Profit improvement:Case study

Our brief: Save the business!

It’s difficult to turn something round that is in such a dire position. We had three months. There were hard decisions to be made. The management of the business had refused to make them so far and because of that had made a 30% net loss.

Where we started: With time running fast running out and a business in disarray

With such a precarious position time certainly wasn’t on our side. The business was in a downward spiral and running out of energy, resources and most importantly, hope. We needed to stop the rot straight away, turn things round and achieve a change of fortunes almost immediately…

What we did: We got right to the root cause, and tackled it hard

So we asked one killer question. The answer to that question provided the way forward. There were so many problems and areas for improvement but we had to focus on the things that would make immediate impact on profit and generate immediate cash.

We used a very powerful process to demonstrate where the business was losing money and what strategies we could adopt to rectify it. We encouraged a really targeted response, knowing that any loss of focus could prove disastrous.

It took 18 months of hard work, but in that time we helped them generate a profit of £150,000. They reported a net profit improvement of £790,000.

How we succeeded: we identified the answer quickly, and stuck to our guns

We had restructured the business and eliminated overhead that was historic and not valuable. We changed the mix of products and focused on items that made profit and only to customers who would play a long term role in the profitable future of the company. We helped them devise a proposal and tendering system that was light years ahead of their competitors in their industry and allowed them to increase prices over 18 months by more than 10% at a time when competitors were reducing them.