DEVELOPING METRICS TO MEASURE PROJECT PROFITABILITY

Challenge:

As a full service, digital solutions company, this $10M+ consulting firm was on a fast-track growth path without a financially sustainable plan for contending with mounting success. Founded in 2011, the 8-year-old firm lacked a succinct management tool that would allow for rapid and efficient responses to each project’s potential problems. Was the firm’s lack of data preventing them from maximizing profit? How could we transform their financial process into a means of supporting the company’s growth?

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Solution:

Though the firm boasted an impressive index of profitable interactions with clients, their financials were maintained on a cash basis, creating a discrepancy in the timing of transactions and subsequently, preventing the company from obtaining an accurate numerical representation of monthly revenue and expenses. Through converting their practices to an accrual method, and therefore aligning the firm with Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP), we were able to set up new financial close measures on a monthly basis to provide more accurate reporting.

Furthermore, the firm had no procedure in place for tracking the performance of individual projects, let alone total accrual on a periodic basis. Working with the firm’s managing directors, Company Launch Partners developed a customized revenue and margin model that allows the business to analyze variances on a project by project basis, as well as forecast future differences in profit and alter company strategies accordingly. With an organized framework depicting gross margin percentage now in place, the firm can make precise, informed adjustments to staffing needs in order to concentrate effort on obtaining profitable results.

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Result:

Today, this firm credits Company Launch Partners’ involvement as a key ingredient to its continued success. In addition to the customized management tool created, we implemented monthly review meetings to evaluate project profitability and resolve management issues. The firm now boasts undisputed insight into what is really driving the cost on any given project. The newfound confidence this digital-solutions company has in their ability to analyze individual project margins has allowed for an increased focus on clients’ needs, as well as a swifter, more transparent decision-making process amongst top-level executives. With the start of 2020, and particularly the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the tools we provided have proved vital to routine business planning.