Exactly what happens in each package, what I’ll need from you, and what you get at the end. No surprises once we start.
- Before we start
- Insight: your two weeks
- Foresight: six to eight weeks
- Oversight: every month
- What typically gets automated
- Your data
Before we start
- A one-page agreement setting out the scope, what’s included and what isn’t, the price and the timetable.
- Half the fee on signing and half on delivery. Oversight is invoiced monthly in advance, with a three-month minimum, then 30 days’ notice on either side.
- A short list of exports from your systems, sent in a shared folder that you own.
What I’ll ask you for
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Sales invoices for the last 12 months, line by line | Margin by customer, product and job, and who has stopped ordering |
| Purchase invoices for the last 12 months | Supplier spend and price rises you haven’t passed on |
| Aged debtors and creditors | How much cash is tied up, and who pays late |
| Monthly profit and loss for the last 2 years | The baseline every improvement is measured against |
| Job costs or timesheets, if you keep them | Whether jobs make what the quote said they would |
| Quotes sent in the last 6 months, won and lost | How fast you quote, and how often you win |
| Stock list with values | Cash sitting on the shelf |
Exports from Xero, QuickBooks, Sage or a spreadsheet are fine. If something doesn’t exist, that tells us something too.
Insight: your two weeks
| When | What happens |
|---|---|
| Day 1 | A 60-minute call: your goals, what worries you most, who I should speak to |
| Days 2 to 4 | I analyse your figures before visiting, so the site day tests real questions |
| Day 5 | A day on site. I follow one order from enquiry to cash, sitting with each person who handles it, then talk to two or three of your team for 30 to 45 minutes each |
| Days 6 to 9 | I map the process, put a £ value on each leak and write the report |
| Day 10 | A 60-minute walkthrough of the findings and the three fixes I’d start with |
What I look at
- Margin by customer, product and job, including the ones that lose money
- Prices that haven’t kept up with your material and labour costs
- How long each step takes, from enquiry to quote to order to invoice to cash
- Late payers and how much cash they hold
- Supplier spend and orders placed without checks
- How many times the same order is typed into different systems
- Customers who used to buy and have stopped
- Stock that hasn’t moved in six months
What you get
- A report of no more than 10 pages, starting with a one-page summary
- A map of how work and money flow through the business, with the bottlenecks marked
- A ranked list of fixes, each with its £ value a year, the effort involved and who would own it
- All the working, so you or your accountant can check every number
Foresight: six to eight weeks
Foresight starts where Insight ends, and the aim is three fixes working, not a plan on paper. We choose the three together: one quick win within two weeks, the fix worth the most money, and one automation.
| Weeks | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1 | Agree the three fixes, who in your team owns each one, and how we’ll measure it. I write a 12-month plan for the rest of the list |
| 2 to 3 | The quick win goes live, such as a new price list, payment terms or a quote follow-up routine. First working session with your team |
| 3 to 5 | I build and test the automation in your systems and start the biggest fix. Second working session |
| 6 to 8 | All three fixes are running. Your team is trained, each fix has a one-page guide, and we measure again. Third working session |
Every fix is measured the same way before and after, using your own data, and checked again three months later.
Oversight: every month
| When | What happens |
|---|---|
| Week 1 | Your dashboard is updated and we meet for 90 minutes to go through it and make decisions |
| Week 2 | A 60-minute sales and operations meeting with your sales, operations and accounts leads |
| Weeks 2 to 4 | Work on the next fix or automation on the list |
| Any time | Big quotes and decisions checked before they go out, and calls when you need them |
Your monthly dashboard
- Sales, this month and year to date
- Gross margin
- Quotes sent, won and win rate
- Days from job finished to invoice
- Debtor days, and cash owed for more than 30 days
- Cash in the bank and a 13-week forecast
- On-time delivery
- Hours saved by fixes so far
It’s built in your own tools so it updates without me.
The sales and operations meeting
- Orders won since the last meeting, and the dates promised
- Capacity for the next four weeks, and anything at risk
- Jobs finished but not invoiced, and late payers
- One problem between teams, with one owner and one deadline
What typically gets automated
| Problem | What the automation does |
|---|---|
| Late payers | Reminders go out automatically at 7, 14 and 30 days overdue |
| Invoices sent days after the job | A draft invoice is created as soon as a job is marked complete |
| Quotes nobody chases | Follow-ups go out at 3, 7 and 14 days, with a task for the salesperson |
| Orders typed in two or three times | An order entered once flows to the job sheet and your accounts |
| Reports built by hand | Your dashboard refreshes itself every week |
| Customers who stop ordering | Sales gets an alert when a regular customer goes quiet for six months |
| Paper timesheets and delivery notes | Phone forms that file themselves |
I switch on features your software already has before building anything new. Everything is built in your accounts, tested alongside your current process for two weeks, and comes with a one-page note on how it works.
Your data
Everything I produce belongs to you. Your figures stay in a folder you own, are kept confidential, and are deleted or returned within 12 months of the work ending, as set out in the privacy policy.
