# Phil Atkinson

Phil Atkinson works with businesses to improve operational processes, especially the gaps between existing systems where spreadsheets, paper and manual tasks have become difficult to manage. At Targeted Agency, Phil builds small web applications to address those gaps, while recognizing that sometimes a better spreadsheet or a process change is the right solution.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/phil-atkinson/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipscottatkinson
- LinkedIn followers: 11,530
- Topics: digital-transformation, operational-excellence, manufacturing
- Based on 14 dated posts, latest 2026-10-06

## Summary

Useful for practical examples of operational gaps between systems and when spreadsheets stop fitting.

- Best for: Manufacturing software brands discussing spreadsheet risk, production scheduling, work in progress or ERP-adjacent tooling.
- Not for: Supplier-assurance or contractor-compliance platforms seeking paid endorsement, guaranteed reach, click targets or conversion pitch.
- Check first: Confirm audience job roles, company sizes, engagement, reach and comparable webinar results before committing budget.

### Takeaways

- The headaches live in the gaps between core systems.
- Start with how the business works, not with the software.
- Ascot Doors production platform connected job records, scheduling, stores, dispatch and documents.

## Main ideas

- **The headaches live in the gaps between core systems**: Phil Atkinson argues that ERP, MRP, CRM and finance systems are good at managing the data they were designed for, so replacing them is rarely the first answer. The real problems are operational edge cases around them: information that ends up in spreadsheets, emails, paper, whiteboards, shared drives or an old Access database. Those gaps create manual work, competing versions of the same information and routine questions about which file is current. The offer is a central, permission-based application that sits alongside existing systems and provides one version of the truth, visibility, control and evidence-based compliance.
- **The spreadsheet is not the villain until it quietly becomes a system**: Phil Atkinson separates the tool from the risk. Excel is brilliant, and a spreadsheet can be exactly right for a small, finite project managed by one person. The problem starts when a file created for a quick need becomes a business-critical system without anyone deciding it should: another team uses it, formulas and macros accumulate, and it ends up running production, stock, resource planning, compliance or reporting. The diagnostic question is not how many spreadsheets a business uses, but what would stop working tomorrow if one disappeared.
- **Start with how the business works, not with the software**: Phil Atkinson describes project work as starting with the operation, not the replacement product. The question is not 'What software should replace the spreadsheets?' but how the business actually works; the system is then shaped around that. The same visible symptom can have different causes, and the goal is usually to remove a constraint, not replace everything.
- **Small tactical applications, not transformation programmes**: Phil Atkinson distinguishes gap-filling software from large digital transformation projects. The work described is small, tactical, affordable and secure web applications that sit alongside systems that already work. They provide one version of the truth, prevent things being missed, automate data handling and add reminders and escalations. The aim, Atkinson says, is not to replace perfectly good systems.
- **The same original problem, with more experience behind it**: Phil Atkinson presents the current work as a continuation, not a fresh start. The founding idea behind Target Information Systems in 2010 was to target the information systems around enterprise platforms, not the platforms themselves. The post traces Accord, Gatehouse, Verature and Heresafe.com as products built in response to client problems in supplier contracts, contractor management and compliance. It says the sale of their interest in July led back to the same kind of information-management and reporting work at Targeted Agency.
- **Recognise when a useful tool has become an operational risk**: This is the priority behind the other arguments. Phil Atkinson says the important shift is recognising when a spreadsheet or manual process has become more important to the business than anyone intended. The point is not to shame the people using it, but to identify the dependency and decide what to do: improve the spreadsheet, build a small application or fix the process. The risk is about continuity and visibility, not Excel being bad.

## Work to read

- ["What do you actually do at Targeted Agency?"](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/philipscottatkinson_manufacturing-digitalisation-businessprocess-activity-7495784426606424064-O53H)
- ["You already know the spreadsheet is holding you back"](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/philipscottatkinson_digitaltransformation-operationalexcellence-activity-7498276831700176897-JBMP)
- [Ascot Doors: a production spreadsheet that became a business risk](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/philipscottatkinson_ascot-doors-activity-7500458950832717824-ZEcs)
- ["16 years later, I've ended up back where I started"](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/philipscottatkinson_digitaltransformation-manufacturing-processimprovement-activity-7498660814170705921-3Ch-)
- ["Data, data, everywhere and not a chart to think"](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/philipscottatkinson_manufacturing-processimprovement-digitaltransformation-activity-7503091823368728577-aaDC)
- [Managing a house renovation in a spreadsheet — and being right to](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/philipscottatkinson_how-much-do-you-care-about-someones-background-activity-7503780603650215938-SW-5)

