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.
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.
Key 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.
Check first: Confirm audience job roles, company sizes, engagement, reach and comparable webinar results before committing budget.
Main ideas
The headaches live in the gaps between core systems · The spreadsheet is not the villain until it quietly becomes a system · Start with how the business works, not with the software
Phil Atkinson works on the operational processes between a company’s established systems: spreadsheets, paper records, email approvals and manual reports that can become hard to manage as a business grows.
At Targeted Agency, they build small web applications to address those gaps, but argue that software is not always the answer; the right fix may be a better spreadsheet or a process change.
Their posts also trace an earlier business journey from Target Information Systems through supplier-management products and Heresafe.com, where they say they sold their interest in July.
Follow their work for practical examples of when a familiar tool still fits—and when the process has outgrown it.
Phil Atkinson takes a measured approach to operational software: start with how the work happens, not a mandate to replace spreadsheets or core systems.
A house renovation can work well in a spreadsheet because one person is coordinating a finite project with an end date; a growing manufacturer’s production scheduling, stock and dispatch may need a different approach.
In the Ascot Doors example, Atkinson describes a production platform built around the operation, connecting job records, scheduling, stores, dispatch and documents.
They also challenge the familiar anti-spreadsheet pitch: Excel can be the right tool, but a spreadsheet that becomes business-critical by default can create continuity and visibility risks.
These specific operational examples—and the distinction between tool problems and process problems—help readers weigh practical improvements against wholesale transformation.
Phil Atkinson's ideas centre on the operational work around a company's main systems.
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ERP, MRP, CRM and finance systems are usually doing what they were bought to do; problems accumulate in the spreadsheets, paper, email approvals and manual reports that fill the gaps.
Atkinson argues for starting with how the business actually works, building small applications alongside existing systems rather than launching large transformation programmes, and judging a spreadsheet by whether the process has outgrown it.
Another thread runs through the posts: this is a return to the same problem they worked on at Target Information Systems and Heresafe, now at Targeted Agency.
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.
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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.
In one post, Phil Atkinson lists the symptoms: someone updates the spreadsheet, someone remembers what happens next, someone compiles the Friday report, and someone asks which spreadsheet is the latest. The old Access database nobody dares switch off is the comic but recognisable version of the same problem.
The spreadsheet is not the villain until it quietly becomes a system
Phil Atkinson separates the tool from the risk.
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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.
Phil Atkinson describes renovating a house and managing the whole project in a spreadsheet: one person in charge, a small number of contractors, a finite task list and an end date. That test changes for a larger operation with many users, dependencies, documents and reporting—and no real end point.
Earlier writing blamed spreadsheets more directly. The revised view is that the answer might be a better spreadsheet, a small web application or simply a process fix.
Start with how the business works, not with the software
Phil Atkinson describes project work as starting with the operation, not the replacement product.
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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.
At Ascot Doors, production scheduling, stock, dispatch and work in progress had spread across spreadsheets, paper and legacy systems.
The result was conflicting information, manual input errors, limited visibility of production bottlenecks and planning that became harder as the business grew.
Phil Atkinson says the team started with how the business worked and built a production management platform around it.
The post quotes Danny Powell, a director at Ascot Doors: 'Ascot got a system far better than we initially envisaged.'
Small tactical applications, not transformation programmes
Phil Atkinson distinguishes gap-filling software from large digital transformation projects.
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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.
In a post answering 'What do you actually do at Targeted Agency?', Phil Atkinson says the work is finding the parts of a business held together by spreadsheets, paper and manual processes, then building simple software to sort them out. Examples include the spreadsheet only Janet understands, the Friday report, the email approval and the paper passed from production to the office.
The same original problem, with more experience behind it
Phil Atkinson presents the current work as a continuation, not a fresh start.
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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.
In the post, Phil Atkinson describes the original mission as 'Automate The World's Data' by bringing enterprise-level development within reach of SMEs.
The familiar targets include paper stacks, whiteboards, spreadsheets, old databases, manual reports and the occasional carrier pigeon.
Sixteen years later, the pitch is similar: if it is important to your business and you are managing it in a spreadsheet, talk to me.
Recognise when a useful tool has become an operational risk
This is the priority behind the other arguments.
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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.
