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Limelight Beams

The board holds you accountable. Who holds your delivery partner?

Limelight closes that gap. Independent. Client-side. Accountable only to you.

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Sound familiar?

The reality check

You've committed to a multi-million pound transformation. Your delivery partner is contracted. The board is watching.

Not your delivery partner — they have a contract to fulfil on their terms. Not your internal team — they're stretched and dependent on the delivery partner for information. Not the board — they're reading the same reports you are.

Most CIO's and CTO's don't have a technology problem. They have a governance problem. That's the gap Limelight exists to close.

 

Beams
What CIO's and CTO's tell us
These are the concerns we hear most often from technology leaders — whether they're preparing for a SAP programme or already inside one. If any of them sound familiar, you're not alone, and you're not wrong to be asking.

Visibility

"I struggle to find visibility across workstreams. I need to know exactly where we stand before issues escalate."

Trust in the delivery

"I don't have full confidence that the delivery partner will protect business priorities or manage risk effectively."

Partner on my side

"I need someone who can help me manage the delivery partner, align the business, and keep the board confident."

Get the migration right

"I know the move to S/4HANA is necessary. I don't want us to be the last company to do it — but I can't afford to get it wrong."

We are your Business Integrator.

That's a term Limelight coined in the UK — and it means something specific. Your delivery partner is contracted to build the technology. Limelight is contracted to deliver the outcome, for you. We sit on your side of the programme, govern the delivery, and give your leadership team an independent picture of where things actually stand. Here's what that looks like in practice.

1

A straight conversation

We start with a sixty-to-ninety minute consultation. No pitch deck. We ask about your programme and your situation, then tell you honestly what we think — including whether and how we can help. If we're not the right fit, we'll say so.

Outcome
Deep intimate understanding

2

A defined engagement

If we proceed, we agree deliverables, timeline, and outcomes before any work starts. Our engagements are defined, not open-ended. Nothing shifts without your explicit agreement. You know what you're getting before you commit.

Outcome
Cornerstones that matter

3

Prism from day 1

We deploy Prism at the start of every engagement — giving your leadership team live, independent programme visibility from day one. Risks, decisions, milestones, and value delivery in a single view that doesn't pass through the delivery partner.

Outcome
Visibility is critical

4

We govern on your behalf

We manage the delivery partner, protect your scope, lead business change, and keep your board confident throughout. If something needs to be said — to your delivery partner, your board, or you — we say it. Honesty isn't optional in our model.

Outcome
Successful delivery

Three forces shaping every CIO and CTO's SAP decision right now.
A deadline creating urgency. AI raising the stakes. And security risk that peaks at exactly the wrong moment. All three reward the same thing — getting the programme right.

The 2027 deadline

SAP mainstream support for ECC ends on 31 December 2027. The average S/4HANA migration takes 18 to 36 months. The planning window is already narrowing. The organisations most at risk are not the ones moving slowly. They're the ones moving too fast — letting commercial urgency push them into a programme before the business case is sound, the scope is defined, and the delivery partner is engaged on the right terms. RunFast Launchpad establishes your independent position before any SAP contract is signed.

The AI question

Your board is asking about AI. SAP is positioning Joule — its embedded AI assistant — as a core reason to move to S/4HANA. The promise is real: automation across finance, procurement, and operations. But Joule's value depends entirely on the quality of what's underneath it. Poor data and weak processes don't improve when an AI layer is added on top. The disciplines that deliver a well-run SAP programme — sound governance, scope control, genuine business readiness — are the same ones that let you actually use AI. For a CIO, this isn't two conversations. It's one.

Security and resilience

A transformation is the moment of maximum exposure. New systems, migrated data, expanded access, and multiple third parties touching your estate at once. At precisely the point security matters most, the people making the access and architecture decisions are often the same people delivering the build. Independent governance changes that. Limelight ensures security and access decisions are made in your interests and challenged objectively — not signed off by the party with a delivery deadline to hit.

Proof. Not promises.

Clients trust us with their most complex programmes. We don't ask you to take our word for it. We point to the programmes we've delivered.

Harrods

Harrods had been an SAP customer for twenty years. The technology had served the business well — but the leadership team recognised it was time to modernise, taking full advantage of the latest SAP capabilities to support the next phase of the business.

The Future Retail programme was a complete greenfield reimplementation of the entire Harrods SAP footprint — a full redesign of retail, supply chain, and financial processes, delivered against an aggressive timeline of under eighteen months.

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RunFast Launchpad
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RunFast Transformation
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Synthomer recognised the need for a global transformation programme to support the next phase of the company's growth — standardising operations across global business units, consolidating six legacy ERP systems into a single S/4HANA landscape, and creating the organisational capability to implement a global template to any future acquisitions.
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RunFast Launchpad
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RunFast Transformation
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Trusted by.

Harrods
CardFactory
Santen
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Pets at Home 2
Thwaites Logo
2SFG
Wales and West Utilities
McLaren Logo
Harrods
CardFactory
Santen
Synothomer Logo
Pets at Home 2
Thwaites Logo
2SFG
Wales and West Utilities
McLaren Logo

Where we help CIO's and CTO's most.

Limelight works across the full transformation lifecycle. These are the services most relevant to you.

 

star-rocket

RunFast Launchpad

Get transformation-ready before the SI starts. Business case, programme structure, readiness assessment.

Transformation

RunFast Transformation

Full programme governance and SI management throughout delivery, with live visibility through Prism.

