What we do
Three kinds of work, for places people come into, spend in, and come back to - usually with the owner still in the day-to-day, and often a season that makes or breaks the year.
Operational review
Where the week goes.
We come and watch the work happen, and ask a lot of questions. Where the effort goes, and which parts of the week nobody has questioned in years. You can’t get at this from a set of accounts. What comes back is a short list of what’s worth changing first, in the order we’d do it.
Management reporting
Numbers you can act on.
The business already holds the data. It’s in the accounts and the booking system. The trouble is that it arrives too late, or in a form that doesn’t answer the question that was asked. We get the same numbers out sooner, and in a shape that answers the question.
Running without the owner
Taking the business out of one head.
When the daily running lives with one person, the business can’t be left, and it’s harder to hand on - to a buyer or to whoever comes next. Both of them pay less for a place that depends on someone who’s leaving. We do that work with you - writing it down, testing it with the people who’ll use it, and handing it over a piece at a time. It’s slow, dull work, and it’s the work that lasts.
How an engagement runs
It starts with a conversation, without charge. After that we look at whatever already exists. Accounts, stock records, rotas, the reports nobody reads. We’re looking for what can’t easily be seen from inside the business.
Then the work. Sometimes that’s a short piece with a clear answer at the end. More often it’s a few days a month over a longer stretch, with us involved in making the changes rather than handing over a report. We’ll say which we think it is before you commit to anything.
At its longest that’s something like a day a week for six to twelve months. Plenty of jobs are much shorter. We take on a small number of engagements at a time. Early on we’d want to see a few different days of the week, because most places run differently on each.
We charge a day rate, or a fixed fee for a defined piece of work. The number is agreed before anything starts.
If any of that sounds like your business, it’s worth a conversation.