What it gives you
At the end, you will know four things.
It is a standalone piece of work. You can act on it yourself, take it to your existing advisers, or continue with us. The recommendation does not depend on you hiring us to deliver it.
What is driving current performance
Not a list of things that are wrong. The specific commercial and operating causes behind the result the business produces today.
Where the most important opportunities and risks sit
Sized, so you can tell the difference between what deserves your attention and what merely feels urgent.
What should change first
In order, with the reasoning shown. Including the things we found that are not worth doing, and why.
What the likely financial impact could be
A range for each, with the basis stated and our confidence in it made explicit rather than implied.
How deep it goes
We look at the business five ways, not one.
It starts with what you want the business to do, because the same change can be right for one objective and wrong for another. After that, the cause of a problem is rarely where the symptom shows, so a single view will mislead you. Each is worked separately, against one financial baseline from your ledger.
How the business is run
Twenty-eight capability areas across seven parts of the business, each looked at four ways: can you see it, do you understand it, have you decided what to do, does it then happen.
What matters in your sector
Assessed against the handful of things that decide who wins in your industry, weighted by how critical each is, not against a generic model.
Where value leaks
Every activity, rated on how well you do it against how much it matters. The gap between the two is usually where the money is.
What actually drives the numbers
The causal chain between what the business does and what it earns, and which constraints are genuinely binding rather than merely annoying.
How you win and keep customers
Eighteen capabilities across who you target, how you sell, how disciplined pricing is, and how well you hold on to customers.
Where two of these disagree, we treat the disagreement as a finding rather than averaging it away. A contradiction between how a business rates itself and what its own data shows is usually more useful than either number on its own.
And from outside the business
An internal view alone will flatter you.
Every business grades itself against its own history. Four more sources sit alongside the internal work so the read is not circular.
The market
Demand, competitive forces, and what the sector realistically allows. It sets the ceiling on what any plan can achieve.
Your competitors
Scored against them on twenty dimensions, relative to peers rather than in the abstract, across positioning, commercial capability, operations, financial strength and structural advantage.
Your customers
What they are actually trying to get done, what they value, and where the journey from first contact to renewal breaks.
Your financials
Taken straight from the ledger and reconciled, not retyped from a management report.
Who does the work
You answer a short diagnostic. We do the rest.
The depth above is our work, not homework we set you. What we need from your team is small, and it is deliberately structured.
What your team does
You and each of your leaders complete a short diagnostic, separately and without comparing notes. Beyond that: system access, and the right people for two or three sessions. That is the whole ask.
What we do
We score the same business independently, from the data and from how it actually runs. Where our view and yours diverge materially, that gap is written up as a finding. It is often the most useful thing the assessment produces.
And if a part of the business cannot see itself clearly, we say so rather than trusting the scores it gives itself.
What you receive
A report you can act on and check.
A clear read of the business
Where performance is coming from, where it is being lost, and why. Written plainly, with the evidence behind each conclusion.
The opportunities and risks that matter
The few that are worth your attention, separated from the many that are not.
A recommended sequence
What to do first, what can wait, and what is not worth doing.
The likely financial impact
What changing each thing could be worth, as a range, with the basis stated.
What we could not determine
The questions the data could not answer, and what it would take to answer them.
What we need from you
Built to minimise disruption. Not passive.
The analysis is ours. What we need from you is access and a little time from the right people.
- Read access to your accounting ledger and core commercial data
- A short high-level diagnostic from you and each of your leaders, done separately
- Two or three working sessions
- Availability from the people who run the areas in question
- Honest answers, particularly on the uncomfortable subjects
The diagnostic takes each person under an hour. Doing it separately matters: once a leadership team has discussed something, they tend to answer as one. Answering alone shows us where the team actually agrees and where it only appears to.
Boundaries
What it is not.
Not a valuation opinion
We can give you an indicative range and show what each gap is costing. We are not registered valuers, and that indication does not replace a formal valuation where you need one for tax, a dispute or a transaction.
Not transaction due diligence
It may identify issues that would matter in a future diligence process, but it does not replace one.
Not accounting or tax advice
Your accountant stays your accountant. We work on the commercial and operating causes behind the numbers.
Not a scorecard exercise
There is scoring underneath it, across all five views. But a score is an input to a finding, not the finding itself.
Not a facilitated workshop
We test what the room believes against the evidence rather than writing the consensus up as a finding.
Not a list of recommendations
Recommendations without financial impact or delivery priority are not a plan.
Common questions
What owners ask before they start.
How long does a Commercial Assessment take, and what does it cost?
Two to four weeks, for a fixed fee agreed before we start. You know the scope and the price up front, with no open-ended hourly billing.
How is it different from an audit or due diligence?
An audit checks that the numbers are correct; due diligence checks them for a buyer. A Commercial Assessment does neither. It examines the commercial and operating causes behind the numbers, and shows where value is being made, where it is being lost, and what each gap is costing you.
Is it a business valuation?
No. We can give you an indicative enterprise-value range and show what each gap is costing, but we are not registered valuers, and that indication does not replace a formal valuation where you need one for tax, a dispute or a transaction.
Do we have to be planning to sell?
No. Most owners use it to improve how the business performs while they still own it. It happens to leave the business more ready for a sale as well, but that is a by-product, not the point.
Will you replace our accountant or existing advisers?
No. Your accountant stays your accountant. We work on the commercial and operating causes behind the numbers, and hand back a clearer picture that makes your existing advisers more useful, not less.
What do you need from us?
Access to your financials, and a short diagnostic that the owner and leadership team answer. The rest of the work is ours. It is designed to sit lightly on a leadership team that already has a business to run.
Clearer priorities. Stronger execution. Better performance.
Two to four weeks for a fixed fee. At the end you know what is driving performance, where the opportunities and risks sit, what should change first, and what it could be worth.
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