Margin recovery
We trace every cost line back to its root cause. Most mid-market firms carry 12–18% of avoidable cost once you look past the P&L summary. We find it, quantify it and help you cut or redeploy it within one quarter.
Business consulting that actually changes the numbers
We work with owner-managed firms across Greater Manchester, typically £2m–£30m turnover, that have hit a ceiling. Flat margins, leadership bottlenecks, unclear exit routes. We diagnose the real constraint in the first week and build a fix you can measure within 90 days.
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Four weeks from confusion to clarity
Most consulting firms hand you a deck and disappear. We stay until the improvement shows up in your accounts.
Week 1: Diagnostic deep-dive
We interview your leadership team, review 24 months of management accounts, and map the operational workflow end to end. By Friday you get a one-page constraint summary: the single biggest drag on profit right now.
Week 2: Options and trade-offs
We present two or three intervention options, each with a cost estimate, risk profile and projected payback period. No 80-slide decks. You pick one direction and we scope the implementation together.
Week 3: Build the playbook
Your team gets a week-by-week execution plan with named owners, KPIs and a simple dashboard we build inside your existing tools. We train whoever needs training and write the SOPs that keep it running after we leave.
Weeks 4–12: Guided execution
We join your weekly leadership meeting for the next two months. If something stalls, we troubleshoot it the same week. Our fee for this phase is tied to whether the KPIs move. If they don't, you pay less.
What we actually do
Six practice areas, each led by a consultant who has run or sold a business in that domain.
Leadership restructuring
When the founder is still the bottleneck at £10m revenue, something structural needs to shift. We design the org chart you need for the next stage, hire or reassign the right people and coach the transition over six months.
Cash flow planning
Growth kills cash. We build 13-week rolling forecasts and connect them to your invoicing cycle so you can see a crunch eight weeks before it arrives. Several clients have avoided emergency facilities this way.
Growth strategy
New markets, new products, acquisitions: we model each option against your balance sheet capacity and management bandwidth. You get a ranked shortlist with a 12-month roadmap, not a vision statement.
Exit and succession planning
Whether you want a trade sale, MBO or family succession, the preparation takes 18–36 months. We start with a realistic valuation, identify the gaps a buyer will discount and close them before you go to market.
Board-level reporting
If your board pack takes three days to compile and nobody reads half of it, we redesign it. We install automated dashboards that pull from your accounting and CRM systems and surface the five numbers that actually matter.
Documented client outcomes
Real engagements, real figures. Company names withheld by agreement; available on request during a call.
£8m engineering firm, Salford
Gross margin rose from 31% to 39% in five months after we renegotiated two supplier contracts and eliminated a redundant QA step that added no defect-detection value.
£22m logistics operator, Trafford Park
Reduced debtor days from 64 to 38 by restructuring invoice terms and automating chase sequences. The cash released funded a depot expansion without new borrowing.
£5m SaaS company, Manchester city centre
Designed and executed a management buyout for the two co-founders. Completion took 14 months from first meeting to signed SPA. Both founders exited at 5.2× EBITDA.
£14m food manufacturer, Stockport
Built a new senior leadership layer beneath the MD, hired a commercial director and an ops director, and coached the MD to step back to a strategic role within nine months.
Common questions
Straight answers, no jargon.
A diagnostic sprint (weeks 1–3) is a fixed fee of £6,500 plus VAT. The guided execution phase runs at £2,800 per month. For exit planning, which involves heavier modelling and legal coordination, fees start at £15,000 for the full programme.
Yes, though roughly 70% of our clients are in Greater Manchester and the North West. We take on firms elsewhere in the UK if the fit is strong, but we prefer engagements where we can visit the site in person at least twice a month.
Our sweet spot is owner-managed businesses with annual turnover between £2m and £30m and 15–200 employees. Smaller firms often don't have enough operational complexity to justify our fees. Larger corporates usually have in-house strategy teams already.
At a large firm you get a partner for the pitch and a junior analyst for the work. Here, the person who scopes the project is the same person who sits in your Monday meeting. We also tie part of our fee to measurable outcomes, which most large firms will not do.
It depends on the severity. If you are trading while insolvent, you need an insolvency practitioner, not a consultant. If you still have runway but margins are deteriorating fast, we can run an accelerated diagnostic in five working days and build a cash-preservation plan.
Start a conversation
Fill in the form or ring us directly. We respond within one working day.
Office address
72 Josianne Way, Manchester M1 5AN, Greater Manchester, United Kingdom
Phone
+44 161 086 8953
Email
[email protected]