The Ascot Doors post makes the dependency concrete: when the person who built the production spreadsheet leaves, the business is left carrying a risk. The post links this to growth: the business had outgrown the process the spreadsheet was built to support.
It is the clearest short statement of what Phil Atkinson does, written as a reply to someone who asked exactly that.
Phil Atkinson says the job is to find the parts of a business held together by spreadsheets, paper and manual processes, then build simple software to fix them.
Companies usually already run an ERP, MRP, CRM or finance system, and those systems generally do what they were bought to do; the problems sit in the awkward space between them.
The examples are specific and easy to picture: a spreadsheet only one person understands, a report that takes half a day every Friday, an approval that disappears into email, a piece of paper passed from production to the office, the same information in three places with three different answers.
The aim is not to replace working systems, but to build small, tactical web applications alongside them around three claims: one version of the truth, nothing gets missed, affordable solutions.
It ends with an open invitation to show them a spreadsheet.
For brands planning a campaign
A plain-language hook for briefing Phil Atkinson on a joint webinar or co-marketing piece: it frames the offer in terms an operations audience recognises and avoids the language of large transformation programmes.
A concise version of the sales conversation and the argument behind it, showing how Phil Atkinson speaks to a prospect who is already half-convinced.
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The post divides a company’s data among its ERP, finance system, spreadsheets and everything else: paper, whiteboards, shared drives and the old Access database nobody dares switch off.
Phil Atkinson argues that the core systems are not the problem: ERP, MRP, CRM and finance systems are good at the data they were designed to hold, while the gaps between them create headaches.
Those gaps mean someone updates a spreadsheet, remembers what happens next, compiles the Friday report or asks which version is latest.
The proposed fix is a secure, permission-based intranet application alongside existing systems, not a replacement.
The post offers a free informal hour to explore what could be done differently.
For brands planning a campaign
The "invest an hour" offer is a ready-made format for a low-commitment webinar or discovery session, while the ERP-gap framing gives a software partner a natural reason to co-present rather than compete.
The strongest evidence of delivered work: a named client, the problem before the build, what the system now does and a quote from the client's own director.
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The opening reframes the problem: when the person who built the production spreadsheet leaves, that is a business risk, not a spreadsheet problem.
At Ascot Doors, production scheduling, stock, dispatch and work in progress were spread across spreadsheets, paper and legacy systems.
That created conflicting sources of information, manual input errors, limited visibility of production bottlenecks, difficulty tracking jobs and increasingly difficult planning as the business grew.
Phil Atkinson says the work began not with "what software should replace the spreadsheets?" but with how the business actually worked.
The result was a production management platform built around that operation.
The post lists live production scheduling and capacity planning, real-time work in progress, stores and kit management, dispatch planning, document control and a complete audit trail.
Each door has its own digital record; stores know when kits need picking; missing parts are identified before they delay production; and drawings, certificates, specifications and QA documents follow the job.
It quotes Danny Powell, a director at Ascot Doors: "Ascot got a system far better than we initially envisaged."
For brands planning a campaign
Lead with this case study in a partner conversation. It shows a manufacturing-specific problem, a named reference and quantified outcomes—the evidence a software vendor needs to justify a joint session on spreadsheet risk.
The clearest account of the career behind the current work: founding a company in 2010, building and selling a SaaS platform, then starting again in the same territory.
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Phil Atkinson recalls finding a photograph from an earlier version of the business that became Heresafe.com.
They and Daryl left a previous company in March 2010 and founded Target Information Systems, a name chosen deliberately: the target was the information systems around enterprise platforms, not the platforms themselves.
Examples included paper stacks, whiteboards, spreadsheets, old databases, manual reports and, in the post's joke, the occasional carrier pigeon.
Clients kept bringing supplier contracts, contractor management, supplier assurance and compliance problems, so the business followed them: the Accord database grew into a supplier and contract management platform, contractor management became the Gatehouse brand in 2014, Gatehouse later became Verature, and everything came together as Heresafe.com, a SaaS platform for contractor compliance and supplier assurance.
Phil Atkinson sold their interest in it in July and now works at Targeted Agency on the same original problem: information and reporting processes outside an organisation's main systems.
