Real engagements, anonymized.

Audit + Build, 14 weeks

The logistics firm leaking receivables.

Eight years operating, two years of creeping DSO. Receivables over 60 days had been climbing every quarter. The constraint wasn't billing capacity — it was an upstream quote-to-invoice mismatch nobody was measuring.

Audited

Twelve-week order-to-cash reconstruction. Handoffs traced from sales through fulfillment to billing. The honest gap: roughly 18% of invoices needed manual reconciliation, and nothing tracked where the mismatches originated.

Built

A quote lock at fulfillment start, a single exception path for changes, and a daily reconciliation window instead of constant interruption. One number to watch each week: DSO.

Changed

DSO dropped from 52 days to 38 in fourteen weeks. The owner described it as the first time in two years that quotes and invoices were on the same line.

Audit + Build + Run, 9 months

The agency owner drowning in delivery.

Independent agency, twelve people, eighty active projects. Strong reputation, exhausting owner. Scope changes were being handled four ways — once by him, three times by leads who had never been given a change-control process.

Audited

Workflow map of how scope changes got requested, approved, and absorbed. Hours-per-week the owner spent on rework, not delivery. The cost of margin erosion in unbudgeted scope.

Built

A single change-control step, a delivery-lead approval cadence, and an owner-as-escalation workflow instead of owner-as-firefighter. Quarterly operating review for every active account.

Changed

Owner hours dropped from 62 a week to 45. Scope changes went through approval without owner involvement in 9 of 10 cases by week ten. Project margin up across the next two quarters.

Sprint + Run, 6 months

The founder losing the margin fight.

Series-A founder, operating since launch, fulfillment had quietly degraded under volume during a hard growth stretch. The problem wasn't demand — it was a handoff that broke above a daily order threshold, and the silent assumption that fire-fighting was the cost of growth.

Audited

Process audit against the actual fulfillment log. Order patterns, restock cadence, process debt. The structural fact: the handoff was always handled manually under load, so it was always the first thing to break.

Built

A hardened, mostly-automated fulfillment handoff engineered around the worst peak week, not the best. Throughput capped to a tested threshold, then raised on evidence. A weekly review of cost per order.

Changed

Fulfillment delays moved from routine to zero inside a quarter. Contribution margin recovered to target through a peak window. More relevant: the founder stopped describing fulfillment as the thing they were losing.