Operations
The month-end balance was £180,000. On the 22nd it was £9,000.
A monthly cash forecast reports the one day of the month that flatters you most, and hides the only number that can actually stop the business.
Rialto Bridge
Operations
Articles on operations.
Operations
One supplier is 41% of cost of sales. Nobody in the business owns the relationship.
Customer concentration gets a board discussion. The same concentration on the buying side is usually filed as an operational detail,…
Operations
The unit price came down 6%. The lead time went from three weeks to nine.
A procurement win that shows up in one department's numbers and a cost that shows up in three others, and…
Operations
Stock turns 4.1 times a year. Half the cash sits in lines that turn once.
Blended inventory turnover is an average of a very uneven distribution, and the average is precisely what keeps the trapped…
Operations
Three people can do the complex work. It’s 60% of the pipeline.
Headcount looks adequate and utilisation looks healthy, yet the schedule keeps slipping, because capacity was counted in hours rather than…
Operations
The terms say 30 days. The money arrives on day 54.
The gap between the payment terms you agreed and the cash you actually collect is rarely a customer behaviour problem,…
Operations
The deal closed on Friday. Delivery found out on Wednesday.
Margin on a project is often decided in the five days between signature and kickoff: an interval that appears on…
Operations
The proposal took 34 hours. The win rate is one in four.
Pursuit cost is a real variable cost of revenue, and in most service firms it is paid out of delivery…
Operations
The role has been open five months. The team has already absorbed it.
A vacancy that stays open long enough stops being a gap and becomes a structure, and the numbers you use…
Operations
Onboarding takes eleven weeks. The decision to renew is made in week three.
Most churn is authored long before the renewal conversation, in the quiet weeks between signature and the customer's first genuinely…
Take it further
This is the general pattern. Your business is the specific case.
Everything here is free to read with an account, and always will be. What it cannot do is tell you which of these applies to your numbers, your market and your constraints. That is the work we do with clients.