Over the past year, Perform Partners has strengthened its position as the multi-award-winning UK go-to consultancy for complex change. From being shortlisted at the UK IT Industry Awards and named a Sunday Times Best Place to Work for the second consecutive year, to delivering an AI-based solution for the education sector, 2025 has been a year of measurable impact, trusted delivery and purposeful growth.

Building on long-term client relationships across the public and private sectors and supported by a maturing partner ecosystem with AWS and Ingram Micro, we’ve focused on what we do best: delivering complex programmes well, helping organisations reduce cost and risk, and turning emerging technologies like AI into practical, responsible solutions.

Rob Smith, Director & Co-Founder at Perform Partners, captured this perfectly in his 2025 reflection:

“I hear it time and time again: ‘you excel at delivery.’ We are very good at what we do. This is evident across all our existing accounts and the contributing year-end revenue. When we land a client, we are retained and, in most cases, we grow.

Here’s our 2025 story…

This year brought many standout achievements, including:

• Welcoming new clients such as Basingstoke College of Technology (BCoT) and securing $25K in AWS credits for the college to accelerate the safe delivery of its first AI-based solution, focused on freeing up staff workloads and improving wellbeing
• Delivering a large-scale retail cloud migration across 18 country markets, migrating 120+ production applications and 1.5PB+ of data while avoiding up to £1m per month in overrun costs
• Being recognised for the second consecutive year as a Sunday Times Best Place to Work
• Delivering a cross-border regulatory platform migration for a leading European gaming operator, migrating 2.1 million customers and launching ahead of a critical compliance deadline
• Being shortlisted for two categories at the UK IT Industry Awards: Team of the Year and Technology Refresh Project of the Year
• Reducing a retail client’s data centre footprint by 50%, decommissioning over 1,000 VMs and cleansing more than a third of a 3,500-server estate
• Delivering a modern ServiceNow platform for a leading UK telecoms client, enabling enterprise-wide IT service access for 3,000+ employees with zero disruption at go-live
• Achieving an eNPS of 85 with a 62% response rate
• Retaining and expanding key long-term accounts, including CityFibre, The University of Sheffield, Evoke, and a major UK high-street bank
• Hosting a series of in-person events and webinars, including two senior leadership sessions at Leeds Digital Festival 2025
• Achieving ISO 27001 recertification and renewing Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus, reinforcing our commitment to strong governance and doing things properly
• Publishing our 2024 carbon reduction results as part of our Net Zero initiative
• Reaching our seven-year milestone as Perform Partners

All driven by one constant: our people.

Delivering excellence, every time

Earlier this year, we successfully delivered a major, large-scale global cloud migration, a flagship example of Perform Partners’ ways of working and what we do best.

Scaling to ten consultants, we navigated tight timelines, complex stakeholders and a multi-supplier environment, helping the client avoid a major data centre renewal cost. Reflecting on the delivery work, Rob commented:

“We were head and shoulders above everyone. Not by accident, but by doing what we always do: putting strong people, clear governance and delivery excellence at the heart of the work.”

For this engagement with the global retailer, we were shortlisted for two UK IT Industry Awards. And although we didn’t take the trophy home this time, our entries stood out from more than 300 others. This is an achievement that reflects the scale of the programme and the quality of delivery our team brought to it.

That same delivery discipline shaped our innovation work this year. AI has been impossible to ignore this year, both in the market and in our client conversations. As a consultancy, our stance is grounded: AI is powerful, but value only comes when the basics are in place: data, governance, processes and clear outcomes.

In 2025, we partnered with Basingstoke College of Technology (BCoT), AWS and Ingram Micro on an innovation project exploring how AI could meaningfully reduce teachers’ workload. The college was seeking a solution that could support assessment and feedback. Not to replace teachers, but to help with some of the repetitive tasks, so they could focus on coaching and supporting students. Scott Hayden, Head of Teaching, Learning and Digital at Basingstoke College of Technology (BCoT) commented:

“The fixer is an assessment and feedback sparring partner. It is not the teacher abdicating responsibility and passing it over to an AI. There’s friction baked into this by design. We wanted to free up evenings and weekends for our teachers, but we want them to still cast their critical reasoning over this. That is absolutely It’s a mixture of the AI and the teacher expert that is giving the feedback to learners.”,

Through our partnership with AWS and the One Government Value Agreement (OGVA) programme, we helped BCoT secure funding that reduced risk and accelerated progress. The outcome was BCoT’s first AI-based solution, delivered safely, collaboratively and with outstanding feedback from the college.

As Paul Rhodes, Director & Co-Founder at Perform Partners, pointed out, many organisations are still “tapping around the edges” of AI. We expect the impact to grow over the next years, and we’re positioning Perform to help clients make that transition responsibly.

These are just two stories from a much broader year of meaningful, high-impact delivery work that collectively strengthens our reputation for clarity, capability and excellence across every engagement. Read more about your projects here.

A year of maturing without losing who we are

Alongside our delivery achievements, 2025 felt like a year of steady growth for the business, without losing the essence of who we are. Shaun Walsh, Director & Co-Founder at Perform Partners, reflected on the year by highlighting how the business has continued to mature without losing its identity:

“We’re clearer on what we’re actually great at (complex change, cloud/DC exit, AWS-aligned delivery) and ‘we get stuff done’ rather than trying to be everything to everyone.”

