Rémy Heilmann — AI Process Automation, M&A IT Integration & Program Recovery

The situation

Three sentences I hear before the first meeting.

AI Process Automation

“We bought the licences and gave the team access. What we see: rising costs. What we don’t see is cost reduction elsewhere.”

What this typically costs before AI saves a single franc: CHF 200,000 – 400,000 for licences, pilot projects and internal working time.

M&A IT Integration

“The acquisition completed six weeks ago, but the integration plan is not in place yet.”

Every month of delay costs CHF 50,000 – 150,000: The synergies promised to the board arrive later, and both IT landscapes keep running in parallel.

Program Recovery

“It has been reported green for three cycles. Everyone in the room knows it isn’t.”

A derailed CHF 5m program burns roughly CHF 400,000 per month while the reporting stays polite.

What I do

Three services. Scope and price are fixed before we start.

The problem I solve

Your AI spend is not producing a measurable return. There are licences, pilots and a steering committee — but no process that runs differently from two years ago. Process and technology are roughly 40% of the effort. The other 60% is the people who run the process every day: their objections, their expertise, their fear of automating themselves away. Skip that and you get a technically successful pilot nobody uses. Take them along and the same technology reaches production.

How I work

Use-case portfolio — 4 weeks. Every candidate gets a quantity structure: volume, hourly cost, error rate, cycle time. And the question that decides it — which revenue or cost line do the released hours land on? Without a named line, capacity never becomes value.
Prioritisation against delivery risk. Value ranked against data readiness, process stability and change effort. Most portfolios shrink to one or two serious candidates. That is the point.
90 days to production. The process redesigned with the people who run it, not around them. Training before go-live, not after. Human-in-the-loop where the cost of being wrong is high, and only there. Measurement agreed before we start.

What you get

Scored use-case portfolio with calculated annual value per case
One production use case your team runs without me
Human-in-the-loop design: what the machine decides, what a person signs off

Entry: Use-case portfolio — 4 weeks
Delivery: Implementation mandate, CHF 2,000 per day
Partner: Delivered with NudgeIT — engineering capacity when a mandate needs more than one person
Built for: Mid-market CIO / COO, 200 – 2,000 employees

Project references

AI Process Automation — live MVP: Customs clearance provider, roughly 900 declarations per day: structured extraction from unstructured documents, release by the case handler, measured from day one.
AI Process Automation — earlier proof of concept: Unstructured email data automatically routed into the ERP: lower error rate, 24-hour processing instead of manual handling.
Change & adoption: Process and behaviour change for a delivery organisation of 1,600 people; one core process reduced from 20 steps to 12.
Qualification: CAS Chief AI Officer (2025) · CAS AI Hands-On (2026) · Certified NLP Master (2025) — the people side is trained, not improvised.

The problem I solve

IT is delaying your synergies and extending the period in which you keep paying the seller for its IT (Transition Services Agreement, TSA). IT is the critical path of every integration and the last function to get a plan. Applications, identity, service desk, infrastructure and data all have to land on one date, while both organisations keep serving customers. Cross-border, the failure point is rarely technology. It is language, time zone and working culture.

How I work

Integration readiness assessment — 3 weeks. Application landscape, identity, infrastructure, service desk, licences and people. Output: risk-ranked plan, cost envelope, realistic cut-over date.
Day-1 plan and mobilisation. Workstreams, owners, decision rights, communication and change plan. The steering committee gets one page, weekly.
Delivery to cut-over. I run the program, chair the workstreams and hold the date. Handover to your line organisation is part of the scope, not an afterthought.

What you get

Risk-ranked integration plan with named owners
Cost envelope and an exit date from the seller’s Transition Services Agreement (TSA) that you can defend to the board
A repeatable playbook your team keeps after I leave

Entry: Readiness assessment — 3 weeks
Delivery: Program lead, CHF 2,000 per day
Languages: Steering in German, English, Spanish or Portuguese
Built for: Serial acquirers, PE portfolio companies, mid-cap groups

Project references16 integrations delivered since 2017, from under 50 users to 2,500 — including a 2,500-user integration in DACH and a 1,400-user integration in Colombia. The M&A IT process itself was developed, standardised and automated, then reused deal after deal. Member of multiple integration steering committees.

The problem I solve

Your program is red and nobody is saying so. Programs rarely fail loudly. Scope drifts, dates slip a fortnight at a time, and the status stays green because nobody is rewarded for saying otherwise. By the time it turns red, the options are expensive and the sponsor has lost the room.

