Associative Trails / work
Our work
For twenty years we've built systems that help professional firms capture, structure and use knowledge.
Today those same problems are the foundations of successful AI adoption.
The projects below were delivered long before AI became a boardroom priority, but they solved the same underlying challenge: making expertise visible, reusable and available beyond the people who happen to hold it.
Eckersley O'Callaghan
An early example of a problem many organisations still face today. The technical knowledge existed, but finding the right answer often depended on knowing who to ask.
We built a technical library where each document linked to the staff, projects and expertise it related to, so its value grew as the practice's knowledge connected up. The value wasn't the software. The value was turning expertise from something remembered into something reusable.
“Matt has been able to deliver an easy to use, customised product... Communicative, concise and creative. It been great to collaborate with him and I'll continue to do so.”
London Business School
A knowledge-capture tool for compiling, annotating and sharing the reading and references behind academic work.
The challenge wasn't storing links. It was preserving the thinking around them. Users could tag, comment on and curate resources so that knowledge accumulated instead of disappearing when individuals moved on.
A small example of a much larger principle: expertise becomes more valuable when others can build on it.
Heatherwick Studio
A bespoke intranet built around tens of thousands of records covering projects, skills and studio history.
Creative practices often accumulate enormous amounts of knowledge but struggle to make it accessible. The project focused on turning years of accumulated experience into something searchable, navigable and useful in everyday work.
The technology mattered less than the memory it unlocked.
Sling
A workflow platform that allows firms to build and run their own approval processes, supported by an Outlook integration that surfaces relevant information where people already work.
The underlying lesson remains important today - knowledge only creates value when it reaches the person making a decision, at the moment they need it.
Good systems reduce the distance between information and action.
“The ease of staff being able to create contacts and add notes… means we are capturing and sharing information much more effectively.”
What these projects have in common
Different professional firms. Different technologies. Different outcomes.
The common thread is understanding how knowledge moves through organisations. Not because every firm needs another system, but because successful AI depends on understanding where knowledge lives, how decisions get made, and what should remain human judgement.
Track record
Two decades of knowledge and workflow systems for professional services firms.
- Arup: CMS rebuild and web standards realignment, contacts and events database, marketing collateral repository
- Scott Brownrigg: Compass intranet, staff and project portal, iOS portfolio app, CRM and events systems
- Sheppard Robson: company intranet and CRM
- Ellipse: website and content management system with PDF form generation for insurance claims
- Grant Thornton: full-lifecycle event management system
- Ashridge Business School: business news and analysis platform
- Old Arupians: long-running community website for a network of retired Arup staff
“Matt has been an inspirational product development partner, helping us to both clarify our initial vision and then deliver an outcome way beyond initial aspirations.”