We’ve become a more intentional presence in the market, with stronger storytelling, more case studies and confident conversations with partners. Internally, Shaun noted a clear step forward in leadership maturity, reflected in greater ownership, a more focused approach to delivery with clarity.

This internal shift translated directly into client environments. As Shaun put it:

“That ‘Perform are here now, it’ll get sorted’ feeling, that’s why we matter. Any time a client has said some version of: ‘You feel like part of our team, not a supplier.’ That’s the bit that reminds me why we exist.”

From steadying politically sensitive programmes to bringing clarity under pressure or safeguarding outcomes as things changed, our approach stayed consistent: honest conversations, disciplined delivery, relationships built on trust and the ability to stay calm when it matters most.

Clients increasingly see us not just as “a pair of hands” but as strategic partners, asking for guidance. That trust has opened deeper conversations about constraints, risks, resilience and ways of working.

Retaining clients and winning new ones

Despite a tough market, one thing remained consistent: when we land with a client, we’re typically retained and often grow.

In 2025 we continued to deepen our relationships with long-term clients and welcomed new organisations. Several of these opportunities came through our partners, emphasising just how integral our partner ecosystem has become to our growth.

As Paul put it:

“If you look at our long-term accounts, it all stems from delivering great work. Strong delivery builds strong relationships. It naturally evolves from there.”

We also expanded our support to the UK public sector by entering new buying routes, including the Scottish Government’s Digital Technology & Cyber Services DPS Framework and the Crown Commercial Service’s Low Value Purchase System.

Building on our partner ecosystem

2025 has been a year of maturing and systemising our partner strategy. We’ve invested heavily in strengthening our motions with AWS and Ingram Micro and that focus has delivered real momentum. We have:

• Strengthened our visibility and relationships within AWS, giving clients better access to expertise, funding and faster support.
• Joined Ingram Micro’s AWS Momentum Program, enabling clients to benefit from a vendor-funded infrastructure assessment
• Completed Ingram Micro’s AWS Accelerated Development Program, enhancing our ability to unlock AWS funding and technical support for client modernisation
• Achieved AWS technical validation approval
• Contributed to key AWS and Ingram Micro events in the UK and abroad with thought leadership driven by our expertise, from symposiums to cloud days, webinars and fireside chats

Earlier this year, we also became a Gold Sponsor of YorkshireX, now InnovationX, a regional innovation programme supporting businesses across Yorkshire and the Humber to adopt and scale emerging technologies like AI, foster collaboration and drive growth. As part of this, we contributed as speakers at the AI Enablement AMA panels and the AI 360 AMA panel.

We also took part in a Synyega partner webinar discussing Broadcom’s VMware pricing changes, a topic affecting many organisations navigating ongoing cost increases.

People, culture and wellbeing

Our people remain our biggest differentiator. This year we’ve continued to invest in development, recognition and wellbeing.

For the second year running, we were named in the Sunday Times Best Places to Work. An achievement entirely based on our people’s anonymous feedback. Independently compiled, the list reflects how well organisations support their people across culture, leadership, wellbeing and development.

Through this feedback and our exceptionally high eNPS score of 85, our team has once again told us that Perform is a place where they feel valued, supported and able to thrive.

To support professional growth and internal capability, throughout the year we offered a range of external training opportunities, including Bid Writing, Impellus Professional Sales Environment and Learning in Leadership and Management, the Leading Growth program via the West Yorkshire Combined Authority and more. We also introduced a Capability Matrix, providing clearer visibility of skills, development pathways and opportunities across the organisation.

We consistently see the impact of our people-first approach, receiving brilliant feedback, formal and informal, from clients across accounts and engagements.

Our commitment to wellbeing and community remains strong. We actively supported Leeds Mind through initiatives such as Multicoloured Monday, Baton of Hope, the Abbey Dash, and sharing our expertise by speaking at the Leeds Mindful Employer “Preventing Burnout at Work” event.

We also expanded the ways we support our people day-to-day, introducing a Leeds Active corporate discount and launching a new EV Car Scheme as part of our employee benefits.

On a more personal level, many of our team members willingly stepped outside their comfort zones, joining webinars and in-person talks to share their stories and expertise, contribute to meaningful conversations, and actively support the communities we work in.

Looking ahead to 2026/27

This year has been one of greater focus and alignment. We’ve sharpened our message to market, clarifying what we do best and which industries we are best placed to support. As a result, we’ve become more efficient, delivering high standards of work with a tight, high-performing team.

As Shaun commented:

“In a year that’s been messy and demanding, we’re still here, still delivering, still trusted and getting clearer and braver about who we are. That’s the momentum I want us to build on.”

As many businesses are now predicting, the wider economic environment will likely remain challenging, and AI will continue to evolve from experimentation to adoption. But we’re heading into 2026/27 ahead of previous years in our forecasting, with strong growth conversations underway with existing clients, proposals in play and an exciting list of prospects, a mature partner ecosystem, new projects in AI, cloud and complex delivery and, above all, with a team that consistently proves why Perform Partners matters.

Most importantly, we’ve learned, adapted and strengthened our foundations.

To our clients, partners and all our people: thank you for everything you’ve contributed in 2025.

Here’s to the next chapter!