For brands planning a campaign
Explains why the current positioning is credible, rather than a rebrand of generic consulting, and gives a partner a concrete story to reference when introducing Phil Atkinson to an audience.
Shows a change of view in Phil Atkinson's own words, making it more informative than a fixed position repeated.
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It is the best starting point for the sharpest version of the spreadsheet argument.
Phil Atkinson revisits an article written a year earlier about businesses drowning in spreadsheets and says they would change one thing: the spreadsheet is not the villain.
Excel is brilliant.
The problem begins when a spreadsheet quietly becomes a business-critical system, usually without anyone deciding it should: someone needs information the ERP does not provide, another team starts using the spreadsheet, formulas and macros are added, and before long it is managing production, stock, resource planning, compliance or reporting.
Targeted's work is to find those gaps, not replace ERP systems or run large transformation projects.
The answer varies: sometimes a better spreadsheet, sometimes a small web application, sometimes simply fixing the process.
The closing question is the useful one: not how many spreadsheets a business uses, but what would stop working tomorrow if one disappeared.
For brands planning a campaign
Reframes "spreadsheet risk" as dependency and continuity risk rather than a criticism of Excel—a safer, more persuasive angle for a webinar aimed at operations and production managers.
A short personal illustration of the exact test Phil Atkinson applies to a business process, told from the other side of the argument: when a spreadsheet is the right tool.
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Writing from a lounge mid-renovation, Phil Atkinson lists the work finished and still to come, and admits the project is being managed in a spreadsheet tracking who is doing what, start and finish dates, and what has to happen first.
It works because of the project's scale and shape: one person managing it, a small number of contractors, a finite number of tasks and an end date.
If it were bigger, with many people needing to access and update information, different dependencies, documents, reporting and no real end point, the spreadsheet would not be enough.
That leads to the business question: not "are you using spreadsheets?" but "has the process outgrown the spreadsheet?"
A chest of drawers delivered before there was a bedroom floor is the one planning failure.
The post closes with a comment on remote-meeting backgrounds and a preference for honest and genuine over staged.
For brands planning a campaign
Gives a partner an accessible, non-technical way into the topic of a process outgrowing its tool, suited to a joint session for small manufacturers as well as larger ones.
How Phil publishes: problem-first posts with concrete examples6
Spreadsheets that quietly become business-critical3
Small tactical applications, not transformation programmes3
The gaps between core systems2
Process first, software second2
Manufacturing production visibility1
Career arc: building, exiting and returning to the same problem1
The gaps between core systems
Phil's most repeated subject is operational data that falls between systems a business already owns.
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ERP, MRP, CRM and finance systems, they argue, are good at the data they were designed for; headaches come from the edge cases around them, which end up in spreadsheets, emails, paper, whiteboards, shared drives or an old Access database.
In practice, someone updates the file, someone remembers what happens next, and someone asks which spreadsheet is the latest.
The answer is a tailored database or application alongside existing systems, not a replacement, giving one version of the truth, control, visibility and evidence-based compliance.
Phil starts with a familiar workaround, names the system gap it hides, then closes with a low-commitment conversation: an hour, no sales presentation, no obligation.
For brands planning a campaign
Frame a partnership or co-hosted webinar around bridging existing systems, not replacing them. The strongest opening is the cross-system visibility problem — which system holds the current answer — rather than a product-versus-Excel contrast, which cuts against how Phil positions the offer.
Spreadsheets that quietly become business-critical
Phil's central diagnostic is that a spreadsheet is not the problem until it becomes a system nobody decided to build.
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A file starts because someone needs information the ERP does not provide; another team uses it, formulas and macros accumulate, and it ends up running production, stock, resource planning, compliance or reporting.
They reframe the question from how many spreadsheets a business uses to what would stop working tomorrow if one disappeared.
Phil is equally clear that spreadsheets are the right tool for small, finite, single-owner projects, using their own house renovation as the example.
They have changed their mind about blaming the spreadsheet: sometimes the answer is a better spreadsheet or a fixed process.
Phil uses short lists of concrete artefacts (the Friday report, the email approval, the ageing database held together by goodwill and fear) and closes with one reframing question.
In the same post, Phil explicitly declines to blame the spreadsheet and says Excel is brilliant, limiting how far an anti-spreadsheet hook can be pushed without contradicting them.
