Independent Data & AI Advisory — Paris / Europe

The data foundations your AI plan already assumes you have.

Part-time executive ownership of the data and AI agenda — from the narrative the board needs to the pipeline that has to run on Monday morning. Embedded with your team, accountable for the outcome.

Tell me what's stuck See how engagements work

01 / The problem

01
The models are ready. The tables aren't.
AI programmes stall on ownership, lineage, quality and access long before they stall on modelling.
02
The clock got shorter.
Data investment is now expected to return inside six to twelve months. Build-the-platform-first, find-the-use-case-later no longer survives a budget review.
03
The gap is leadership, not headcount.
Most companies at this stage cannot justify a full-time CDO, and a project consultancy leaves once the document is signed.

02 / What I do

Fractional CDO

Executive ownership of your data function, one to two days a week.

Sequenced roadmap on 90-day / 6-month / 12-month horizons, tied to real decisions
Leadership-meeting presence: priorities, arbitrations, vendor calls, board pack
Handover built in — including hiring and onboarding your permanent CDO

6 to 12 months · 1–2 days per week

AI-ready data foundations

A lakehouse and governance target you can defend line by line, and a plan to get there.

Current-state read: platform, quality, lineage, access, cost
Target architecture with a costed, country-by-country rollout curve
Delivery oversight through the first working increments

8 to 12 weeks, then oversight

Data & AI due diligence

For acquirers and operating partners: what you are actually buying, and what it will cost to integrate.

Key-person, architecture, security and SLA exposure
Multi-country entity and data-model integration complexity
Prioritised diligence questions and a costed integration path

2 to 4 weeks

Data as a product

Turn the data you already own into something your clients' systems can consume.

Product definition, contracts, quality guarantees and pricing shape
Serving architecture: APIs, and MCP interfaces for clients' AI agents
Acquisition at scale — crawling, entity resolution, source governance

6 to 10 weeks to first product

The team you already have

Most data organisations don't need replacing. They need a direction and a coach.

Operating model, roles and decision rights across engineering, science and production
Coaching for data leaders moving into executive rooms
Working practices that outlast the engagement

Continuous, alongside any mandate

03 / Track record

20+: countries of data and technology operations led
500+: external sources under managed acquisition
2: registers — the same truth for the board and for the engineers

Engagements are covered by NDA. References available on request.

04 / How I work

Sprint

A bounded question answered with evidence. Diligence, architecture review, cost challenge.

2–4 weeks, fixed price

Embedded

The CDO seat, part-time, with accountability for the plan.

6–12 months, days per week

Advisory

A standing outside perspective for a CEO or a fund.

Half a day a month, plus board cycles

05 / Principles

Value inside the hold period, not the roadmap horizon.
The board and the engineers get the same story.
We win together, we lose together — your team ships it, and keeps it.
Buy less, decide faster. Pilot sprawl is the most expensive thing in the room.

06 / About

Twenty-five years building and running data and technology organisations inside international groups — market research, information services, financial data — before going independent. Long enough to have modernised platforms that were already running, in businesses that could not stop, across teams spread over three continents. Ortolani is deliberately small: you get the person you met, not a pyramid.

07 / Contact

Tell me what's stuck.

A 30-minute call, no deck. If it isn't a fit, I'll tell you in the call and point you somewhere better.

hello@ortolani.net