About

Tom Hudson

Founder, Dexlab Consulting

Founder of Dexlab Consulting. I help UK businesses find and fix the operational mess underneath their technology. Systems, data, process and ownership problems that waste money, slow growth and keep leaders stuck in work their business should be doing without them.

Tom Hudson, Founder of Dexlab Consulting
Why
Dexlab

There was nothing in the middle.

If you run a founder-led or owner-managed business and you need someone to look at your operational foundations honestly, the options are poor. A large consultancy sells you seniority, sends in a junior to do the work, charges you for both and leaves when the engagement ends. A contractor fixes what you point them at but rarely challenges why you pointed them there in the first place.

Neither is what most businesses in that position actually need. They need someone who reads the whole picture, challenges the decision before the budget is committed and stays accountable to whether the problem gets fixed. Not to a day rate. Not to a vendor relationship. To the outcome.

"Most big consultancies will get you on a call with a senior consultant to hard sell you, then send out a junior to follow a guide and collect the information. A senior reads it to you very convincingly. Then they leave. You just paid a fortune for a presentation. If all you needed was a presentation you would have already started."

The
Background

Where the experience comes from.

NHS · Cambridge University Hospitals

Enterprise architecture, AI governance and responsible adoption

Managed a £10m IT budget across one of the UK's leading NHS teaching trusts. A 3,000-strong specialist user base within an 11,000-staff estate. Every stakeholder. Every layer.

Legacy server migrations, elimination of technical debt, operational automation and a data-first digital strategy built for long-term scale. I founded an AI Community of Practice inside the NHS, built the governance framework and trained non-technical staff to use it compliantly.

"If I can do that in one of the most controlled environments in the UK, I can do it anywhere."

Arcus Global · High-security public sector

Cloud architecture and delivery for government clients

Full commercial and technical lifecycle management for public sector clients on AWS and Salesforce platforms. Legacy infrastructure migrations to cloud within strict security-cleared environments. G-Cloud procurement and service design. When security and compliance are non-negotiable, you build differently. That standard transfers to every client engagement.

Play.com / Rakuten · Consumer e-commerce

CRM, data architecture and automation at scale

Volume is a stress test for every decision made before it. What holds and what breaks under pressure tells you more about the architecture than any audit. Most businesses do not find out their data structure was inadequate until they try to grow. By then it is expensive to fix.

Optimal Payments · Payment services

Technology leadership in a regulated financial environment

Regulated industries do not tolerate ambiguity. Compliance requirements, audit trails and data obligations are non-negotiable. The discipline that comes from working inside that environment applies to any business facing increasing regulatory pressure on AI, data and information security.

Fensport · Specialist automotive

A full rebuild of systems, process and ways of working

Not a blueprint applied from above. The existing operation mapped first, then rebuilt around how the business needed to run. The sequence mattered more than the tools. This engagement is as close as it gets to the work Dexlab does now.

Mid-market advisory · Multiple UK businesses

Technology strategy and large-scale change

Growth does not create technology problems. It reveals the ones that were already there. Across several UK businesses in high-growth phases, the pattern is consistent. The organisations that handle it well build the foundations before they need them.

The
Philosophy

Most businesses are trying to fix the wrong thing.

They buy a new platform. They hire someone to automate the process. They launch an AI tool. These are reasonable responses to a real problem. The issue is they are treating the output while ignoring what is underneath it. The process that nobody has mapped. The data that nobody trusts. The work that belongs to everyone and therefore to no one.

I have worked inside organisations where a technology failure had consequences that went beyond a balance sheet. That experience taught me one thing clearly. The technology is almost never the root cause. The operational foundations are. Clear that up first and the technology question becomes a lot simpler.

Dexlab is built on that sequence. Fix the process, data and ownership problems first. Then the automation and AI decisions become obvious. Not the other way round. The businesses that get real return from technology investment do one thing differently. They fix the foundations before they spend.

How I
Work

A few things to know before we speak.

I diagnose before I recommend.

Every engagement starts with understanding what is actually broken, not what the business assumes is broken. Most of the time they are not the same thing. The diagnosis comes first. Everything else follows from what is really there.

The work does not get handed off.

What I find I found myself. What I recommend I stay accountable for. There is no junior in the background following a guide. You deal with one person from the first call to the final delivery.

The output belongs to you from day one.

Everything I produce in a mapping session, an audit or a sprint is yours to keep and act on regardless of what happens next. If you take the findings and fix the problems yourself, that is a good outcome. I would rather you solved it than felt obliged to pay me to do it.

The
Team

Two people. One business.

The advisory work is mine. The operations, client experience and marketing are Rio's. We run this together. That matters because clients are not dealing with a solo operator trying to do delivery, admin, follow-up and growth alone. The work stays personal, but the business behind it is handled properly.

Tom Hudson
Tom Hudson
Founder & Principal Consultant

All audit work, client engagements and advisory delivery. Every finding is mine. Every recommendation is mine. That is not a marketing line. It is the operating model.

LinkedIn →
Rio Hudson
RH
Rio Hudson
Head of Operations & Marketing

Marketing, operations and client experience. Enquiries are answered quickly, clients are looked after properly and the work around the advisory is held to the same standard as the advisory itself.

LinkedIn →
The
Name

Named after my son.

Dexlab is named after Dexter. That is the reason it exists. Not as a lifestyle business. As something that has to work, has to justify the time it takes away from him and has to be worth building properly. That context shapes how the business runs and who we choose to work with.

The
Discipline

The approach is consistent.

I lost 100kg. I did not do it by hoping the outcome would change on its own. I changed the inputs, followed the system and kept going until the result moved.

That is how I approach business problems too. Build the system. Trust the process. Do the work. Foundations first. Everything else follows.

Start here

Twenty minutes. No pitch. No obligation.

One conversation to understand your specific situation and confirm whether there is a fit worth pursuing. If there is not, you leave with a clearer picture of the problem and no pressure to do anything with it.

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DEXlabCONSULTING
Dexlab Consulting Ltd · Registered in England and Wales
Fixed-fee work · Defined outcomes · Independent advice