How I work

Ten-day diagnostic. Interviews across the delivery line, scope reconstruction, cost curve, dependency and decision audit. I talk to the people doing the work, not only the ones reporting on it.
Three options to the steering committee. Stop, re-cut or push through — each with cost, date and risk. Written plainly. No hedging.
Interim leadership, if you want it. I take the program, or I stand up the PMO and the standards so your own people can run it.

What you get

Unvarnished status — the version the sponsor can act on
Three costed options with a recommendation
PMO standards, reporting and quality gates that survive me

Entry: Ten-day diagnostic
Delivery: Interim program lead, CHF 2,000 per day
Built for: CIO, program sponsor, board committee

Project referencesBuilt a PMO practice from zero to 10 project managers and moved three support engineers into project management. Led the global delivery program for 1,600 professionals across a CHF 70m business line — customer satisfaction went from 2 to 4 out of 5. Led COVID crisis management for an operations centre of more than 750 people across India, Germany and Mexico.

Business case

Every conversation starts with a number. Here is what one looks like.

A representative core process, costed the way I put it in front of a steering committee — before a single line of scope is agreed.

People tied up in the process: 10 FTE
Fully loaded cost per hour: CHF 85
Productive hours per person, per year: 1,700
Annual cost of the process today: CHF 1,445,000
Share removed by automation: 35%
Investment — use-case portfolio: CHF 20,000
Investment — 40 delivery days: CHF 80,000
Total investment: CHF 100,000

CHF505,750

Released per year

Under 3 monthsPayback on the full investment

How to read thisThirty-five per cent sits below what I have delivered — one core delivery process went from 20 steps to 12, a reduction of 40%. The figures above are a worked illustration, not a forecast, an offer or a commitment. They exclude licences, infrastructure and change effort. And the caveat that decides it: released capacity only becomes value once you can name the revenue or cost line it lands on. Your numbers are established in the use-case portfolio, against your own volumes.

How I work

Four commitments. They are the reason clients call back.

01 / Reporting

The status report says what is true.

If a program is amber, it is reported amber — in week two, not week twenty. Sponsors can handle bad news. They cannot handle finding out late.

02 / Money

Business case before kick-off.

Volume, cost, error rate, cycle time — and the line the value lands on. If the number does not hold, I say so before you spend, not in the closing report.

03 / Handover

I hand over to your team, not to my successor.

The playbook, the standards and the capability stay in your organisation. A mandate that cannot end is a mandate that failed.

04 / Accountability

One person, running it.

No engagement pyramid, no junior team learning on your budget. You get the person you met, in the room, holding the date.

How we contract

The questions procurement asks before the sponsor gets a say.

Confidentiality

NDA signed before the first substantive conversation. In live transactions, deal-sensitive material stays on your systems — I work inside your environment, not alongside it.

Contract & jurisdiction

Swiss law, place of jurisdiction Zurich. Your own framework agreement is fine; I have signed on client paper before and will not hold up a start over boilerplate.

Capacity & continuity

Single point of accountability is the offer — and the risk. It is managed by documenting decisions as we go and keeping your own people close to the work. For engineering capacity beyond one person I work with NudgeIT.

Exit

Every mandate has a defined end. Playbook, standards and reporting stay with your team. A mandate that cannot end was scoped wrong.

Five success criteria between people

Programs succeed or fail on what happens between people.

Curiosity

Keep learning. Ask what’s next.

Courage

Reimagine the work. Build what’s new.

Empathy

Lead with empathy. Put people first.

Creativity

Boldly. Learn as you go.

Collaboration

Better together. Solve it as one.

Who I am

Rémy Heilmann
Rüschlikon (ZH), SwitzerlandLinkedIn profile

Recommendations

What the people who have worked with me say about me.

Read on LinkedIn

International program experience in AI, IT and M&A.

Over twenty years in the volunteer fire department, several of them in a command role. That is where I learned to decide with incomplete information and a running clock — and to name the problem while it can still be fixed.

Volunteer Fire Brigade Kilchberg-Rüschlikon · Officer rank · since 2005

Most recently I sat in the global core management team (N-2) of SoftwareONE, a software and cloud provider with 9,000 employees across more than 60 countries — leading the delivery model for a CHF 70 million business line. Before that I built the M&A IT Integration function and the PMO practice, and led IT infrastructure program management. That I now lead AI programs into production is not an accident — it is the result of a standing habit: asking what comes next before the market demands it, and then going to learn it.

What runs through all of it: technology was never the bottleneck. The question was always whether the people came along. You do not roll out a global delivery model to 1,600 people by memo — you build it with them, listen before you redesign, and create the conditions in which others get better. That is why I trained for it — Certified NLP Master, Coaching for Transformation. Not as a shortcut, but because I don’t trust instinct alone.

