Privately owned Passive Fire Protection company turning over in excess of £3m.

Engagement Brief and Challenge

• The client recognised it was underperforming in a buoyant sector and sought support to achieve its potential.
• Areas identified for improvement included:
  • Company structure – to align people, accountability and improve effectiveness.
  • Company operations – efficiency controls required to improve productivity.
  • Output – the margin of delivered v sold products and services needed improving.
  • Pricing – insufficient profit margins to allow for growth.

Addressing the Challenge

• Full strategic review across all departments and functions of the business in order to obtain an understanding of where weaknesses lay and improvements could be made.
• This resulted in the production of a detailed action plan, identifying key areas for improvement and development in the short to medium term, including:
  • Finance
    • Review of business fundamentals, including restructure of financial information to provide greater visibility and focus on turnover targets, profitability, and overhead control.
    • Establishment of financial and performance benchmarks to develop and implement monthly financial reporting.
  • Pricing/Profitability & Sales
    • Redefinition of cost structure and the application of a relevant gross margin to achieve net profit goals.
    • Standardisation of project costing plus pricing increase to achieve higher margins, supported by streamlining client proposals and service delivery processes.
    • A proactive key account development strategy to gain clarity over the sales pipeline, key accounts and after sales service levels.
  • Team
    • Reviewed, defined, and implemented restructure of business to achieve goals set.
    • Provided mentoring for Directors and managers to take more initiative, be more accountable for their parts of the business, have greater oversight across the whole business and work more collaboratively as a team.
• As a result of the firm commitment of the client’s management team, Resource 5 implemented a rolling 90-day plan immediately which:
  • Identified the leadership team’s priorities by function, to provide focus and accountability on the priority business improvement actions.
  • Facilitated monthly business and financial reviews.
  • Agreed the rationalisation of overheads, realignment of resources and how to improve cash-flow and embed disciplined business controls.
  • Introduced a regular management review process of the action plan at each leadership meeting.

Outcomes

This quick action resulted in an uptick within the first year in revenue by 35% at FY, with a 12% increase in operating profit above budget. Subsequent year on year growth seen.