How We Work

Most consulting methods are a sequence of meetings with a deliverable at the end. Ours has one stage the others don't, and everything else is arranged around it: before we do any work, we sit down with you and measure where you're starting from.

That sounds procedural. It isn't. It's the whole thing. A fixed price with a number attached only means something if both sides agreed on the starting number first — and once work has started, there is no honest way to go back and reconstruct one.

The stages

1. 1. Qualify

   A short conversation about whether the model fits. We're looking for one thing: is there a real system — an ERP, a CRM, a ticketing tool, a database — that already holds the number we'd be trying to move? If there isn't, we'll tell you on that call, and we'll tell you what the first step would be instead.

2. 2. Discovery

   We walk the process as it actually runs, not as the documentation says it runs. Who touches it, how often, what it costs, and — the part most firms skip — whether the number can be pulled out of your system today, while we're in the room. If nobody can produce it live, it isn't a number we can put fee behind, and we'd rather find that out now than after signature.

3. 3. Value model

   We write up every driver we think the work moves: efficiency, compliance, risk, revenue, competitive position. All of them, with dollar figures, confidence levels, and the assumptions printed next to each one. Then we mark which of them are measurable enough to carry fee — which is always fewer than the total. The gap between those two numbers is the most honest page in the document.

4. 4. Proposal

   A fixed price, the fee split, and a measurement schedule naming each metric, its unit, the system it's read from, and how it's extracted. You also get the full value case, including the drivers we've explicitly declined to stake fee on, and a sentence saying why. Terms get set here, in writing, against your systems — not on a web page.

5. 5. Baseline capture

   We don't start work until we've measured, together, where you're starting from. We run the extraction jointly, on screen, over a period long enough to be representative — usually three months of history. Your measurement contact signs off on the number and the period it covers. Then it's archived, raw data and all. Only after that does delivery begin. If you need us to start sooner, we can — but the affected metric comes out of the fee-bearing set, because a baseline reconstructed after the fact isn't one.

6. 6. Deliver

   Conventional implementation, with two additions. The obligations we need from you — access, decisions within a stated number of days, a named counterpart — are tracked as a live checklist, and if one slips we tell you in writing at the time rather than producing it as an excuse at the end. And the go-live date gets recorded, because it starts the clock on everything that follows.

7. 7. Measure

   After a stabilization period, we run the measurement — using the identical extraction we used for the baseline, on the schedule written into the agreement. Same query, same system, same method. A measurement that isn't reproducible the same way twice isn't evidence.

8. 8. Value realization report

   Baseline, target, actual, per metric, with the raw extract attached. Whether each target was met, and what that means for the outcome fee. Any obligations that slipped and how they were handled. The full business case revisited, including the drivers that never carried fee. And an honest section on where our estimate was off and why. We write every one of these as though it will be published, because the ones you let us publish will be.

Why the baseline is the whole method

Ask a firm that promises you a result how they'll know whether it happened. Most of the time the answer arrives after the work is done, assembled from whatever data is convenient, and it always seems to show the work was worth it.

A baseline captured before anything changes, from a system you already run, attested by someone on your team, with the raw extract kept — that number can't be negotiated later. Not by you and not by us. It's the only version of this that's fair in both directions, and it's why we're willing to put a fifth of our fee behind it.

What we will and won't stake fee on

This is the part most firms leave out. It is the part that makes the rest credible.

Here is the full value we expect this to create. Here is the part we can measure precisely enough to put our own fee behind. We only guarantee the part we control.

Where we start depends on where you are

Our method depends on being able to read a real number out of a real system. Plenty of good businesses aren't there yet — that's a starting point, not a disqualification. Here's how we handle the situations that come up most:

• › Your operations run on spreadsheets. Then the first win is usually the system of record itself. We start smaller: pick the one process that hurts most, put real measurement around it, and build from there. Some of our best work starts here — it just starts with a different first step than a value model.
• › There isn't one decision-maker, and the group can't reach consensus. Getting to "this is the problem worth solving first" is work we can help with — a short alignment session usually does it. What we can't do is scope against a priority that changes between meetings, so we'll get agreement before we quote.
• › You're mid-ERP-migration or in a pending acquisition. The ground is moving, and anything we measured now would tell you more about the migration than about your operation. This is a timing question, not a fit question — we'll do a short readiness review now and pick up the value work once the dust settles.
• › The implementation work is under $25,000. Below that size the measurement rigor we build into every engagement is harder to justify on return alone — some of what you'd pay for is scoping the work may not need. That's a caveat, not a closed door: we still take smaller engagements when the outcome is worth it, and if a straightforward fix from a firm that bills hourly is the better answer, we'll tell you that instead of selling you a method. The $5,000 Value Diagnostic sits below the line on purpose: it's how you find out whether a larger engagement is even worth having.
• › You'd rather not share operational data. Understandable, and often workable — we can operate under NDA, on read-only access, or on aggregated extracts with nothing identifying in them. If sharing numbers at all is off the table, though, a method built on reading your own numbers isn't the one for you.

If none of these describe you, we can go straight to the numbers. If one of them does, tell us anyway — we'll be honest about the right first step, even when that step isn't us.