Operations & Governance — division two
Growing a business that leaks money just makes a bigger mess.
Revenue fixes everything — until it doesn’t. Somewhere between the first hire and the fiftieth, the machine starts losing parts: money slips through contracts nobody re-read, time disappears into processes nobody owns, and decisions stall because the data is in twelve spreadsheets and somebody’s head.
What we do
Six things that keep a company running properly.
Every engagement starts with understanding where your business actually is — not where you think it is. From there we fix what leaks, build what’s missing, and set up the structures that let you scale without everything depending on you.
Efficiency & Accountability
Time audits, cost benchmarking, KPI trees — find the drag and fix it.
Frameworks & Systems
SOPs, dashboards, reporting cadence — the operating system for your company.
Compliance & Governance
GDPR, ISO prep, risk registers — tick the boxes without the bureaucracy.
Team & People
Hiring frameworks, onboarding, culture docs — build the team that builds the business.
AI & Automation
Workflow automation, LLM integration, internal tools — let machines do the repeatable work.
Mentoring
Structured support for founders and senior leaders — sounding board, accountability partner and strategy gut-check.
Not sure where to start? Most clients begin with the efficiency audit — it tells us (and you) exactly where the biggest gains are hiding.
Why it matters
A pound saved is worth more than a pound won.
Revenue is exciting. Efficiency is boring. But a pound you stop wasting drops straight to the bottom line — no acquisition cost, no ad spend, no sales cycle.
Most owner-run companies we meet are leaving 10–25% of their gross margin on the table. Not through incompetence — through growth. The systems that worked at £500k don’t work at £2m. We find the gap, fix it, and build the structures that stop it coming back.
Where it usually hides
Four places money and time disappear.
Spend
Subscriptions nobody uses, contracts that auto-renewed at a higher rate, suppliers who raised prices and nobody noticed.
Time
Manual work that could be automated, meetings that should be emails, approval chains that exist because of one incident three years ago.
Process
Steps that duplicate each other, handoffs where things fall through, workarounds that became permanent.
Tools
Three systems doing the job of one, spreadsheets duct-taped together, and the one person who knows how it all works.
How an engagement runs
From first call to measurable improvement.
Every engagement starts with the audit. What we find there shapes everything that follows — no guessing, no generic playbooks.
Weeks 1–2
Get under the bonnet
We map your costs, contracts, team time, tools and processes. No surveys — we sit with the people who do the work and watch what actually happens.
Week 3
The findings deck
A clear, prioritised report: here’s what it’s costing you, here’s what to fix first, and here’s what each fix is worth in real money.
Weeks 4+
Implement together
We build the frameworks, renegotiate the contracts, automate the workflows and train your team. You see savings before you see our second invoice.
Ongoing
Mentoring & accountability
Monthly or fortnightly check-ins to keep the momentum, solve new problems as they surface, and make sure nothing slides back.
AI & Automation
The boring work should do itself.
We don’t bolt AI onto broken processes. We fix the process first, then automate what should never have been done by a person in the first place.
Proposals, reports, compliance paperwork — drafted from templates, data and past examples in minutes instead of hours.
Triage, categorise and draft replies for routine messages so your team handles exceptions, not volume.
CRM to accounts to project tool to calendar — data moves once, automatically, instead of being re-typed three times.
Live dashboards that pull from every source so decisions are based on today’s numbers, not last month’s export.
AI is a power tool, not a strategy. We only recommend it where the maths works and where it won’t make your customers feel like they’re talking to a vending machine.
Mentoring
Someone in your corner
Running a company is mostly decisions made alone, at speed. Our mentoring gives you a sounding board who knows operations, has seen the same problems a hundred times, and will tell you when you’re wrong.
Pricing
Clear numbers, before we start.
The Audit
from £2,800 fixed
A full efficiency review of your costs, time, processes and tools — with a prioritised findings deck and costed recommendations.
Implementation
quoted from findings
We build the frameworks, renegotiate contracts, automate workflows and train your team. Scoped and priced from whatever the audit surfaces.
Mentoring
from £650 / month
Monthly or fortnightly sessions, between-session access, notes and actions after every call. No minimum term after the first three months.
If the audit doesn’t find enough to justify its fee, we refund it. We’ve never had to.
Questions
Frequently asked.
How long does the audit take?
Two to three weeks, depending on the size of the business and how many people we need to talk to. You’ll have the findings deck by the end of week three.
Do we have to use you for the implementation?
No. The findings deck is yours — you can take it to your own team, another supplier, or do nothing. Most clients ask us to implement because we already know the business by that point, but there’s no obligation.
What size company is this for?
Owner-run businesses turning over £250k–£5m. Big enough to have real operational complexity, small enough that there isn’t a COO or ops director handling it already.
Will it be disruptive to the team?
We design the audit to be low-friction. Most of the time we observe and ask questions — we don’t pull people into workshops or demand weeks of their calendar.
What about the AI stuff — is it actually useful?
For the right tasks, genuinely transformative. For the wrong ones, a waste of money. That’s why we start with the process, not the technology. If AI doesn’t earn its keep, we won’t recommend it.