For established integrators, consulting and services firms
Turn your client relationships and delivery strength into AI services that sell and make margin
VISTORUS helps firms decide whether an AI practice is worth building, then builds it: offers tested with your own customers, economics that hold up, first engagements pursued and delivered, and owners who can run it. Led by a former AWS and Google Cloud practice executive, as your interim practice leader or alongside the leader you already have.
$30M+annual revenue from the cloud, data and AI delivery practice built from launch at AWS
Under $5M to $20M+annual run rate for a PE-backed federal healthcare practice in three years at Salient CRGT
$112M+GSI partner ecosystem pipeline from CEO-level joint business planning at Google Cloud
50+person delivery organizations led as a manager of managers at AWS and Salient CRGT
Results from prior roles, achieved with those organizations' teams and resources. Pipeline is not revenue.
Before anything is built
The first question is whether you should build it at all.
A practice builder who always says yes is not worth hiring. Every engagement can end in a recommendation to narrow or stop, and that answer is part of the work.
Build, extend or partner?
A standalone AI practice, an AI extension of services you already sell, or a delivery partnership. We compare them on your economics before choosing.
What advantage do you already have?
Your client relationships, domain knowledge and delivery record are the reason revenue is attainable. Offers are built on them, not on a generic AI catalog.
Where do the first customers come from?
Named existing accounts, a sales owner for each, and a realistic buying path, identified in the first month.
What would make it unprofitable?
Rework, underestimated delivery effort, ongoing support obligations, technology costs and pricing that cannot absorb them.
What must you contribute?
An executive sponsor, sales participation, technical leadership, access to your clients and the capacity to deliver the first engagements.
When should you stop?
Review points are set at the start, with explicit reasons to narrow, redirect or end the engagement.
The best fit is a firm that already has enterprise clients and delivery capacity but no senior owner to package, price, sell and run AI services. Experience is deepest with clients in healthcare, financial services and the public sector.
Practice build
What VISTORUS commits to, and how completion is judged.
Two ways to lead it, one set of commitments. Business results are measured together, as explained under how engagements work.
When the seat is open
Interim leader
VISTORUS leads the leadership role until a permanent leader takes over.
When you have a leader
Alongside your leader
Your leader keeps the seat. VISTORUS leads a defined mandate under agreed authority.
VISTORUS commits to
Commitments
Win, loss and demand review, and draft offers tested with your existing clients
Costed offers covering scope, pricing basis, delivery effort, support costs and margin sensitivity
Account prioritization, qualification standards and hands-on leadership of the first pursuits with your account teams
Staffing plan and hiring-panel participation
A hyperscaler and GSI partner plan, prepared and progressed with your partner team
Operating cadence, practice dashboard and reusable delivery assets
Handoff to named owners, plus a permanent-leader profile where a hire is planned
Completion evidence
Accepted when
The sponsor approves offers and margin targets, or accepts a recommendation to narrow or stop
Each offer has named target accounts and a sales owner
Named owners run the cadence without VISTORUS in the chair
Handoff is complete: offers, pipeline, cadence and open decisions transferred to your leader
Measured together
Business measures
New pipeline against the offers
Bookings
Delivery gross margin
Utilization
Qualifying existing opportunities is a VISTORUS commitment. New demand, partner-program approvals and client buying decisions depend on others, so they are measured jointly.
Time
Two to three days a week
The weekly commitment is set in the engagement letter and can step down once owners run the practice.
Between working days
A named operator on your side
A practice operations lead on your team runs daily execution. Urgent decisions reach VISTORUS the same day, and go to your sponsor when they exceed delegated authority.
Decision points
A 90-day phase, then a review
Continuation is agreed on findings and progress, never assumed. Budget, hiring and pricing approvals stay with your sponsor throughout.
Example: what a costed offer sheet looks like Show exampleHide example
Illustrative only. A hypothetical offer with hypothetical figures, shown to explain the format. It is not a client deliverable.
Offer
Document-intake automation for one high-volume workflow, such as claims or enrollment intake
Who buys, and why now
An operations leader at an existing client with a growing backlog and a service-level target at risk
Scope
Included: one workflow, integration with one system of record, evaluation set, go-live and 60 days of tuning. Excluded: model training, additional workflows, process redesign outside intake.
Pricing basis
Fixed fee for build, then a monthly run-and-improve fee
Delivery effort
Three people for eight weeks: an engagement lead, an AI engineer and a data engineer
Recurring support
About a third of one engineer for monitoring, evaluation and change requests
Technology costs
Inference and platform costs passed through at cost, with a monthly cap agreed with the client
Target gross margin
40% on build, 55% on run
Margin sensitivity
If rework raises build cost by 25%, build margin falls from 40% to 25%. Two such engagements in a row trigger a scope or pricing change.
Walk away when
The client cannot provide data access within three weeks, requires custom model training, or will not name an owner for adoption
First customers
Three named existing accounts with the workflow, each with an account lead as sales owner
Relevant case, prior role
Scaling a PE-backed federal practice from under $5M to $20M+
Starting point
A sub-scale federal healthcare practice inside a PE-backed technology services firm.
Responsibility
Vice President, Federal Healthcare Technology, accountable for practice growth and delivery.