## Brand relationships

- **Targeted Agency** (disclosed_partnership)
- **Target Information Systems Limited** (owned_business)
- **Heresafe** (owned_business)
- **Verature** (owned_business)
- **Ascot Doors** (client)

## Partnerships

Phil Atkinson’s public commercial activity centers on Targeted Agency’s own work: building small web applications that fix operational gaps for manufacturers. A published case study of Ascot Doors covers production scheduling, stock, dispatch and works-in-progress records. The posts pitch that work rather than show sponsored placements. Ask them directly for a rate card, media kit, partner terms and partnership options; none appears in these posts. They invite businesses to “invest an hour” in a free, informal conversation about what they are doing now, what is getting in the way, and what could be done differently, and ask readers to drop a message or call. A software company proposing a joint webinar would be opening a relationship rather than buying a defined package, so it would need to agree the format, audience and content directly. The recurring problems in the posts — a spreadsheet that has quietly become business-critical, a Friday report nobody owns, approvals lost in email, information held in three places with three answers — offer clear subjects for co-hosted content, since Atkinson already discusses them publicly.

## Alternatives

- Stephanie Fels: Choose Stephanie Fels when the campaign needs quantified operational outcomes and a regulated-manufacturing audience rather than a general small-and-mid-sized manufacturer audience. Fels's posts give three worked examples with numbers attached: an aerospace tier-one supplier with 20 minutes of admin per equipment reception across 2,000 receptions a year recovering 400-plus hours annually; a 30-site tier-one supplier cutting non-conformance closure time by half after replacing scattered spreadsheets, paper forms and email threads; and a supplier managing 4,000 purchase-order lines a year targeting 1,200 hours recovered through a supplier collaboration portal. Each example is framed as a layer on top of the existing ERP rather than a replacement, and starts small with one workflow, one site or one team before scaling. For a joint webinar where the partner's goal is to show measurable return, that structure is a stronger spine than Phil Atkinson's diagnostic-question approach: the session can open with a before-and-after figure instead of a symptom list. The aerospace, quality and supplier-collaboration vocabulary also matches an audience already under audit pressure, where a spreadsheet gap is a compliance exposure, not just an efficiency annoyance.
- Eric Ciampoli (MBA): Choose Eric Ciampoli when the campaign is specifically about documentation drift — what happens when equipment, processes and teams change but written procedures do not. Ciampoli's posts make that argument directly: equipment evolves, processes improve and teams adapt; when documentation falls behind, the gap between how work should happen and how it actually happens becomes operational risk. The stated purpose is to make plant knowledge more accessible, current and actionable, connecting what teams rely on with what happens on the floor. The goal is better visibility, stronger consistency and smarter decisions, not simply better documentation. A second post shows the in-person side of this work: a Manufacturing Day booth where the team talked with manufacturers about operational improvement, ERP alignment, process optimization and plant visibility, and bringing plant data, documentation and knowledge together. If the partner's webinar angle is compliance evidence, procedure currency or knowledge capture after a plant change, Ciampoli's framing is closer to that subject than Phil Atkinson's spreadsheet-dependency framing, which focuses on workflow gaps rather than the documentation meant to describe them.
- Jay Byam: Choose Jay Byam when the campaign is about data capture and capital justification rather than spreadsheet dependency as a whole. Byam's posts describe an aluminium mill handling roughly 800,000 dollars of material through the plant every hour and running, or intending to run, continuously. Every improvement request must be proved with data: replace a machine and show the downtime data; add operators and show where hours are lost. Failures are still recorded on pen and paper: operators write down why equipment stopped, someone enters it later, and when the line is down, restarting it takes priority. Details get lost, failures get simplified and events get missed — which is why plants losing the most to downtime often hold the weakest downtime data. A second post makes the operator-facing case about overall equipment effectiveness: paper logs and spreadsheets work for a while, then the binder fills up, downtime reasons become miscellaneous and operators stop logging because nothing useful comes back to them. The fix is a system that fits how work flows, makes logging fast and returns visible feedback. For a webinar on why manual operational records fail, this is the most concrete explanation in the set of how failure happens at the point of capture, and supports a session aimed at maintenance, reliability and continuous-improvement audiences.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/