Software · name kept private

04 Restore the pace

A $100m software company: services margin back from 21% to 30%.

A busy professional services team was doing more work and keeping less of it. The client asked us not to name them, so we have not.

21% → 30%

services margin, on plan three months running

$11m

services business redesigned across three regions

£1m

a year of new services found in support tickets

3

regions redesigned, from team structure to sign-off

The situation

The situation

This is a $100m software company selling ERP software to manufacturers and distributors. Its $11m professional services arm was busy, but it was losing revenue and margin. More projects were going out of the door and less money was being kept from each one.

What we found

What we found

The leak was in how the services business was run, not in how hard people worked: how the team was structured, how margin was recovered, and how work was signed off commercially.

There was also an opportunity hiding in plain sight. The support tickets held a pool of repeat work valuable enough to be packaged and sold.

What we did

What we did

✓

Redesigned how the services business runs across all three regions, covering team structure, margin recovery and commercial sign-off.

✓

Built the company’s own AI into the services portfolio, splitting agent-led work from human-led work so new service lines sit on top of the existing base.

✓

Analysed the support tickets to size the pool of repeat work that could be packaged and sold.

What happened

What happened

Services margin went from 21% to 30%, and has stayed on plan three months running. The support ticket analysis found a £1m a year pool of work that can now be packaged and sold as new services.

This engagement was led by our co-founder Michelle Humphreys. The same approach works at any size: find where the margin goes between the job coming in and the money landing, then fix the biggest leak first.

Where is your business leaking?

Tell us how it runs. We will tell you honestly whether we can help, and what we would look at first.