The context
An HVAC and mechanical services contractor whose commercial activity runs on a continuous flow of quotes.
The problem, as it was lived
Every quote was re-priced by hand, from a supplier price list that hadn’t moved in years. Pricing a quote therefore meant starting again from a basis that no longer tracked the market.
That one act has two costs, and both are invisible from the owner’s desk. The first is time, taken out of every quote, every day, by the people who should be out selling. The second is margin leaving without a sound: when the starting basis is wrong, the error is systematic, it shows up on no individual quote, and it only becomes visible at the scale of a year.
What the diagnostic revealed
Three measurements, taken on the company’s real data rather than on hallway estimates.
The real volume of quotes produced over the year, which is to say the exact base the problem multiplies across. The time that manual re-pricing was eating, brought back to that volume. And the gap between the price list in use and market prices: the size of the drift, measured, not assumed.
The plan delivered
A priced recovery plan, project by project. Each project carries its own estimated gain and its own cost, which makes it possible to decide what order to take them in, or to take none of them.
Exactly where this case study stands
The diagnostic is delivered. Nothing is in production yet.
I keep this case study in the portfolio for two reasons.
First: the diagnostic is a deliverable in its own right. The owner now has, on paper, the volume, the time, the price gap, and a plan priced project by project. It belongs to him. He can run it with me, with someone else, or in house. That’s the rule of the audit, and it holds just as well when there is no next step.
Second: it would be dishonest to show you four transformations when there are three. You’re going to hand me numbers about your company. You may as well know right away how I talk about the case studies that aren’t there yet.
What this case study proves
That the first value of an audit isn’t the system it announces. It’s what it makes visible: a purchase price asleep, a volume everyone underestimates, a cost in time nobody ever counted. You don’t decide without those three numbers. You can decide without me once you have them.
That is exactly what you receive at the end of the audit: measurements taken on your data, and a plan priced project by project, which stays yours whatever comes next.