About BPI Concepts

BPI Concepts was formed in mid 2007 when the director, Susan Gardiner realised there was a gap in the consulting/ contracting market. Having spent time working at consulting companies and other large corporations, Susan observed that there was a shortage of companies or individuals that were prepared to “call a spade a spade” and do what was actually needed to be done to improve processes within an organisation.

“I have found that consulting companies in particular set very narrow scope boundaries for their customer projects, partly so that everyone understands what is to be delivered, but also presumably to maintain their popularity with whoever is paying the bills! What I have found however is that there seems to be strict compliance with what the customer “wants” rather than what they actually “need”. Seddon refers to this as “doing things right” rather than doing the right things……”

The failure of many programmes of change is masked by the plausible aspiration to ‘do things right’. For example, the focus of registration to ISO 9000 is often ‘what do we need to do to achieve registration?’, regardless of whether these are the ‘right things’ to do”. 1

“After feeling constrained by environments that expect this stringent demarcation, I decided to take a risk and become an independent contractor – a leap of faith that required confidence in my ability to actually make a difference to customers that were willing to be challenged. Although it remains a delicate balancing act between trying to change the world, and conformance to a set, predetermined scope, I have found that at worst, many companies are grateful for the identification of possible, achievable and realistic improvement to their operations. It is this that drives me and BPI Concepts.”

Susan Gardiner, Director.

BPI stands for “Business Process Improvement”. BPI Concepts is a consulting/ contracting company with a commitment to doing things a little bit differently.

1. “Systems thinking – management by doing the right thing”, John Seddon, http://www.systemsthinking.co.uk/systems.asp