About · Christophe Lemaitre · France

The person behind
the practice

Christophe Lemaitre is the founder of CL Edge Consultant — an AI strategy and agentic systems consultancy based in France. He brings 15+ years of senior enterprise programme delivery experience, now combined with direct capability to design and build agentic AI systems.

Based in FranceRemote across Europe
15+ yearsEnterprise delivery experience
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The backstory

15 years of enterprise delivery.
Now amplified by AI.

I've spent 15 years inside the hardest part of enterprise delivery — the place where strategy meets execution and things stop going to plan. From managing supplier onboarding waves for Nestlé, IBM, and L'Oréal to leading programme governance at Optimizely, I've consistently operated at the intersection of senior stakeholder pressure, cross-functional complexity, and the need to produce measurable results under real commercial constraints.

What I found, doing that work at scale, is that most enterprise processes are extraordinarily automatable — but only if you understand them from the inside first. That's what drew me into agentic AI. Not as a technology play, but as the most powerful lever I've seen for turning institutional knowledge into reliable, scalable operations.

The insight that shaped the practice came from years of watching organisations automate the wrong things. They built tools that handled the clean, simple cases — and then failed when the first exception arrived. Because the people who built the tools didn't understand the exceptions. I did. After four years of managing onboarding for global enterprises, I had catalogued hundreds of them.

I built CL Edge Consultant to combine both. Strategy and delivery. Enterprise credibility and AI build capability. The ability to sit in a room with a C-suite and translate their business challenge into a working agentic system — without losing nuance at either end of that conversation.

I'm based in France, work remotely across Europe, and take on a small number of engagements at a time to maintain genuine senior focus on every one. The practice is deliberately sized around quality of output, not volume of throughput.

MBA, University of Arkansas Business Administration · 2002–2003
Masters in Management, TBS Education Toulouse, France · 1999–2002
Based in France Remote-capable across Europe
8 companies · 15+ years Optimizely · Tradeshift · Tungsten · Acxiom · Sky
Senior clients Nestlé · IBM · L'Oréal · GE · Caterpillar · Sanofi · Sodexo
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Organisations worked with
Optimizely Tradeshift Tungsten Network Acxiom Sky London Mint Office Nestlé IBM L'Oréal Sodexo GE Caterpillar Sanofi Skype
Career timeline

The experience that
shapes the practice

Each role built a specific type of enterprise delivery expertise. Together they form a background that is unusual: commercial depth, programme delivery rigour, and AI build capability in the same person.

Now

CL Edge Consultant — Founder & Principal Consultant

AI strategy and agentic systems consulting for enterprise organisations across Europe. Combining process-to-agent translation expertise with senior programme delivery. Clients across professional services, FMCG, technology, and industrial sectors.

3yr

Optimizely — Senior Programme Manager & Engagement Manager

Led enterprise programme delivery across global accounts for the digital experience platform. Responsible for post-sale implementation governance, stakeholder alignment, and commercial outcome delivery. Developed the AI-augmented delivery methodology now central to CL Edge Consultant's practice.

4yr

Tradeshift — Head of Onboarding Strategy & Principal Consultant

Owned end-to-end onboarding strategy for enterprise supply chain clients including Nestlé, IBM, Sodexo, and L'Oréal. Designed onboarding methodology and SOW governance framework. Managed wave rollouts of 50–500 suppliers simultaneously. Designed and ran the training programme for onboarding strategy consultants — developing a team of subject matter experts across the European practice.

2.5yr

Tungsten Network — Service Delivery Manager

Managed global key accounts including GE, Caterpillar, and Sanofi for the e-invoicing and supply chain finance platform. Responsible for account health, escalation management, and strategic account development. Operated at C-suite level with clients where misalignment meant material commercial exposure.

2yr

Acxiom — Senior Client Services Manager

Managed the Skype account — one of the world's largest consumer databases — and other major digital client accounts. Responsible for data quality, campaign delivery, and senior client relationship management across one of the world's largest consumer data platforms.

4yr

Sky — Senior Programme & Project Manager

Delivered complex technology and operational transformation programmes across the Sky business. Built the programme management discipline that underpins every subsequent engagement — rigorous stakeholder governance, structured risk management, and outcome-linked delivery.

3yr

London Mint Office & Eloise Lingerie — Commercial & Marketing Director

Managed marketing budgets of up to £3M and grew e-commerce conversion rates by 24% through SEO and digital marketing. The commercial foundation that ensures AI systems are built to move the KPI that matters to the CFO — not just to automate tasks in isolation.

Philosophy

How I approach
client work

Process fluency before technology

Every engagement begins with understanding — not with tools, platforms, or solutions. The most common reason enterprise AI fails is not the technology: it is that the people building the AI systems did not understand the real workflow they were automating. The edge cases, the institutional knowledge, the decisions that live in people's heads rather than in any documentation.

I invest significant time in the discovery phase of every engagement precisely because the quality of what gets built is entirely determined by the quality of what gets mapped. An agent that handles the clean cases but fails on the exceptions is not an improvement over the manual process — it is a regression.

Senior attention on every engagement

The practice is deliberately small. I take on a limited number of engagements at a time so that every client receives genuine senior attention — not a senior introduction followed by delivery from a more junior team. The person you speak to in the discovery conversation is the person building the system.

This is not scalable in the conventional consulting sense. But it produces better work and better client relationships, which is the point.

Outcomes over activity

Every engagement is anchored to measurable business outcomes — not hours delivered or deliverables produced. The question that frames the work is always: what does success look like for this organisation six months after the system goes live? That question shapes the architecture, the build decisions, and the adoption programme.

🗺️
Map before you build
The process mapping phase is the most valuable part of any engagement. Skipping it saves time in discovery and costs it everywhere else.
🎯
Honest about fit
If agentic AI is not the right approach for a particular problem, I will say so — and recommend what is. Client interests come before engagement scope.
🔗
Adoption is part of delivery
An AI system that the team doesn't trust or use is a failed deployment, regardless of technical quality. Change management is built in from the start.
Track Record

The numbers behind
the practice

15+
Years of senior enterprise programme delivery across financial technology, supply chain, digital experience, and data platforms
F500
Clients managed at senior level — Nestlé, IBM, L'Oréal, GE, Caterpillar, Sanofi, Sodexo, and Skype
8
Companies across four countries — commercial, technology, programme management, and AI consulting roles
Work with Christophe

Ready to build something
intelligent together?

A 30-minute conversation is the fastest way to find out whether there is a fit — and to get a direct answer about whether CL Edge Consultant is the right partner for your challenge.

  • 15+ years enterprise delivery backing every engagement
  • Senior from day one — no handoff to junior consultants
  • AI strategy and build capability combined
  • Honest about fit — not every challenge is an AI problem
  • Based in France, remote-capable across Europe
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