Actions
Built a portfolio across cloud modernization, data platforms, analytics and mission applications; built and led a 50+ person delivery organization; secured Authority to Operate for mission-critical systems.
Result
$20M+ annual run rate in three years, with renewals and scope expansions at HHS, SSA and FDA.
What transfers
Practice economics, offer and portfolio design, hiring a delivery leadership team, and expanding inside existing accounts. The AI-specific work is shown in the Google Cloud case below.
Two other ways to engage
Deployment leadership and strategic pursuits.
Separate engagements for AI companies, platform vendors and integrators, each with its own commitments and acceptance.
For AI and software companies with signed customers stuck before production
Deployment & Partner Delivery Leader
Gives each stalled deployment an accountable plan, clear partner responsibilities and agreed go-live gates.
Commitments
Deployment backlog assessment across signed accounts
Accountable implementation plan for each priority account
Partner responsibilities, staffing and joint governance
Go-live readiness criteria and a handoff process into your services team
Accepted when
Account owners accept the plans and the agreed readiness gates are in use for the priority accounts.
Measured together
Time to first production use, implementation cost and adoption.
Time and authority
Fractional or interim, typically two to three days a week. VISTORUS leads the deployment cadence and partner escalations; named account owners run daily execution, and commercial concessions stay with your executives.
Relevant evidence from AWS. Built the delivery practice serving regulated Fortune 500 and defense industrial base clients, with 95%+ client retention and a consumption-governance framework that reduced implementation costs by 25%.
Discuss a deployment gapFor hyperscalers, platform vendors and integrators with a named strategic deal
Strategic Pursuit Executive
A contracted executive for one named pursuit, when the account team needs someone who has run delivery and existing teams cannot cover it.
Commitments
Bid or no-bid recommendation
Customer sponsor map and engagement plan
Business case and commercial assumptions
Staffed delivery plan with partner commitments
Accepted when
The account sponsor accepts the pursuit package and the delivery commitments behind it.
Measured together
Stage progression, win or loss, proposed margin and delivery readiness.
Time and authority
Scoped per named pursuit. Works under the account leader's direction; the VISTORUS role is disclosed to the customer.
Relevant AI evidence from Google Cloud. Directed partner solution architecture and go-to-market for AI use cases moving from pilot to scaled delivery, reducing time-to-value by 40%, and built the AI value-governance framework behind $60M+ in customer AI commitments.
Use it when the scope is still forming. Skip it when the need is clear; an engagement can start directly with the first 30 days. A no-go recommendation is a valid result.
Typically three weeks
Practice launch
You provide
Recent wins and losses, client requests, delivery margins and partner status
Sponsor time
A kickoff, a weekly check-in and the readout
You receive
Build, extend or partner recommendation, offer shortlist, economics view and a 90-day plan
The decision
Whether to build, and in what form
Typically two to three weeks
Deployment recovery
You provide
Signed-account list, deployment status and partner contracts
Sponsor time
A kickoff, a weekly check-in and the readout
You receive
Root causes by account and a recovery plan for the priority accounts
The decision
Which accounts to recover first, with what capacity
Typically ten business days
Named-pursuit readiness
You provide
Account plan, customer context and the proposed solution
Sponsor time
Two working sessions with the account leader
You receive
Sponsor map, value case check and delivery-readiness gaps
The decision
Bid or no-bid, and what it would take to win
Fixed scope and fee, agreed in writing before work starts.
How engagements work
Clear authority, disclosed roles, principal-led.
Every engagement letter names who decides, who delivers, who VISTORUS works for, and how much principal time you are buying.
Your sponsorApproves
Budget, hiring, pricing and final decisions, plus success measures and the escalation path.
VISTORUSLeads and delivers
Leads the work under delegated authority agreed in writing, and is accountable for the commitments.
Your teams and partnersExecute and own
Run daily execution, deliver the technology and own the practice after handoff.
DisclosureNo hidden interests
Role disclosed to every party, one side of any pursuit, and no resale margin or consumption-based pay.
What VISTORUS commits to
Work within its control
The commitments listed for each engagement, delivered to the agreed acceptance criteria.
What is measured together
Results that depend on others too
Pipeline creation, wins, bookings, margin, adoption and renewals also depend on your teams, your clients, partners and procurement. They are tracked against a baseline, never sold as guarantees.
Principal-led: the executive you meet is the executive who does the work. When a mandate needs specialist capacity, named senior operators are added only with your approval and under the same accountability.
Also available
Interim technology or AI leadership for an open seat
When a CIO, CTO or AI leader has left and the seat cannot stay empty through the search, VISTORUS can hold it: stabilizing priorities, vendors and the team, and helping select the permanent hire.
Anuj has worked on each side of the work VISTORUS does. At AWS he built and led a cloud, data and AI delivery practice. At Google Cloud he ran joint business planning with global system integrators. At Salient CRGT he scaled a PE-backed federal practice. As CIO of CGAP, hosted at the World Bank, he was the enterprise customer, across 45+ countries.
Earlier roles at EY, KPMG/BearingPoint and TCS added large-program delivery in financial services, healthcare and the public sector. He holds an MBA from the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business. Based in the Washington, DC metro area.