Waterstons: digital consultancy for leading organisations

James Alderson, Client Experience Director at Waterstons, discusses the company’s development of its partners’ technology capabilities

The ability to go digital has never been more critical for sustaining global operations. As businesses expand their use of technology, partners provide insight and application of new systems, while leveraging existing solutions for maximum gain. 

Speaking with James Alderson, Client Experience Director at Waterstons, he explains how the company has worked with its clients to support their digital transformations. With more than 14 years at the company, Alderson has helped clients on their digital journey from providing strategic consultancy and alignment advice to delivering projects such as the adoption of cloud, global collaboration tools, and cybersecurity solutions, to name but a few. 

“Having worked with lots of clients across the course of my career at Waterstons, I have had the opportunity to really understand what our clients do, how they operate and really understand the businesses we work with. That knowledge helps me to ensure that the people who are delivering the broad range of different services that we provide today are really thinking from a client's perspective,” says Alderson. 

How does Waterstons support digital development? 

Comprised of 240 people, the business is well-positioned in supporting global business operations with its workforce widely dispersed across the UK and other parts of the world. 

As a result, Waterstons is able to take on various projects to provide its digital consultancy services and build close relationships with its clients that operate globally. “We can solve many different client challenges that we see in the marketplace. We're big enough to support that, but we're small enough to care as well,” Alderson says. 

“That's the really important piece for us, making sure we can walk in their shoes, grow with them and partner with them for a long period of time as well,” he adds.

The company also takes pride in building great working relationships with its clients, which can be seen through its partnership with Cundall — a multidisciplinary engineering and construction consultancy — as it celebrates 13 years of partnership with the business. 

“We've grown along with them in that time,” says Alderson. 

“Our key priority has been immersing ourselves within their business, seeing what challenges they've faced; what challenges the sector that they operate within has faced as well, to really help them evolve what they're doing through the use of technology. It's allowed us to look at different, innovative ways to help them, and ensure the technology platform that they've got supports their growth, both in the UK and internationally.”

Continually delivering value to clients

Waterstons’ ability to integrate itself into its clients’ operations adds value to its services. The company is often considered part of Cundall — and vice versa — with employees working in its partner’s office. “We really immerse ourselves in the organisations that we serve,” says Alderson.

“We often get asked, ‘do you work for Waterstons, or do you work for Cundall?’”

“We also share our knowledge openly and often freely. During the pandemic, we created the Waterstons Academy Lite programme, taking our internal training materials and making them available externally as well,” Alderson explains.

Waterstons is also committed to encouraging innovation within the company as it heads up its own research and development (R&D) fund. “We've got our own internal R&D innovation funds to encourage development. We set aside time and effort from people within the business for them to invest in innovation. We take those industry trends and insights that we gain from our clients and the broader marketplace, to really focus on how we can innovatively solve those problems.”

Read the full digital report here