Operating review: a fixed-fee diagnosis before you commit to a seat

What you get at the end

A written report of 10 to 15 pages and a one-hour walk-through. The report has three parts:

1. How the company really runs. A plain description of how work moves from first enquiry to paid invoice, based on interviews and real jobs, not the org chart.
2. Where it leaks. The places where money, time or customers are lost, each with a rough estimate of the cost per month.
3. The fix list. Every fix ranked by payback, with a suggested owner, an approximate cost and the number on your scorecard that should move if it works.

You keep the report and can act on it with or without us.

Who it's for

Owners who sense a problem but can't name it, and owners who want proof before paying for a retainer. It's also useful before a big decision: opening a second location, hiring a general manager, or changing your main marketing vendor.

Common triggers we hear from Ontario owners:

• revenue grew but profit didn't
• the team feels busier every month without more output
• a new location in another region, say Ottawa or York Region, isn't behaving like the first one
• the owner wants to step back within a year or two and doesn't know where to start

How the review runs

Three phases: listen, measure, rank.

Listen (weeks 1–2)

Interviews with you and four to eight key people, usually 45 minutes each by video. We ask each person the same questions: what slows you down, where do you wait for someone else, what would you change first. The overlaps are where the real problems live.

Measure (weeks 2–4)

A read of the numbers that drive decisions: enquiries, quotes, close rate, job margin by service, marketing spend by channel, delivery times. Where numbers don't exist, we estimate from a sample of recent jobs and note the gap.

Rank (weeks 4–6)

Every finding gets a cost estimate and a fix. We rank them by payback and by effort, then walk you through the result.

A worked example of ranking

Ranking by payback stops the loudest problem from crowding out the most expensive one. Imagine the review finds three issues:

The software issue is the one everyone complains about. But the routing rule takes an afternoon and the pricing guide a week, and together they're worth roughly nine times as much. The report would put those first.

How results are measured

By whether the top three fixes move their scorecard numbers within 90 days. Each fix in the report names the number it should change and by roughly how much. If you continue with us, we track those numbers; if you don't, the report gives your team what it needs to track them.

Mistakes to avoid with any diagnostic project

Only interviewing the owner, skipping real job data, and getting a report with no ranking.

• An owner-only review sees the company the way the owner thinks it works. Talk to the people doing the work.
• Opinions without numbers produce long reports and few decisions.
• A list of 40 equal recommendations is a list nobody acts on. Insist on a top three.

When you're ready, call, text or email with your company size and the main symptom. Our pricing page explains how projects are priced, and the services overview shows where a review usually leads next.