The part that is hard to replicate: I integrate across language borders and name what others prefer to leave unsaid. A 1,400-user integration in Colombia. Business continuity across India, Germany and Mexico. Steering call in Spanish, board report in German. And if a program has been reported green for three cycles when it is clearly red — that goes on page one of my report.

I was an operator, not an advisor. The integrations were mine, with my budget and my name on the steering report. Today I ask the same question I always did: which process costs the most, which people run it every day — and what does it take for both to look different in ninety days? That is the craft I bring.

Mindset

Growth mindset · Curiosity · Courage · Empathy · Creativity · Collaboration

Focus regions

Europe · North and South America · India

Languages

German (native) · English (fluent) · Spanish (advanced) · Portuguese (advanced)

Education

MSc in IT & Business Process Management, University of Liechtenstein · BSc Business Administration (International Management), ZHAW

Certification

CAS Chief AI Officer (2025) · CAS AI Hands-On (2026) · Certified NLP Master (2025) · Coaching for Transformation (2023)

Recognition

Internal top-performer award, 2018 and 2023

Straight answers

The questions I get asked before anyone signs anything.

Why do the people matter more than the technology?

Because the model runs in weeks and the organisation takes months. A process only changes once the people who run it understand the new flow, trust it, and apply it without supervision. Skip that and you get a technically successful pilot with zero adoption — while the cost runs anyway. In my experience process and technology account for roughly 40% of the effort; the other 60% is involvement, training, governance, and an honest answer to what happens to the time that is released.

What happens to the people whose work gets automated?

That belongs on the table in the first workshop, not after go-live. There are three honest answers: the capacity lands on a named revenue or service line, it is absorbed through natural attrition, or there are job losses. Which one applies is a decision for the executive team — not for me and not for the tool. My job is to make sure the decision is taken before the start and communicated openly. Unspoken intentions are the most reliable way to lose an AI program.

What does an M&A IT integration cost?

The integration readiness assessment is a fixed fee from CHF 28,000 and takes three weeks. Running the integration program through to cut-over is charged at CHF 2,000 per day. Total cost depends on the number of users, applications and legal entities involved. The assessment produces a cost envelope you can defend to the board before you commit to delivery.

What is a Transition Services Agreement (TSA) and why does it drive integration cost?

A Transition Services Agreement (TSA) is the contract under which the seller keeps providing IT and other services to the buyer for a defined period after closing. If the integration runs late, the Transition Services Agreement may have to be extended — depending on the deal at a cost of CHF 50,000 to CHF 150,000 per month, on top of delayed synergies. The exit date from the Transition Services Agreement is therefore one of the most expensive variables in a post-merger IT plan.

Do you work outside Switzerland?

Yes. Mandates run internationally and are delivered in English by default — the working language of most global programs. German, Spanish or Portuguese are available in addition where a local team works faster in its own language. Delivered examples include a 1,400-user integration in Colombia and business continuity leadership across India, Germany and Mexico.

Do you work alone or with a team?

The work is done personally. No engagement pyramid, no junior team learning on your budget. Where a mandate needs engineering capacity beyond one person, I work with my delivery partner NudgeIT. Otherwise additional capacity comes from your own organisation — which is also how the capability stays in-house after the mandate ends.

What does “human in the loop” mean in practice?

It means deciding, case by case, where the model acts on its own and where a person reviews or signs off before anything is committed. The rule of thumb is the cost of being wrong: low-value, high-volume steps run automatically, while exceptions, financial commitments and anything a regulator or auditor could ask about keep a named human approver. Every checkpoint is documented, so the process is defensible after the fact — not just fast.

How quickly can you start?

One mandate is taken at a time; next availability on request. A first conversation of 30 minutes is free and results in a straight answer on scope, timing and price — including whether the engagement is a fit at all. A written proposal follows within five working days.

Is your AI strategy
still hallucinating,
or already delivering?

Three sentences I hear before the first meeting.

Three services. Scope and price are fixed before we start.

The problem I solve

How I work

What you get

The problem I solve

How I work

What you get

The problem I solve

How I work

What you get

Every conversation starts with a number. Here is what one looks like.

Four commitments. They are the reason clients call back.

The status report says what is true.

Business case before kick-off.

I hand over to your team, not to my successor.

One person, running it.

The questions procurement asks before the sponsor gets a say.

Confidentiality

Contract & jurisdiction

Capacity & continuity

Exit

Curiosity

Courage

Empathy

Creativity

Collaboration

International program experience in AI, IT and M&A.

The questions I get asked before anyone signs anything.

Tell me what is stuck. I will tell you whether I am the right person.

Direct contact

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