PRICING & MARGINPART OF THE FRACTIONAL CFO SCOPE

Pricing, margin and unit economics.

There is one blended gross margin and it is treated as a fact about the business. Underneath it, a third of the customers are subsidising the rest, and nobody knows which third, because overhead is allocated on revenue — which guarantees that the largest customer looks the most profitable regardless of what it costs to serve. Discount authority sits with sales, price increases have not been tested in years, and the answer to “should we take this deal” is decided on gut feel.
WHAT WE DO ABOUT IT, BELOWUNITED STATES AND CANADA
How We Run It
01 / 03
What we actually do, in the order we do it.

Margin is rebuilt bottom-up by product, customer, channel, site and job, with cost-to-serve allocated on what actually drives the cost — orders, deliveries, support hours, returns — rather than on revenue. This routinely reverses the ranking of the top ten customers, and that reversal is the single most useful piece of analysis we do.

Then pricing structure, discount discipline with authority set at amounts that reflect the margin at stake, and price testing where the elasticity is genuinely unknown. Unit economics tied back to the ledger so the model and the accounts agree.

BROUGHT IN FOR THIS, AT NO CHANGE TO THE FEE

Costing and pricing analysts for the bottom-up margin rebuild

What Changes
02 / 03
What you can do afterwards that you cannot do now.
Name the customers and lines that cost you money to keep. Decide a deal against a number. Take a price increase where the market will bear it and know where it will not.
Who Arrives With This
03 / 03
The sentences that usually bring somebody to this page.
Nobody arrives asking for a workstream. They arrive with a situation, and this is one of the two or three we would put against it.
“We are profitable but there is never any money”
“I do not know which customers actually make money”
“Every supplier contract seems to renew at a higher price”
“Earnings have been drifting down for three years”
THE OTHER SIXTEEN
The rest of the scope.
Nobody needs all of it at once. The diagnostic decides which two or three matter first in your business, and you keep that assessment either way.
Planning and forecastingReporting, KPIs and the boardCash, treasury and working capitalControls, systems and the closeDebt and lendersEquity and investorsTransactionsValue, exit and successionTax coordination and incentivesCross-border and multi-entityCompensation and the finance teamRisk, fraud and crisisCapital allocation and investment appraisalTurnaround and profit improvementTechnical accounting and revenue recognitionGovernance and stakeholders
SEE THE FULL SCOPE →
What Happens Next

Tell us what your month looks like. We will tell you whether this is the first thing to fix.

One hour on your business, with the CFO who would hold the seat rather than a salesperson. Nothing to prepare and nothing to sign. A written note back within two working days saying what we heard and what we would look at first.
BOOK A CONVERSATIONREAD THE AGREEMENT
ONE HOUR · NO CHARGE · A WRITTEN NOTE BACK WITHIN TWO WORKING DAYS
THE HOURWhat the business does, how the cash moves through it, and what would have to be different in a year.
THE NOTEWhat we heard and what we would look at first, in writing, within two working days.
THE PODThe CFO and controller who would hold your seats, each with a named backup behind them.
THE STANDARDClose by the seventh working day, pack on the eighth, and a published response standard in between.