An independent consultancy · Michigan
Every company is being told to move faster with AI. The catch is that agents amplify the operation you already have, broken parts included. Ironbrant helps you fix the operation first, then build the systems that think ahead.
01 · Diagnose
Org charts lie. Process docs lie harder. Before we touch a single tool, we map how the work really gets done, down to the spreadsheet quietly holding everything together.
02 · Design
Automation takes the rote work. Agents take the repeatable judgment calls. People keep the decisions that matter. Most of the job is drawing those lines in the right place.
03 · Deploy
A system nobody uses is a demo. We ship alongside the teams who will live in it and stay until the new way of working sticks.
What we do
We work with leaders of operations-heavy businesses, where a large team moves real volume every day and the pressure to adopt AI is arriving faster than the operation underneath can absorb it.
01
Two to three weeks inside your operation. You get a plain-language map of where capacity leaks, what to automate, and what to leave alone. The fee is fixed, and you can act on the map without us.
02
We design and build AI-assisted workflows that survive contact with real staff and real edge cases, from knowledge systems to service operations. Your team owns them when we leave.
03
M&A integrations, platform migrations, org redesigns. We have run them at scale, and we have the scar tissue to prove it. You get to skip earning your own.
04
A senior operator in the room for as long as you need one. We build the team, set the cadence, and hand you the keys on the way out.
How we work
Stage 01
Short, fixed-fee, and honest. If the answer is "you don't need us," that's the report. Roughly a third of assessments end exactly there, which is why the other two-thirds trust what comes next.
2–3 weeks · fixed feeStage 02
A scoped engagement against the assessment's plan. We build the systems, ship the workflows, and train the teams. Success is measured in your metrics, and we plan our own exit from day one.
Scoped · outcome-pricedThe record
Ironbrant is new. The record behind it is not. These results come from running the operation, and they set the standard we hold client work to.
01 · Scale
Eight university partnerships had to grow without growing the team. We designed a low-touch student experience with the service standards built in. The standards held through a 5:1 workforce reduction, and one coordinator went from 500 semester enrollees to 2,100.
02 · Automation
A back-office operation needed throughput, not headcount. AI and process automation went in where the work was rote, cutting cycle times 27% and raising capacity 48% in six months. The work won a company-wide Innovation Challenge and later took another $1.0MM of annualized cost out.
03 · Data integrity
Billing discrepancies across 125+ university partners were leaking real money. We built process controls and data hygiene into the workflow instead of bolting them on, cutting the discrepancies by $4MM a year.
The name
A brant is a small, unglamorous goose that breeds in the high Arctic and flies storm coasts every year to get home. No drama, no missed years.
That's the standard here: iron discipline in the work, without taking ourselves too seriously while we do it. The companies that get through interesting times tend to run on both.
"In 390 BC the watchdogs slept through the raid. The geese didn't. Rome kept the geese."
Why we keep one on the letterhead
About
Ironbrant is the practice of one senior operator who spent years running operations before advising on anyone else's.
Our founder spent fourteen years leading operations in online higher education, through five corporate iterations, four major M&A integrations, and the merger that formed the largest OPM in the world. He ran a 150-person organization supporting 825,000+ students across 125+ universities, delivered $200MM in revenue on a $6MM fixed budget, and took $3.3MM in annualized cost out of the operation.
His teams became their company's heaviest AI users because the systems were built around the work, not the other way around. He holds an MBA in finance.
The consultancy exists because most companies don't need a bigger platform or a louder AI strategy. They need someone who has run the operation, knows what breaks, and can build the version that doesn't.
Start the conversation
One email is enough. Tell us what's slow, what's breaking, or what you've been told AI will fix. You'll get a straight read on whether we can help, and a straight no if we can't.
A useful first note says what's slow, how big the team is, and what you have already tried. Three sentences is plenty.
[email protected]