Business Performance Improvement
Not every company that needs help is in trouble. Most of the value we find sits in businesses that are perfectly solvent and quietly leaving money on the table — in the mix they sell, the working capital they tie up, and the reporting that tells them about it a month too late.
When to call us
While you still have the choice.
None of these is a crisis. Left alone for four quarters, several of them become one.
- Revenue is growing and gross margin is not.
- Nobody can say which customers or SKUs actually make money.
- Working capital keeps absorbing the cash you expected to see.
- The forecast and the actuals have not agreed in four quarters.
- Headcount grew faster than output and nobody wants to name it.
- A sponsor is asking for a value creation plan and it needs to be real.
What we do
Find the money, then make it stick.
01
Margin and mix
Profitability by customer, channel and SKU, with landed cost and returns included rather than averaged away. Most companies find that a minority of their revenue carries all of the margin, and are surprised by which minority.
02
Working capital release
Inventory turns, aged and slow-moving stock, receivable dilution and payment terms. Cash sitting in the warehouse is the cheapest money a growing company can raise, and it needs no lender’s approval.
03
Cost structure
Overhead, footprint, supply terms and the vendor spend nobody has retendered in three years. Cuts that hold, rather than cuts that reverse the moment volume returns.
04
Operating cadence
A monthly pack that closes on time and says something, a forecast the team owns, and a short list of measures the business is actually run against — replacing the report nobody reads.
05
Value creation plan
For sponsor-owned companies: an initiative-by-initiative plan with owners, timing and quantified impact, built to be defended at a board meeting and tracked afterwards.
How we engage
Three sizes, depending on what it needs.
The first one is small and fixed-fee on purpose. If the diagnostic does not find more than it costs, you should not be doing the rest.
Diagnostic
A few weeks. Margin, working capital and cost structure examined, with a ranked list of what is worth chasing and roughly what each item is worth.
Embedded operator
One of our partners inside the business for a defined period, running the initiatives rather than reviewing them — which is the difference between a plan and a result.
Sponsor-side
Operating partner support across a portfolio company on the fund’s behalf, reporting to the deal team, with the awkward findings delivered rather than softened.