

    It has been a pleasure to work with Ben and see him swiftly learn the ropes of eMobility at a truly staggering pace. His contributions to the future successes of Connected Kerb will be abundantly clear to anyone that has had the opportunity to work with him.

    Ben is an extremely capable developer and I genuinely admire the extent to which he has developed professionally over such a short span of time. Ben's ability to understand the brief, ask the right questions and then get cracking on a solution is symbolic of his ability to just get stuff done.

    Not to mention the fact that he's pro-actively designed and developed much-needed solutions under his own steam, purely because it needed to be done and he was able to recognise, understand and provide a solution for those needs.

    In short, Ben is just great at what he does. Fact.”

    Tom Aldred EV Infrastructure Systems & Operations, Connected Kerb

    “Ben is one of our star performers at Kleene. Ben is very driven to achieve results and takes on responsibility and accountability beyond the scope of his role to make sure the end goal is achieved. Ben balances gaining a deep technical understanding of the domain area, with a customer focus, and brings people together to make sure that cross functional collaboration happens.

    In the time I've known Ben he has constantly strived to understand our company goals and align his area, delivering impressive results along the way, the team he has hired and internally developed at Kleene is recognised as one of our best performing. Ben also is a key contributor to our company culture, from speaking at all hands on Product topics, to being a key member of the Kleene basketball team.”

    Andrew Thomas CEO, Kleene

    Where is the work slow?

    Free audit