For brands planning a campaign
The two-question diagnostic — how many spreadsheets, then what breaks if one disappears — is a ready-made spine for a joint webinar on spreadsheet risk. It lets a software partner discuss operational risk without an anti-Excel message and gives the audience something to answer in the chat or on a call.
Phil describes project work as starting with how the business actually works, not with what software should replace the spreadsheets.
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The Ascot Doors account is their clearest example: production scheduling, stock, dispatch and work in progress were spread across spreadsheets, paper and legacy systems.
Rather than lead with a replacement product, the work began with the operation and produced a platform shaped around it.
Phil frames the departure of the person who maintained a production spreadsheet as a business risk, not a spreadsheet problem, and says the answer is sometimes a better spreadsheet, a small web application or simply fixing the process.
Case narrative: a symptom list (different sources of information, manual input and errors, limited visibility of bottlenecks, jobs hard to locate, forward planning getting harder), followed by a reordered starting question and named outcomes.
For brands planning a campaign
Any co-marketing should show the diagnosis step rather than jump to product. A manufacturing software partner can use Phil's discovery-led framing as the credibility layer of a joint asset, with the product appearing as the outcome of a described problem.
The Ascot Doors work is the most specific account of what Phil builds: live production scheduling and capacity planning, real-time work in progress, stores and kit management, dispatch planning, document control and a complete audit trail, with every door carrying its own digital record.
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Missing parts are identified before they delay production, and drawings, certificates, specifications and QA documents follow the job. Phil links the change to growth: the business had outgrown the process the spreadsheet was built to support.
For brands planning a campaign
This defines a concrete manufacturing audience segment and a set of named functions. A partner could build a webinar or guide around one of them, such as work-in-progress visibility or kit management, with Phil supplying the operational framing and a client-side example.
Small tactical applications, not transformation programmes
Phil draws a deliberate line between their work and large digital transformation projects.
Read more
They describe building small, tactical, affordable and secure web applications that sit alongside systems that already work, providing one version of the truth, ensuring nothing gets missed, automating data, and sending reminders and escalations. Phil states plainly that they are not interested in replacing perfectly good systems, and that value often comes from recognising when a useful tool has become an operational risk.
For brands planning a campaign
Use “alongside” and “gap-filling” language in any joint positioning. A partnership pitched as enterprise-wide replacement or full ERP displacement would sit awkwardly with how Phil describes their offer.
Career arc: building, exiting and returning to the same problem
One post traces Phil's route from founding Target Information Systems in March 2010 with Daryl, through an Accord supplier and contract management database, the Gatehouse contractor management brand in 2014 (later Verature), and the consolidation of the products into Heresafe.com, a SaaS platform for contractor compliance and supplier assurance.
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Phil sold their interest in it in July and now runs Targeted Agency, which they present as a continuation of the original aim — automating information-management processes that sit outside an organisation's main systems — rather than a fresh start.
For brands planning a campaign
The founder story gives a partner a natural long-form angle: building, scaling and exiting a SaaS business, then returning to the same problem with more experience. It also signals domain history rather than a new entrant, supporting credibility for an operations-focused brief.
How Phil publishes: problem-first posts with concrete examples
Phil's posts open with a question or a plain statement of a familiar problem, build through recognisable specifics, and close with a question to the audience or an offer of a conversation.
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Formats include client case narratives with a direct quote from the client, reflective founder storytelling, and everyday anecdotes such as managing a house renovation.
Hashtags recur around manufacturing, digital transformation, process improvement and SMEs.
Phil writes in short paragraphs and uses lists of artefacts or outcomes rather than statistics.
For brands planning a campaign
Co-created content should follow this shape: a familiar operational problem, specific named artefacts, a practical close, and an invitation for the audience to describe their own situation rather than a product call to action.
Atkinson’s posts document a business they founded and later sold, a contractor-compliance brand that grew out of it, a software practice they describe as their own work, and a named manufacturing client.
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The posts contain no sponsorship, affiliate arrangement or paid partnership, and no sponsorship disclosure text appears.
Targeted Agency
Disclosed partnership
Atkinson describes Targeted Agency as a practice building small web applications alongside existing ERP, MRP, CRM and finance systems.
