Commercial intelligence built by someone who ran the business

Built by someone who has sat in your chair

3DMAI was built by Richard Mann — a UK commercial operator with over 20 years running real businesses across manufacturing, distribution, and retail.

Richard spent eight years as Head of Product at Johnson Tiles, managing a 4,000+ SKU portfolio, running national accounts with B&Q, Topps Tiles, and Travis Perkins, and leading commercial decisions that moved millions of pounds of revenue. He knows exactly what it means to price a product range under margin pressure, manage a supplier base across four continents, and present a commercial case to a buying director.

He then founded TSD Ltd, an omni-channel retail business that he grew and exited — experiencing first-hand the cashflow pressure, hiring decisions, and commercial uncertainty that every UK SME owner navigates without adequate data or support.

He now runs Point One Consulting, advising UK SME owners on commercial strategy. Every problem 3DMAI solves is a problem he has personally faced.

Why 3DMAI exists

The difference between a business that grows and a business that struggles is rarely effort. It is visibility. The owner who understands their margin by product, knows their cashflow position three weeks in advance, and can model the cost of a hire before committing — that owner makes fundamentally different decisions.

Large companies have commercial directors, finance teams, and business intelligence systems to provide that visibility. UK SME owners rarely have any of these. They make pricing decisions based on gut instinct, manage cashflow by checking their bank balance, and discover their margins have eroded when the year-end accounts come back.

3DMAI exists to close that gap. Every tool on the platform is built to answer a specific commercial question a UK business owner actually faces — not a hypothetical business school scenario, but the real decisions that land on a business owner’s desk every week.

What 3DMAI is not

3DMAI is not accounting software. It does not replace FreeAgent, Xero, or QuickBooks. Those tools record what happened. 3DMAI analyses what it means and what to do next.

It is not a consultancy. You do not need to book a call, wait for a proposal, or spend thousands of pounds to get a structured commercial analysis of your pricing position or cashflow outlook.

It is not generic AI. It does not give you a plausible-sounding answer to a general question. It uses your specific numbers — costs, prices, volumes, margins — and applies structured commercial logic to tell you what those numbers mean for your business.

How the platform works

You enter your numbers. The tool applies the correct commercial logic — break-even calculations, margin analysis, weighted scoring, statutory rates — and returns a clear output. Every benchmark used comes from a named UK source: Bank of England, ONS, HMRC, or sector-specific data. You see the number and you see where it came from.

Where AI is used, it is to analyse third-party data — supplier websites, uploaded accounts, market information — not to invent answers. The analysis is clearly marked with a certainty rating so you know how much weight to give it.

When you are confident in the data, you certify it. The Data Certified tick locks the analysis with a timestamp, making it suitable for use in board reports, bank submissions, and investor presentations.

Data accuracy and sources

Every rate, benchmark, and threshold used in 3DMAI tools is sourced from a named UK authority and reviewed regularly. The statutory late payment interest rate (8.5% — Bank Rate + 8pp) is set by the Bank of England. National Living Wage rates come from HMRC. VAT thresholds from HMRC. Employer NI rates from HMRC. Sector margin benchmarks from ONS Annual Business Survey data.

If a number in a 3DMAI output does not match your experience or expectation, that is worth investigating — it is often a sign that your actual position is different from industry norms, which is commercially significant. We publish our full data sources at 3dmai.co.uk/data-sources.

Who uses 3DMAI

The platform is used by UK SME owners and operators, accountancy practices who want to give clients structured commercial analysis between annual reviews, business school students who want to work with real commercial tools rather than textbook examples, and commercial teams who need fast, defensible analysis for board or investor presentations.

The common thread is a need for accurate, structured commercial intelligence — and the recognition that gut instinct, however experienced, produces worse decisions than gut instinct supported by good data.