The Challenge
A 30-partner advisory firm had grown to £8M revenue without ever having a clear view of project-level profitability. Revenue was tracked, costs were tracked, but the connection between a project, its team, its time, and its margin had never been modelled. Partners were winning work without knowing whether it was profitable. Finance was producing a P&L that was 6 weeks behind reality.
The CEO needed a profitability framework that could tell her, by project and by partner, whether the business was making money — and a reporting layer that updated in real time, not on the last working day of the month.
The Approach
- 01
Mapped the existing data landscape — practice management system, finance platform, and time-recording tool — to identify the data available and the gaps
- 02
Designed a project profitability model connecting time-recording, direct costs, and revenue recognition into a single margin view
- 03
Built a utilisation model across the partner and consultant population — planned vs actual, by service line and by individual
- 04
Delivered an ExCo reporting suite: revenue, margin, utilisation, and pipeline — all live, all automated
- 05
Operated as embedded Fractional IT Business Partner for 9 months post-delivery, owning the data strategy and quarterly reporting evolution
“We went from guessing which work was profitable to knowing — and that changed every commercial conversation we had.”