Service lines
4
Mapped cost curves
Work · Financial & professional services
Professional & financial services — project margin under pressure
A services firm with blended fixed-fee, T&M, and retainer work needed a forward view of margin that respected utilization, pipeline quality, and hiring timing.
Rolling 6-mo view
Margin $
Fee + utilisation
Scenarios on deck
8+
Staffing, rates
KPIs are illustrative / representative — not audited client guarantees.
Challenge
Revenue looked fine on paper until write-offs and bench cost arrived too late; partners wanted “what if we move two seniors” without another FP&A cycle.
Approach
We unified CRM pipeline confidence with resourcing and cost rates in a project-centric forecast, with client-level bridges from sold backlog to expected margin.
Design decisions
- Project-centric forecast over entity-only P&L
- Margin erosion triggers vs plan as early warnings
- Hiring and rate scenarios on a shared model
Representative views
Concept frames below are anonymised representations — not production screenshots.
Forward MRR
$1.24M
NRR
112%
Sources
11
Outcomes
- Brought resourcing, delivery, and finance to one margin narrative each month
- Surfaced at-risk projects early via margin erosion triggers vs. plan
- Helped the exec team model hiring and rate moves with a shared model
More work
Continue exploring
Ready to scope a similar cockpit for your stack?