CXO AMBITION
One trusted set of numbers, no matter how fast the business changes
US-based, privately held • ~1,000 employees • manufacturing, materials & project-based construction, international reach • originally a 40-day engagement
Problem
Every acquisition brought its own numbers
Trigger
Acquisition-led growth outpacing data maturity
Outcome
A data capability that's AI-ready and built to scale
Delivery
40 days (initial scope)
Their world
The client is a fast-growing, privately held manufacturing, materials and project-based construction business with international reach. Growth has come through acquisition, aimed at both vertical integration and broader geographical coverage. But every acquisition brought new sites and new capabilities. Each new business arrives with its own finance systems, accounting standards and costing methods, leaving the group without a single, trusted view of its numbers. The differences ran deep. Behind this sat a fragile web of spreadsheets, understood in full by only a handful of people — and when several of them left as the business expanded, no one remaining could fully explain how the numbers were produced.
As the leadership team grew, newly appointed managers expected the numbers to support strong, timely decisions and found the opposite — a gap in data maturity visible at every level, and a constraint on growth rather than a foundation for it. Leadership needed to trust its manufacturing costs and margin reporting, and needed a partner who understood the business, could move quickly, and could build a platform strong enough to support what came next.
What we did
1
Reviewed the business and its numbers
We began with a short, focused review of the business and its numbers, working directly with the people who ran it day to day, to establish where trust was breaking down and where the risk was greatest.
2
Built a new data foundation — first version in 30 days
From there, we designed and built a new data foundation for the group, bringing information in from across the business and reconciling it into one trusted version of the truth — translating each site's costing treatment onto one consistent basis, through clear business rules rather than manual adjustment. The effort was right-sized to the business's timeline: enough quality and robustness to keep improving long after go-live, without the delay of over-engineering for its own sake. The first working version was delivered within 30 days.
3
Partnered with the business as it kept changing shape
This was never simply a technology delivery service. Understanding how the business operated, and partnering with it directly as priorities changed, shaped everything that followed: consistent reporting across business units as the organisation restructured through further acquisitions, improved costing, combined profit and loss reporting, and clearer visibility of inventory and sales performance. We scaled the team up and down as the work demanded, standing up a dedicated team for each new acquisition to speed up bringing its numbers into group reporting.
What we did
We began with a short, focused review of the business and its numbers, working directly with the people who ran it day to day, to establish where trust was breaking down and where the risk was greatest.
From there, we designed and built a new data foundation for the group, bringing information in from across the business and reconciling it into one trusted version of the truth — translating each site's costing treatment onto one consistent basis, through clear business rules rather than manual adjustment. The effort was right-sized to the business's timeline: enough quality and robustness to keep improving long after go-live, without the delay of over-engineering for its own sake. The first working version was delivered within 30 days.
This was never simply a technology delivery service. Understanding how the business operated, and partnering with it directly as priorities changed, shaped everything that followed: consistent reporting across business units as the organisation restructured through further acquisitions, improved costing, combined profit and loss reporting, and clearer visibility of inventory and sales performance. We scaled the team up and down as the work demanded, standing up a dedicated team for each new acquisition to speed up bringing its numbers into group reporting.
The Impact
TRUST IN THE NUMBERS
Every part of the business reconciled its figures differently
One set of numbers, reconciled the same way across the group
RESILIENCE TO CHANGE
Growth outpaced a platform held together by short-term fixes
A platform built to absorb acquisitions and organisational change
SPEED WITHOUT RISK
Speed depended on workarounds that undermined stability
Faster delivery without compromising consistency
CONSISTENT ACCOUNTING TREATMENT
Units of measure and overhead allocation applied inconsistently
Progressively standardised treatment across the business
"They deliver consistently, and our numbers now fully reconcile — for the first time, we can trust what we're looking at. What sets them apart is how well they understand our business: they surface the questions we hadn't thought to ask, work through them with us, and bring the skills, technical and commercial, to solve anything we put in front of them."
Why this matters
For a business scaling through acquisition, this is not a technology upgrade — it's an enterprise value initiative. As the organisation grows, its structure, cost base and portfolio of businesses will keep changing, and its data capability must change with it. This client now has a longer-term partner who understands both the business and its data, and a capability built to move and adapt as the organisation continues to expand, integrate acquisitions and change shape.
Because the numbers are now trusted across the group, the client is also starting to build AI-powered tools on top of the platform, so that AI-driven answers draw on consistently interpreted numbers. Getting the data right first is what makes those results trustworthy, rather than another source of numbers no one believes.