CPP Master Brief — Source of Truth
1. Who CPP is
Covington Place Partners LLC (CPP) — an AI consultant group that "enables mid-market enterprises to thrive in the artificial intelligence era by designing solutions to optimize operational efficiency, elevate user experience, and drive scalable value." Based in Greater St. Louis. Site self-description: "Your AI Business Solutions Advisor Group."
- Positioning line: "Consulting for business strategy and results, not industry hype."
- Purpose: "To be the trusted partner that simplifies AI and delivers unbiased, outcome-driven solutions aligned to each client's unique goals."
2. The two founding partners
The LinkedIn profiles are authoritative for the founders. (The live /team page is stale/templated on this point — see §8.)
- Shea Long — Co-Founder & Partner (Jan 2025–present), Greater St. Louis. AI-enabled enterprise-transformation leader; focus on AI strategy + agentic workflows, revenue acceleration, AI governance. Prior: Chief Product Officer, Alivi; VP Product (Go-to-Market), Papa; SVP Product, EmpowerMe Wellness; VP Head of Product Dev, ModivCare/LogistiCare; Staff VP Commercial Innovation, Centene; SVP Head of Products, TierPoint; VP & Global Head, CenturyLink/Savvis. Education: Stanford GSB (LEAD cert), USAFA (BS Business Mgmt), Carnegie Mellon (cert). Contact:
Shea@covingtonplacepartners.com. - Mike Burns — Managing Partner & Cofounder (June 2024–present), St. Louis. 3+ decades in healthcare advertising, digital transformation, data-driven marketing; fractional CSO/CMO roles. Prior: CSO, Advocado; President (Health Services), Wunderman Thompson Health; Chief Development Officer, Wunderman Health; EVP, KBM Group Health Services; EVP, Marketing Direct. Education: University of Missouri–St. Louis (BS Marketing & Finance).
Both are St. Louis–based senior operators with deep healthcare + product + marketing backgrounds — that is the real credibility base.
3. What CPP does — the 3 pillars (authoritative service model)
CPP operates under three pillars (Brian, 2026-07-01; corroborated by the CPP_Discovery Workshop Overview 04 2026 deck's "Three Integrated Focus Areas"):
Pillar 1 — Executive Workshop (Strategy). Level-set the executive team on AI enterprise concepts, show how peers transform with AI, identify & prioritize use cases, and build the company's AI roadmap → final report. Productized as the One-Day AI Discovery & Ideation Workshop ("AI Opportunity Sprint"): pre-work (CEO Vision Capture, short-term + 3-year vision, bespoke agenda) → morning (Discovery: process mapping + pain points; optional AI Education; Analysis) → afternoon (Ideation; Prioritization via an Impact vs. Effort matrix). Deliverable: 3–4 prioritized AI projects, each with Problem Statement, Solution Concept, Technical Approach, Owner. Scope: 8h prep + 8h workshop + 8h summary. Workshop fee: $3,500.
Pillar 2 — Company AI Readiness. A deep bench of SMEs (20–30 yrs experience) engaged to meet clients wherever they are, across these domains: Data Readiness & Data Transformation Strategy · AI Governance Services · AI Cultural Impact Strategies · Training & Education · Cost Optimization Services (FinOps) · Software Development AI Operating System (SD/OS) · AI Business Requirements Development.
Pillar 3 — Agentic Solution Development Services (Execution). A team of AI software developers building agentic solutions/products using AI best practices, collaborating with client engineering teams with strong knowledge transfer on how solutions are developed and architected.
Reconciliation: the four cpp-source pitch decks map into Pillar 2 — AI Governance Program → AI Governance Services; COS/CDI → Cost Optimization (FinOps); AI-SDOS → Software Development AI Operating System (SD/OS). They are the deep-dive collateral behind Pillar-2 SME domains.
Live-site framing (lighter than the pillars): "AI Strategy Implementation / AI Solutions Roadmap," "AI Implementation Support" ("vendor selection to change management"), "Implementation Excellence." The site predates/undersells the 3-pillar model.