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They write in the first person about the work (“I build small, tactical web applications”) and use “we” for the business. Ask what their formal relationship to Targeted Agency is.
Atkinson writes that they and Daryl founded Target Information Systems Limited in March 2010 after leaving their previous company, deliberately choosing a name focused on information systems rather than large enterprise platforms.
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The post recounts the business’s development; ask about its current ownership.
Atkinson writes that their contractor-compliance and supplier-assurance SaaS business was eventually brought together under Heresafe.com and that they sold their interest in it in July.
Atkinson writes that the contractor management system developed inside their earlier business was spun out under its own brand, Gatehouse, in 2014, and that Gatehouse later became Verature.
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The post describes it as part of the business Atkinson and Daryl built, which Atkinson subsequently sold.
Atkinson describes Ascot Doors as a growing manufacturer managing production scheduling, stock, dispatch and work in progress across spreadsheets, paper and legacy systems.
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Their team built a production management platform around the operation.
An Ascot Doors director said: “Ascot got a system far better than we initially envisaged.”
The post links to a fuller write-up of the project.
Explore Phil Atkinson's work through a recurring question: which operational process has quietly become more important than the system it sits beside?
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Start with the posts about spreadsheet dependency and gaps between ERP, CRM and finance systems, then turn to the Ascot Doors production example for a concrete manufacturing case.
The founder-history post explains how the current work continues an earlier business.
Look for practical diagnostics, named artefacts and low-commitment next steps rather than product pitches.
Similar creators below cover adjacent problems in manufacturing operations, aerospace visibility and OEE data; compare them by the plant problem they address and the operational layer they propose.
Both treat manufacturing and aerospace operations as systems problems.
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They argue that existing ERP and quality systems should be complemented, not replaced, and use concrete operational examples such as production visibility, supplier risk and non-conformance data.
Phil Atkinson focuses on SMEs and small web applications that fill gaps around spreadsheets, paper and manual processes. Stephanie Fels writes about aerospace quality, production operations and supply-chain visibility in larger Tier 1 settings, using Connect 981 case examples and workflow layers on top of ERP.
Both discuss manufacturing operations improvement, ERP alignment, plant visibility, and connecting operational knowledge and documentation to the realities of the plant floor.
Read more
Phil Atkinson's posts are largely diagnostic essays about spreadsheet dependency and process-first software. Eric Ciampoli's posts focus more on companies and events, describing ECIC's operational improvement approach and OPSIDIAN's operations-intelligence platform rather than offering recurring personal diagnoses.
Both write about manufacturing operations, operational excellence and weak operational data.
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They argue that data collection systems must fit how work happens and return value to the people logging the data.
Phil Atkinson focuses on spreadsheet and process gaps around core systems, especially for SMEs. Jay Byam focuses on downtime, OEE and equipment-performance data in heavier plants, with examples such as aluminium mills and the difficulty of capturing failure reasons while production is running.
One judgment is supported directly; another remains open.
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Phil Atkinson’s posts support the topic fit for a manufacturing-software partnership: they address operations, production and finance people at small and mid-sized firms who run work on spreadsheets, paper and older systems—the same problem a spreadsheet-risk webinar would address.
The posts don’t identify those followers, their seniority or how many see any given post.
The LinkedIn profile had 11,530 followers when observed on 7 October 2026.
That’s a workable but not large base for a co-hosted webinar.
The posts report no engagement, reach or attendance figures, so the practical reach of a single post is unknown.
The recurring subjects align well with a campaign aimed at spreadsheet-risk webinar attendees: the production spreadsheet only one person understands, the Friday report assembled by hand, the approval lost in email, and a case where a door manufacturer outgrew the spreadsheets that ran its scheduling and dispatch.
Buyers planning a webinar on spreadsheet risk would be speaking to an audience already primed by these themes.
The gap is audience composition.
The posts don’t measure job function, employer size, seniority or geography.
Before committing budget, ask whether Phil Atkinson has audience survey results or another documented source on followers’ job roles and company sizes, and request recent results for comparable spreadsheet-risk and operations material in the formats the partnership would use, such as a live session or a long-form post—not just total follower numbers.
Phil Atkinson’s public commercial activity centers on Targeted Agency’s own work: building small web applications that fix operational gaps for manufacturers.
