Approach
Map, build, train, run, in that order
Four stages, in order. Skipping one is the mistake this sequence exists to prevent.
How the work runs
- 01 Map Financial visibility · KPI dictionary · process ownership · clean customer and lead data · documented workflows · data readiness
- 02 Build Targeted automation · integrations · AI assistants · custom applications -- built against an approved baseline, not a guess
- 03 Train Training on live work · documentation for everyone who works alongside it · a named owner with a threshold, an alert and an escalation path
- 04 Run Monitoring · incident handling · maintenance · improvement capacity · a monthly benefits report your CFO can audit
Map
You cannot automate against a number you cannot trust, and you cannot hold anyone to a process nobody owns.
The Map stage produces financial visibility, a KPI dictionary, named process ownership, clean customer and lead data, documented workflows, and data that is actually fit to build against. It is unglamorous. You will buy AI and get spreadsheet reconciliation for the first month. We say that on the first call, not in week three.
Every KPI we define carries the same fields, every time: name, the decision it supports, its owner, the formula, numerator and denominator, units and period, the authoritative source, refresh frequency, baseline, target, quality checks, known limitations, escalation threshold, and the person accountable when it crosses that threshold. A number without an owner is a rumour with a decimal point.
Build
Targeted automation, integrations, AI assistants and custom applications -- built against the approved baseline from Map.
The baseline is what makes the build honest. Without it, nobody can say afterwards whether the thing worked, and the argument about attribution starts in month four with no evidence on either side. With it, we can point at what the process did before, what it does now, and what else changed in between.
We build on one or two workflow families at a time. Not the whole company at once.
Train
Your people learn the system on their own live work, not on a demo account.
Everyone who works alongside it gets documentation: what it does, what it does not do, how to pause it, and who to tell. Each part has a named owner with a view, a threshold, an alert and an escalation path.
Run
Monitoring, incident handling, maintenance, agreed improvement capacity in hours, and a monthly operating review.
Automation that nobody watches degrades quietly. The queue fills and the exception rate creeps, and without monitoring the first report of it comes from a customer. Run is the stage that catches it first, and it is also where the monthly benefits report comes from.
The three workflow families
We work on three shapes of process and nothing else.
Lead to cash. Inquiry, qualification, follow-up, proposal, sale, fulfillment handoff, invoice, collection.
Request to resolution. Inquiry, classification, assignment, response, escalation, resolution, quality review.
Work to financial visibility. Completion, documentation, invoicing, approval, reporting, reconciliation.
Refusing everything outside these three is deliberate. A narrow surface is what lets the method compound -- the same patterns and the same parts, reused instead of rebuilt. If your problem sits outside them, we will say so on the call.
What it costs
| Stage | Price | Duration | What it produces |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operating Diagnostic | $12,500 | 3 weeks | Baseline, KPI dictionary, process map, quantified opportunity, go/no-go |
| Foundation & Deployment | $75,000-$150,000 | 8-16 weeks | Map and Build on one or two workflow families |
| Managed Essential | $10,000/mo | ongoing | Defined coverage, monitoring, maintenance, monthly operating review |
| Managed Growth | $20,000/mo | ongoing | Broader coverage plus agreed improvement capacity |
| Managed Transformation | $30,000/mo+ | ongoing | Multi-function program, reserved capacity, governance |
If you are under $15M
We do not stretch the full program down-market. There is a smaller one.
| Offer | Price | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Operating Diagnostic | $12,500 | Same as above |
| Single-Workflow Implementation | $25,000-$40,000 | One workflow, end to end |
| Managed Lite | $3,500-$6,000/mo | Monitoring, maintenance, quarterly review |
The diagnostic price is the same either way, and it is credited in full against whichever implementation follows.
The test we run before we sell you anything
We use a 3-to-1 hurdle. The work has to be worth about three times what it costs before we will take it on.
A $75,000 implementation plus $20,000 a month for twelve months is $315,000 in first-year fees. At 3-to-1 that needs roughly $945,000 of addressable annual value. At a $35 fully loaded hourly rate, $945,000 is about 27,000 hours -- roughly 13 full-time equivalents of pure process work. Since nobody spends all day on automatable process, that points at a company with 15 to 20 or more people in process roles before the full program clears.
Against revenue, the same hurdle looks like this.
| Your revenue | $945K as a share of revenue | Verdict at full price |
|---|---|---|
| $5M | 18.9% | Not there. We will not sell you the full program. |
| $10M | 9.5% | Entry tier only. |
| $15M | 6.3% | Possible with high transaction volume. |
| $25M | 3.8% | Workable. |
| $40M+ | 2.4% | Comfortable. Core target. |
At the entry tier the arithmetic is friendlier: $40,000 plus $5,000 a month is $100,000 of first-year fees, which needs $300,000 of value. At the same $35 loaded rate that is about 8,600 hours a year -- under a third of the process volume the full program has to clear.
The formula, which you can run yourself
(transactions/yr x minutes each x loaded hourly rate / 60)
+ (leads lost to slow response x close rate x contribution margin)
+ (rework and error correction hours x loaded rate)
+ (DSO reduction days x daily revenue x cost of capital)
We run this out loud on the first call with your numbers. It qualifies the account and it shows you the competence we are selling at the same time. It is also the fastest way to discover that the numbers do not exist anywhere in your business -- which is itself the reason to hire us.
The whole thing is worked end to end, with sample inputs, in Why AI Can't Fix a Process Nobody Owns.
Who else you are comparing us to
You are not comparing us to nothing. You are comparing us to something you may already pay for, and each of those options is good at what it does.
| Alternative | Genuinely good at | Where the gap is |
|---|---|---|
| Fractional COO | Judgment, leadership, prioritization | No build capacity, no software, no data engineering |
| Fractional CFO | Financial visibility, cash discipline | Stops at the P&L; doesn't touch process or automation |
| EOS implementer | Accountability rhythm, meeting discipline | Facilitation only -- doesn't build the data behind the scorecard |
| RevOps / CRM agency | CRM hygiene, pipeline mechanics | Revenue side only; back office and finance untouched |
| MSP / IT provider | Infrastructure, security, uptime | Not a process or workflow function |
| AI / automation agency | Model plumbing, fast demos | No operating foundation, no measurement, no ownership |
If you already run EOS, keep it. You have a meeting rhythm and a scorecard, and our question is only whether the numbers on that scorecard are pulled from a system of record or typed in from memory. We work underneath it.
How we report benefit
Four buckets, always separate, never summed into one headline number.
- Incremental contribution profit
New margin that exists because of the change.
- Actual cash costs removed
A payment that stopped.
- Capacity released
Reported as hours. Never converted to dollars unless a role was actually eliminated or a hire actually avoided.
- Cash timing
Reported as days and working-capital effect, not as profit.
Our fees are subtracted so you can see net. Where attribution is weak, we write that down. When your numbers improve, other things will have changed too -- seasonality, headcount, pricing, marketing. We normalise the obvious ones, use staged rollout where it is feasible, and disclose what is left. A before-and-after comparison on its own does not establish cause, and we will not pretend otherwise in a report with our name on it.
Where we stop
If the diagnostic says an implementation will not clear 3-to-1, we say no and we stop.
That is one of our exit rules. The full set -- when we stop selling, when we reprice, when we slow down, and when we end an engagement we have already started -- is written down on the firm page.