A transformation consultant must eventually endure the inconvenience of having to transform. Leonardo Musso, co-founder and CEO of KPS, has reached that chapter with an long view of the business. He helped start the consultancy in 2000. More than a quarter of a century later, he is still responsible for making its promises meet the rather less accommodating world of customers, budgets and delivery.
His career runs through economics, international product marketing at BMW and international projects at IBM Consulting. At KPS, it has included expansion across Europe, acquisitions and the operational responsibility for subsidiaries. The thread is practical: how do you get a complicated organisation to work differently while it continues doing business?
That question has acquired a personal edge. Retailers, central to KPS's business, have become more cautious about large programmes. Musso now has to adjust the firm he helped build to customers who increasingly prefer smaller commitments. The consultant's own business has become an implementation project.
Florence, Constance, Barcelona - then the factory gate
Musso studied economics at the universities of Florence, Constance and Barcelona. The three cities give his education a European geography before his professional career begins. His first corporate stop was BMW, where he worked in international product marketing. He then moved to IBM Consulting and shared responsibility for international project initiatives.
Those are two different vantage points on an organisation. Product marketing concerns what a company takes to market; consulting brings the processes and systems behind it into view. His subsequent career would repeatedly bring those concerns together. A retailer's ambition may be expressed in sales, but carrying it out involves everything from customer communication to the software keeping the operation moving.
In 2000, Musso became one of KPS's four founders. Michael Tsifidaris, another founder and now supervisory board chairman, also had a career at IBM Consulting. KPS's leadership therefore carries a connection to that earlier consulting world as well as a shared history inside the firm.
A founder with the subsidiaries on his desk
Musso's role has had an operational centre of gravity from the beginning. He has been responsible for managing KPS subsidiaries and acting as the holding company's general representative. He joined the executive board in 2015. These responsibilities put him close to the machinery of the group, beyond the ceremonial pleasures of a founder's title.
By 2017, he was preparing to serve as the sole executive board member. Asked about the support beneath that position, he described a second management tier whose responsibilities had been redistributed in 2015 and 2016. Project managers, he explained, would take part in strategic and operational decisions. For a consultancy, that is a consequential place to put authority: near the people who discover whether the plan survives contact with the client.
His account of international expansion was similarly concrete. KPS had been active in Scandinavia since 2010. The acquisition of Denmark's Saphira Consulting in December 2016 would support existing customers locally and help reach new ones. Expansion involved people capable of doing the work where customers needed it.
The arithmetic behind the ambition
In the 2016/2017 financial year, KPS increased revenue by 10.6% to €160.3 million. Asked how long that pace could continue, Musso paired pride in the result with a caution about the purpose of expansion. The attractive percentage was only one part of his answer.
“Growth is not an end in itself.”
Leonardo Musso, 2016/2017 executive board interview
He also described recruitment, career development and the KPS Academy, the firm's internal training centre. These were the practical demands behind the growth figure. More work requires people who can carry it out, and changing technology gives experienced consultants another syllabus alongside their client assignments. An invoice may be expressed in euros; the capacity to earn it walks into work.
During the following financial year, revenue rose to €172.2 million, while EBITDA fell from €26.4 million to €20 million. Both numbers belong in the account. Expansion can enlarge a business and complicate its economics at the same time. The graph of a company's life seldom has the courtesy to move in only one direction.
KPS group revenue, fiscal years. EBITDA: €26.4m → €20.0m. Bars begin at zero.
Buying a business is the opening sentence
The acquisition programme widened KPS's geography and its range of work. Infront added digital strategy consulting. Envoy Digital brought a stronger presence in Britain and more digital consultants. The appeal of the combination was the ability to connect strategic advice with the implementation that follows it.
At the March 2019 annual general meeting, Musso emphasised that the acquisitions had been integrated. He linked internationalisation, industrialisation and innovation to economies of scale and a broader service offering. It was a statement about making the enlarged group function, beyond announcing that it had become larger.
By May 2019, he was pointing to another benefit: the acquired companies in Germany, Spain and Britain had brought talented employees as well as capabilities. KPS said that this helped reduce reliance on external consultants. Here was a founder describing acquisition value in the workaday currency of staff, coverage and delivery costs. The map mattered because of the people on it.
Black Friday is an exacting examiner
When Musso explained KPS's work in 2021, he used the electronics retailer Elkjøp as an example. The assignment involved reconsidering the customer journey across mobile, online, stores and delivery, supported by an integrated digital platform. Enterprise systems, personalisation, customer communication and service all belonged to the same undertaking.
In his telling, the resulting platform was easier to maintain and performed reliably through Black Friday and Black Week. These are useful tests of a transformation claim. A customer attempting to buy something has limited interest in the elegance of the architecture underneath. The purchase has to work, particularly when everyone else wants to make one too.
The example explains the intersection Musso occupies. Commercial ambition, technical design and everyday use must arrive at the same place. A consulting presentation can finish on its final slide. A retail system has to be ready for the next customer.
When the home business needs the same discipline
The later chapter is harder. In his January 2025 letter to shareholders, Musso described weak investment in major digitalisation and transformation programmes. Retail accounted for around 70% of group sales. The company was exposed to the hesitation of the very industry in which it had accumulated experience.
For 2023/2024, KPS reported €145.4 million in revenue, down 18%, and a consolidated loss of €23.4 million. That loss included €17.8 million of extraordinary, non-cash goodwill amortisation. Those distinctions matter, but they do not remove the operating challenge. Customer insolvencies and restructuring added pressure.
Musso described reducing external services, adjusting headcount and cutting other costs. He also set out a change in the sales approach: more small and medium projects and a broader industry mix. A firm associated with large transformation programmes was trying to reduce its dependence on them.
In September 2025, KPS lowered its forecast again as retailers deferred projects into 2026. The revised revenue range was €118 million to €122 million for 2024/2025. A forecast is a dated expectation, and this one records the pressure under which Musso was making decisions. Continuity in leadership offers no exemption from changing conditions.
The half-year report to March 2026 continued that account. Revenue remained below the previous year as customers favoured smaller, clearly bounded assignments. The picture differed by region: transformation revenue in the German-speaking markets exceeded plans, while postponed new projects weighed on Britain. The task remained uneven and unfinished.
Room for an experiment, with a boundary
KPS's 2026 TOP 100 profile offers a concise view of Musso's current innovation agenda. Practice leaders assess developments against market demand and business impact. AI trials use real business data, a defined task and a limited testing period. A successful experiment can then become part of the firm's regular offering.
Musso places responsibility for innovation with management. The same account describes work on stalled transformation projects: clarify objectives, decisions and risks, consolidate responsibility and establish manageable stages. It is an approach that gives the next decision something firmer to rest on. Even an experiment benefits from knowing where the laboratory door is.
Another term, and another kind of sponsorship
In February 2026, KPS's supervisory board extended Musso's term for three years beyond its scheduled December 2026 end and appointed him chairman of the executive board, or CEO. Michael Hessing joined as CFO, effective 15 February. The founder's long tenure continues with an expanded board.
His responsibilities also extend to the company's developing leadership culture. In October 2026, KPS named him executive sponsor of Women@KPS and announced his participation at the herCAREER Expo in Munich on 22 October. Sponsorship adds a specific commitment to the familiar corporate language about careers and opportunity.
Musso's next chapter has practical measures attached: a broader project mix, manageable experiments and the economics of delivering them. He has spent years explaining how customers can change. The continuing assignment is to apply that discipline inside the company he helped create, one decision and one working project at a time.