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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.
For a manufacturing software company selling production scheduling, work-in-progress or ERP-adjacent tooling, a joint webinar on spreadsheet risk with Phil Atkinson as the operations voice is a strong fit for four reasons.
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First, this is their most repeated subject.
The posts describe operational data falling between ERP, MRP, CRM and finance systems and ending up in spreadsheets, paper, whiteboards, shared drives or an old Access database, with someone updating a file, someone remembering what happens next, and someone asking which version is latest.
That is the problem a spreadsheet-risk webinar would address, so the audience would not need persuading that the topic matters.
Second, Atkinson offers a usable, non-hostile hook.
The posts ask two questions: has the process outgrown the spreadsheet, and what would stop working tomorrow if one of them disappeared?
These let a software partner discuss operational risk without running an anti-Excel message—a useful distinction, since Atkinson also says Excel is brilliant and the right tool for small, finite, single-owner projects.
Third, there is a concrete case to anchor the session.
The Ascot Doors account describes production scheduling, stock, dispatch and work in progress spread across spreadsheets, paper and legacy systems, and the finished platform’s live scheduling, real-time work in progress, stores and kit management, dispatch planning, document control and audit trail, with a quote from the client’s director.
Fourth, the format matches Atkinson’s publishing style: problem-first posts, lists of familiar artefacts, and a low-commitment close, such as investing an hour in an informal conversation with no sales presentation and no obligation.
Two limits are material.
Reach is unproven: the LinkedIn profile listed 11,530 followers on 7 October 2026, but the posts publish no engagement, reach or attendance data.
Plan this as relationship-led co-marketing, with targets agreed jointly, rather than as a bought audience.
The posts also include no paid partnership formats, rate card, media kit or partner terms, so start with a conversation rather than a package purchase.
When to choose a specialist
For a supplier-assurance or contractor-compliance platform seeking a paid endorsement-style product comparison from Phil Atkinson—a single-vendor recommendation with guaranteed reach or click targets and a conversion pitch built on replacing manual contractor management—this is a poor fit as pitched.
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There is no documented sponsorship offer to buy.
The posts include no rate card, media kit, partner terms or sponsorship policy; Atkinson’s only stated commercial route is a free, informal, no-obligation conversation, and the posts are first-person pitches for Targeted Agency’s own project work rather than sponsored placements.
Nor do the posts support performance guarantees.
The only published audience figure is a LinkedIn follower count of 11,530 on 7 October 2026; nothing measures engagement, reach, click-through or webinar attendance, so a vendor cannot reasonably promise or demand guaranteed delivery on this basis.
The requested message also conflicts with Atkinson’s public positioning.
They explicitly decline to blame the spreadsheet, describe Excel as brilliant, say the answer is sometimes a better spreadsheet or simply fixing the process, and state plainly that the work is not about replacing systems that already function.
A campaign requiring an anti-manual-process or full-displacement conversion message would contradict that.
A campaign in the contractor-compliance or supplier-assurance category raises another question to resolve before any pitch: the posts describe building Target Information Systems, the Gatehouse contractor-management brand, later Verature, and Heresafe.com, a supplier-compliance and contractor-assurance platform, and selling that interest in July.
The posts do not say whether an endorsement in the same category is appropriate or what disclosure would be needed; ask directly rather than assume.
This campaign would need to change shape before Atkinson could be recommended—for example, into a neutral educational session on contractor-management risk rather than a product endorsement with delivery guarantees.
A worked campaign example
Plan a joint 45-minute webinar for operations, production and finance people at small and mid-sized manufacturers, co-hosted by Phil Atkinson and the software company, on spreadsheet dependency in production scheduling and work-in-progress.
Working title: 'What would stop working tomorrow?
A practical session on spreadsheet risk in production.' Make dependency the subject, not spreadsheets.
Open with the two-question diagnostic from the posts—not how many spreadsheets the business uses, but what would stop working tomorrow if one disappeared.
Then use Ascot Doors as the lived example: a growing door manufacturer whose production scheduling, stock, dispatch and work in progress had spread across spreadsheets, paper and legacy systems, ending in a platform with live scheduling, real-time work in progress, kit management, dispatch planning, document control and an audit trail, each door carrying its own record.
