Case studies
Longer stories from three engagements, with permission from the clients involved.
Highland Fabrications: recovering hidden margin
Highland Fabrications builds steel structures for the construction industry. Revenue was growing at 12% per year, but net profit had been flat for three consecutive years. The managing director suspected procurement costs were the issue but had no time to investigate.
We spent two weeks inside their Inverness facility. The real problem was not raw material prices: it was rework. Roughly 9% of fabricated components were being reworked due to errors in the handoff between design and shop floor. We introduced a digital sign-off step, retrained two team leads and changed the scheduling sequence for complex jobs.
Rework dropped to 2.5% within three months. The company recovered £42,000 in direct costs and freed up 160 labour hours per month that could be redirected to new orders.
£42k annual savings
Rework reduced by 72%
Forth Digital Marketing: choosing not to expand
Forth Digital wanted to open a Manchester office. The founders were excited, but the numbers did not support it. We modelled three scenarios: a full office with local hires, a remote team managed from Edinburgh, and a focused push to grow Scottish accounts.
The Manchester option required £95,000 in upfront costs and would not break even for 14 months under optimistic assumptions. The Scottish-focus option needed almost no investment and could generate comparable revenue growth by increasing average contract value with existing clients.
Forth chose to stay focused. They grew revenue by 18% over the following twelve months, improved their client retention rate and avoided the management complexity of a second location.
18% revenue growth
£95k in avoided costs
Brae Hospitality Group: fixing the cash-flow gap
Brae runs four boutique hotels across the Scottish Highlands. Their corporate clients (wedding planners, event companies, tour operators) were paying invoices an average of 47 days after the event. The gap was forcing Brae to rely on an expensive overdraft facility.
We restructured their billing process: invoices now go out automatically on the day of checkout, with a 14-day payment term. We set up staged reminders at day 7, day 14 and day 21, and introduced a 2% early-payment discount for corporate accounts. We also renegotiated the overdraft terms with their bank, saving £3,200 per year in interest.
Average payment time fell to 19 days. The overdraft has not been used since February 2024.
Payment time cut by 60%
Overdraft eliminated