Margin was the first part we lit up — the hardest one, and the one almost nobody else builds.
It turns out margin is one of six slices that all run off the same foundation: pricing, delivery, realization, margin, cash, and the portfolio around them. Instrument them together and you don't have a report. You have the instrument panel for how the firm actually makes money — and where it quietly loses it.
The slices aren't abstract. They're the stations a dollar passes through between the work you win and the money you keep — and every station is a place it can leak.
Each slice is useful on its own, and each snaps into the same engine. Margin is built and proven; the rest are modules that light up as a firm is ready for them.
Fees set by last year and gut feel, with no target margin agreed before the engagement letter is signed.
Partners buried in staff-level work, and budget overruns nobody sees until they land as a write-down.
Rate discounts, scope creep and write-offs lumped into one realization number that hides all three — and who caused each.
Revenue looks healthy while specific engagements — sometimes marquee clients — quietly lose money once cost is loaded.
Finished work aging in WIP and receivables — the firm financing its own clients for free while margin sits uncollected.
Client concentration and service-mix drift — chasing revenue that quietly dilutes the firm's average margin.
The reason the six slices agree with each other — and the reason a new one is weeks, not months — is that they're not six separate tools. They're six views on a single, documented model of the firm's economics.
The same loaded-cost-per-hour and the same revenue definitions feed pricing, margin, and cash alike. The forward price you quote and the margin you later report are computed on one basis — so they reconcile instead of arguing. No two spreadsheets, no two answers.
A real, documented data model on your own platform — not a locked appliance you rent. Adding a slice is a handful of measures on a foundation that already exists, which is why the engine expands with the firm rather than being rebuilt for it. If we part ways, it stays and it still works.
No firm buys the whole engine on day one, and none should. You start where it hurts, prove the value in one slice, and light up the rest at your own pace.
A fixed-scope read across the engine, in about two weeks. We quantify the leaks we can measure straight from your billing and WIP data — realization and cash — put a directional, benchmarked figure on margin, and flag where the other slices are likely bleeding. Delivered as a written brief, a sized roadmap, and a leadership readout.
We build the slices the diagnostic flagged, one module at a time. Each is delivered on its own, useful the day it ships, and wired into the same model as the last — so nothing is thrown away.
A standing engagement keeps the whole engine current against the same numbers, and lights up the next slice when leadership is ready for it — so the improvement holds after the novelty wears off.
The honest comparison isn't one consultant versus another. It's what it costs to stand up this capability in-house — a small BI function of three roles most mid-market firms can't easily hire — against having us build the same system for your firm and then keep it running. Here it is by the month.
Figures are illustrative, fully-loaded estimates for a mid-market in-house build; role salaries vary by market, so the point is the order of magnitude, not the decimal. This is a capability and total-cost comparison, not a headcount-for-headcount claim.
Margin is the first slice because it's the hardest and the most revealing: it's where cost and revenue finally sit on the same line. The full margin deep dive — the data model, the measures, and the five-page leadership report — is already built and pressure-tested on a complete sample. It's what the rest of the engine is built to match.
See the deep dive on a call →A thirty-minute conversation, no deck. We'll tell you which slice is most likely bleeding — and if what you already run answers the question, we'll tell you that too.
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