3B. Products — powered by grāmatr (the shift from hours to product)
CPP is no longer only consulting hours — there is shipping product: one grāmatr-powered platform engine → three productized surfaces, sold individually by buyer/job-to-be-done (NOT a bundle; buy one and you're ~80% integrated for the others). "Three standalone consoles on one invisible shell, powered by grāmatr." The narrative anchors on financial governance; the Dev-OS is the horizon (name, don't over-sell).
| Product | Buyer | Job-to-be-done | Core surface |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI Cost Optimization | CFO / VP Finance / FinOps | Make AI spend visible, attributable, shrinking | Attributed token+$ baseline, showback/chargeback, anomaly + budget alerts, right-sizing, savings-vs-baseline, quarterly FinOps reporting. Delivery: Phase-1 AI Cost Audit (fixed fee) → Phase-2 managed FinOps |
| AI Governance & Audit (the financial-governance anchor) | CISO / Risk / Legal / Compliance | Enforce policy, prove it held, survive a regulator | Three-layer governance (content/logical/physical), directive-enforcement firmness ladder, prompt-layer protection, immutable audit trail, 48-hour regulator export, evidence packaging |
| AI Development Operating System (horizon) | CTO / VP Engineering | Steer AI use, separate real velocity from vibe-coding, route work to the right model | Utilization monitoring, output-quality/anti-slop signals, LSP/IDE integration, in-IDE model steering. Premium pricing |
Compounding-KB win: every governance/audit engagement builds a reusable collaborative knowledge base (context + memory) — the work compounds into an asset, not just a report.
⚠️ HONEST-VERB GUARDRAIL (mandatory for all copy). Say "designed to support EU AI Act / NIST-aligned," NEVER "certified/compliant." SOC 2 = "disciplines followed," not "certified." Do not overstate actor-tracking (frame via turn history + identity). Cost product goes upstream of metering — CPP sells an AUDIT + managed improvement, NOT a dashboard/metering tool.
Provenance: this product line lives in the
gramatr/cpp-gramatrproject (lead engagement: ConnectBase — board-ready white paper "Re-Architecting API Production Through Agentic AI"). Lineage: the four pitch decks map onto these products (COS+CDI → Cost Optimization; Governance Program → Governance & Audit; AI-SDOS → AI Dev OS).
4. Methodology
"AI Consulting Methodology": "We meet our clients where they are on their AI adoption journey. Our phased approach ensures every AI initiative aligns with your business maturity and risk tolerance — from strategy to scalable innovation." Mike Burns frames it as meeting clients "wherever they are on the AI maturity curve — from foundational education and strategy alignment to enterprise-wide deployment," ensuring adoption is human-centered, scalable, and tied to real business outcomes.
5. Differentiators
- Vendor-agnostic / unbiased — "We recommend solutions based on your needs, not our partnerships." This is CPP's core stated differentiator.
- Trusted partnership — "Your goals become our goals."
- Senior-operator credibility (from the founders' executive backgrounds).
6. Strategic wedge
Brian's stated positioning direction (not yet on the live site; CSO to finalize the wording — capture the strategic point, not final copy):
Core idea — proven process de-risks the unknown. The wedge is not mainly "beating the Big Four." It's that CPP pairs proven processes with experienced senior members so that, even when the destination isn't known up front, the journey itself is de-risked and mid-market companies still reach high-value outcomes. The bespoke solution emerges out of the proven process — process + experience is the guarantee; bespoke is the result, not the pitch.
Supporting layers (secondary to the above):
- Bespoke, not templated — big firms bring loaded, predefined templates; CPP tailors to the client's real operation. Bespoke matters, but it's downstream of the proven process.
- Fair pricing / value — never "cheap," "affordable," "budget," or "discount."
- Vendor-agnostic / senior operators — aligns with CPP's real live-site positioning.
Emphasis balance (per Brian): lead with proven process + senior experience → assured high-value outcomes; let bespoke and the Big-Four contrast support it, not headline it.
7. Industries served
Site: healthcare, telecommunications, manufacturing, "and other industries." Shea Long adds: construction, higher education, marketing & advertising, CPG. (Healthcare is the clear center of gravity given both founders' backgrounds.)
8. Content assets & channels
- White papers (PDFs, downloaded): CPP Workflow Transformation (Part 1); ConnectBase — Agentic AI (Board Ready); How to Secure Corporate Data with AI ("A Technical White Paper for CIOs and Chief AI Architects").
- Blog/insights + a Videos page (e.g. "Speed is Strategy: How Agentic AI Rewired an Entire Operating Model").
- Brand: fonts Montserrat + Inter; logo
assets/47cd0066-…png; X handle @cpp_consulting; site is a React SPA on Vercel. - Broader leadership team: Charles Eaton (SVP Product Development & Design), James Dickman (Chief Technology Officer), Jason Wargel (SVP Program Management) — alongside founders Shea Long and Mike Burns.
9. Product decks in cpp-source — status
The four decks (AI Governance Program, AI-SDOS, CDI Model Mapping, COS Capabilities) are real CPP product material, but they are detailed pitch/productized offerings NOT reflected on the current live site (the site describes generic AI strategy/implementation consulting). Treat the decks as product concepts / sales collateral, captured in cpp-source/ and summarized in the knowledge-graph cpp-service-lines entity — do NOT present them as live website facts until confirmed. Details unchanged; provenance corrected.