Welcome to Ascenza
Ascenza is a New Zealand born and bred consulting company. Our mission is to be New Zealand's provider of choice for business case development & benefits-led services. We bring fresh thinking to help you plan the execution of complex strategies.
Never before has delivering real benefits been more important
Are you choosing the right projects?
Do your business cases have real benefits that can be practically delivered?
Can you track, measure and report on the delivery of your benefits?
The team
Stephen Plank
Principle Consultant
Innovative thinker with broad experience in strategy, team building, vendor management, business development, benefits management and project management. A reputation for creating successful outcomes in highly complex environments. Broad experience building high-performance teams and strategies. Business & outcome-focused.
Nicola Deacon
Founding Associate Consultant
Nicola has over 30 years of experience in management, consultancy and project implementation roles within the Tertiary Education sector, Manufacturing, Logistics, and FMCG.. Nicola has worked across the project lifecycle from the development of business cases and benefits identification through to project delivery and benefits realisation. Nicola has delivered training in business case development, benefits management and performance improvement .
Richard Zajkowski
Founding Associate Consultant
Richard has spent over 20 years, helping clients deliver projects, across many different sectors. Richard believes that by focussing on clear benefits, strategic alignment and ensuring rigorous assessment of investment feasibility, you will establish credibility and confidence with decision-makers, setting your project up for the best chance of success. Richard now focuses on business cases, benefits realisation and pre-project planning.
Mike Stobbs
Advisor
With over 30 years’ experience leading teams and organisations in the technology, consultancy and innovation sectors, Mike has spent much of his career working at the leading edge of both corporate and consumer solutions. Mike has held a number of executive and governance roles as well as directly providing advisory and implementation expertise from electronic banking, home shopping and payments to multi-sector digital transformation initiatives. Mike's Master's thesis “Are organisations realising the promised Benefits or just delivering another project?” was driven out of a desire to better understand the required attributes organisations need to improve business outcomes.
Better decision making.
The winning business case
Ascenza is all about developing the winning business case. However, preparing a well-worded document or PowerPoint is the easy part. The "thinking" behind the business case is what leads to ultimate success. This is where Ascenza is uniquely qualified to support businesses in preparing and implementing business cases.
Because: the winning business case:
Is aligned to strategy
Has identified the right partners
Can be delivered
Can be fundedCan be tracked and measured
Strategic review
Our strategic review framework helps develop a starting point for building programmes which include the right projects.
Education
Short courses :
Foundation benefits mapping
Advanced benefits mapping
Better business cases
Procurement
Finding the right partner, solution or service providor is often key to delivery of a robust business case. Which is why we have developed a benefits led approach.
Tracking & reporting
Ascenza uses the Wovex software platform for benefits modelling, tracking & reporting. A powerful way to bring complex portfolios together.