Stethescope

RunHealthy Assessment

An independent audit of a programme already in motion. Four to six weeks. Prioritised findings.

Bar Graph

Prism

Live, independent programme intelligence. Full change management. Data orchestration. Risks, decisions, milestones, and value delivery — in one view your board can access directly.

Questions we get asked.
What is a Business Integrator and why does a CIO need one?

A Business Integrator is a client-side partner who sits between your business and your SI. Your SI is incentivised to deliver software on their terms. A Business Integrator is incentivised to deliver outcomes on yours — providing independent governance, SI management, change management and board-level assurance that keeps the programme honest and the CIO in control.

SAP programmes create political and commercial pressure that is very difficult to manage from inside the organisation alone. Limelight's model gives CIOs the independent programme oversight they cannot get from either the SI or an internal team that depends on the SI for information.
How does Limelight protect us from our SI without replacing them?

We do not replace your SI — we govern them on your behalf. That means challenging scope creep before it becomes commercial, ensuring milestones reflect genuine progress rather than optimistic reporting, and making sure your leadership team makes informed decisions. We give you an independent view of where the programme actually stands.

Most CIOs receive their programme picture from the SI itself. This creates an obvious problem: the organisation assessing progress has a commercial interest in how it is perceived. Limelight provides the independent lens that closes this gap.
What real-time visibility will I have of programme progress without relying on SI reporting?

Limelight's Prism platform provides independent, real-time programme visibility — risks, issues, decisions, milestone progress, and value delivery in a single view directly accessible to your leadership team. It removes your dependence on SI reporting, which is structurally incentivised to show progress rather than reflect operational reality.

Prism is not a reporting tool — it is a programme intelligence platform. It ensures the right people have the right information to make the right decisions throughout the lifecycle, and gives CIOs the data to hold their SI accountable.
Our SAP ECC support ends in 2027 — how should we be thinking about this now?

SAP mainstream support for ECC EHP 6-8 ends 31 December 2027, with extended maintenance at a premium until 2030. The average S/4HANA migration takes 18–36 months — meaning the planning window is already narrowing. The most important action is establishing an independent strategic position before SAP's deadline dictates your programme start date.

SAP's commercial incentive is to convert ECC customers to RISE subscriptions under time pressure. Organisations that let that deadline drive decisions without independent planning typically start programmes without a sound business case or defined scope. Limelight's RunFast Launchpad establishes your position independently before any SAP contract is signed. Planning window for 2027 deadline is narrowing now 

What does AI in SAP mean for our transformation approach?

AI capabilities in SAP — particularly SAP Joule — are changing what S/4HANA can do operationally. But they do not reduce the governance challenge of getting there. The CIO's priority is ensuring the transformation programme is structured well enough to actually access that AI value — treating AI as a reason for governance rigour, not a reason to rush migration.

SAP Joule provides genuinely useful automation and intelligence — but only to organisations on a sufficiently modern, well-governed, clean-core, data rich SAP landscape. The programme disciplines that deliver a well-run S/4HANA implementation are the same ones that position the organisation to leverage AI. Governance and AI readiness are the same investment.
How do we maintain board-level confidence throughout a multi-year transformation?

Board confidence is lost when reporting is filtered through the SI, risks are surfaced too late, and the narrative diverges from operational reality. Limelight provides independent programme reporting that gives your board an honest picture. Our Prism platform delivers live visibility of programme status, risks, decisions, and value delivery.

Programmes that lose board confidence rarely recover it cleanly. The intervention required after confidence collapses is far more expensive than the governance investment that would have prevented the problem.
What does 'guaranteed outcomes' mean — what exactly is Limelight held to?

Before any engagement begins, we agree specific deliverables, timelines, and success criteria — fixed in scope. We do not expand scope without your agreement and do not charge for rework within our defined responsibilities. Accountability is built into the structure of every engagement, not added as a marketing claim afterwards.

This is how we price our work. If a RunFast Launchpad is scoped to deliver a board-ready business case and readiness assessment within a defined period, that is the commitment. The fixed-scope model is what makes the guarantee operationally credible.
We're not experts at large programmes — can we 'outsource the risk'?

You cannot fully outsource the risk of a transformation programme. You can cap certain costs, but when scope, dependencies, and business readiness shift — and they always do — so will your exposure. What you can do is significantly reduce risk by having experienced, independent leadership on your side from the start.

Too many consultancies sell fixed-price delivery as risk transfer. When scope, risks, and dependencies change, so does your fixed price. Limelight does not take the risk off your hands — we make sure the decisions that create risk are made well.
How can I minimise the risk of project scope creep?

Scope creep almost always has one root cause: insufficient definition at the start. When scope is vague, SIs interpret it generously. Prevention requires a formally defined scope baseline, an agreed change control process, and someone on the client side who understands what is and is not in scope well enough to challenge it throughout.

The SI has a commercial interest in scope interpretation. Limelight provides continuous scope governance throughout the programme — not just at contract signing.
What is the first step to working with Limelight?

The first step is a structured consultation — typically sixty to ninety minutes — in which we understand your programme's current position, objectives, and the specific challenge you are trying to solve. We will be direct about whether and how Limelight can help. There is no commitment required and no proposal pushed before that conversation.

Most engagements begin with RunFast Launchpad for organisations at the start of their journey, or a RunHealthy Assessment for programmes already running. We will tell you clearly which starting point fits your situation — including if neither is right for you.
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No commitment required. We'll tell you honestly whether and how we can help — and if we're not the right fit, we'll say so.
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