Explain the gap: ERP, MRP, CRM and finance systems are good at the data they were designed for, while headaches sit in the awkward edge cases around them—the Friday report, the email approval, the paper passed from production to the office, the same information in three places with three answers.
Phil Atkinson frames the operational problem and asks the diagnostic questions; the partner shows how a small, tactical application sits alongside existing systems rather than replacing them.
Close with Atkinson’s own low-commitment offer: an hour, no sales presentation, no obligation.
Invite attendees to bring a specific spreadsheet or manual process to a follow-up conversation.
Run one co-hosted session, promoted through Atkinson’s LinkedIn posts and the partner’s own list, with a short checklist attendees can complete after the session and a follow-up route to book a conversation.
Because no engagement, reach or attendance data exist for Atkinson’s audience, agree registration and attendance targets jointly and use first-party registration data from the first session to set the second.
Use language such as 'alongside', 'gap-filling', 'small tactical applications', 'one version of the truth' and 'nothing gets missed'.
Avoid 'spreadsheets are dead', 'digital transformation programme', enterprise-wide ERP replacement, and any promise of guaranteed reach or clicks.
This proposed joint format draws on Atkinson’s public posts and stated topics, work, audience and partnerships; it is not a confirmed engagement.
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.
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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.
The tradeoff is scope and tone.
Phil Atkinson's posts focus on aerospace and space manufacturing, AS9100-style quality regimes and named case studies tied to one platform.
That makes the examples less portable to general operations or finance audiences at small manufacturers, and a co-hosted session risks reading as a product demonstration with outcomes attached rather than an operations expert discussing a problem.
Their posts cover the same underlying gap through everyday artefacts — the Friday report, the email approval, the paper passed from production to the office — that travel across industries.
Fels also gives performance figures for customers, not her own reach or engagement, so a partner needs first-party registration and attendance data to plan promotion.
Choose Eric Ciampoli when the campaign is specifically about documentation drift — what happens when equipment, processes and teams change but written procedures do not.
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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.
The tradeoff is depth of demonstration.
The posts state the problem and the platform's purpose in general terms and describe conversations on a trade-show floor, but lack the detailed project accounts Phil Atkinson gives for Ascot Doors or Stephanie Fels gives for individual suppliers: no named client, timeline, before-and-after measurement or reconstructed process.
A webinar built on this alternative would need to supply its own case detail.
The vendor-proof tone of the platform messaging could also make a co-hosted session feel promotional unless the partner brings independent operational examples.
For an audience whose problem is spreadsheets used as business-critical systems rather than stale procedures, Ciampoli's angle is adjacent, not identical; the campaign would need reframing to fit.
Choose Jay Byam when the campaign is about data capture and capital justification rather than spreadsheet dependency as a whole.
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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.
The tradeoff is narrowness.
Both posts focus on equipment effectiveness, downtime logging and operator adoption, and both close by naming a product.
This is product-linked commentary in a specific equipment-performance category, not general operations advisory work.
A partner selling production scheduling, work-in-progress or ERP-adjacent tooling would be borrowing an argument from an adjacent discipline, and the audience overlap with Phil Atkinson's spreadsheet-risk framing — gaps between ERP, finance, CRM and paper systems — is partial.
The posts also offer the thinnest basis among the three alternatives: two posts, no client names and no deployment figures.
A session leaning on Byam would need the partner to bring the case material and would have less independent ground to stand on than one built on Phil Atkinson's own account of a delivered project.
Phil Atkinson's six LinkedIn posts cover the operational gaps between core systems, spreadsheet dependency, a production-management project at Ascot Doors, and the history of Targeted Agency and the businesses that preceded it.
The posts have no publication dates, so the only timeline comes from dates stated inside them: a founding in March 2010, a brand change in 2014, and a sale in July of an unspecified year.
The LinkedIn profile showed 11,530 followers on 7 October 2026.
The posts here include no videos, articles or transcripts, and the Ascot Doors account and the client comment quoted in it come from Atkinson's own post rather than independent verification.
Before a partnership decision, a marketer would still need audience composition and engagement data, any rate card, media kit or sponsorship terms, post publication dates, and clarification of whether an endorsement in contractor compliance would conflict with Atkinson's earlier ownership of a platform in that area.
