06Optimise
Most improvement programmes go after cost, because cost is the thing you can see.
We look at price, customers and mix first, then cash, cost to serve and the capital the business is committing.
Optimise in practice
Most improvement programmes go after cost, because cost is the thing you can see. Meanwhile the price list has not changed in three years, the discount policy lives in people’s heads, and nobody can say which customers are profitable to serve.
So we look at price, customers and mix before we look at cost. Then working capital and cash conversion, then cost to serve and the capital the business is committing. Growth and margin are the same conversation, not two separate programmes.
We have run the commercial and the operating side of this in businesses we owned, where margin and cash were ours to find, and inside large organisations where the same levers had to be pulled across a cost base of scale without breaking service.
What we do as owner
Price, customers and mix first, then cash. Cost comes last, because it is the easiest to see and usually the least of it.
Late payment costs the UK economy almost £11 billion a year, and around 14,000 businesses, 38 a day, close as a direct result. Cash is not an administrative problem in a smaller business. It is survival. London Economics for the Department for Business and Trade and the Office of the Small Business Commissioner, 31 July 2025
Price and margin6
- Pricing, discount discipline and commercial governance
- Price realisation: what is listed against what is collected
- Discount authority, so margin is given away by decision rather than by habit
- Gross margin by product, service and customer
- Price increases planned and communicated, rather than avoided
- Procurement and supplier renegotiation
Customers and mix6
- Customer segmentation and customer profitability
- Key-account growth, cross-sell and upsell
- Retention and churn reduction
- Sales-force effectiveness and sales productivity
- Revenue operations, CRM discipline and pipeline management
- Route to market, channel effectiveness and product mix
Cash and capital6
- Working capital, receivables and inventory
- Late payment and collections discipline
- Cash conversion and cash forecasting
- The cash conversion cycle as one number the board watches
- Capex governance, maintenance versus growth
- Capital allocation and investment prioritisation
Cost and flow5
- Cost to serve and network economics
- Throughput, OEE and flow
- Spans, layers and overhead
- Technology run-rate cost
- What the business should stop doing altogether
Customer operations4
- Service model, service levels and support
- Field-service effectiveness
- Complaint root-cause reduction
- Customer onboarding and renewal management
Not selling? The same capability is available as an executive mandate. See Advisory