4 Sub-themes of work
5 Engagement formats
6 Trigger situations
Cost programs including zero-based budgeting and overhead reset. Pricing strategy and revenue management across B2B, B2C, and subscription models. Margin architecture, profit pool analysis, and the discipline that turns a margin program into a sustained one rather than a one-time event.
ON THIS PAGE The work | Where this fits | Scope in detail | Methodology } Engagement formats | Related
Most companies have margin trapped inside themselves. It lives in the cost categories no one has reset in five years, in the pricing decisions made by individual sales people on individual deals, in the customer mix that has drifted away from where value gets created, in the procurement decisions inherited from when the business was a third its current size.Β
The work in this practice is to find that margin, recover it, and put in place the operating discipline that keeps it recovered. Cost programs, pricing strategy, revenue management, margin architecture. Programs designed to deliver against quantified outcomes β and designed so the outcomes hold after the firm leaves.
Six recurring margin and revenue situations the firm sees most often. Each is a real conversation with a real shape β and a real number on the other side of it.
π Β
"Revenue is up. Margin is flat."
A growth business where the top line is moving but the operating margin is not. The fix is rarely a single thing β it is usually a mix that hides itself in segment-level numbers until someone insists on reading them carefully.
β¦ Β
"The board has asked for a 15% cost reduction. By next year."
A company under cost pressure β sponsor-driven, board-driven, or self-imposed β that needs a structured program rather than a round of cuts. Zero-based budgeting, overhead reset, function redesign, with the discipline to make the savings stick.
β Β Β
"Our best customers are not our most profitable customers."
Customer-level profitability that no one has built. A revenue base where the top accounts have drifted toward the worst economics, and the company is investing growth into the wrong customers because the data to know better was never put in place.
βΒ Β Β
"We've never really set our prices. We just answer when asked."
Pricing made on a deal-by-deal basis, by sales people, with no central discipline. The price list is two years old, the discount policy is unwritten, and the fastest-growing customers are the ones with the worst economics. Pricing strategy, not pricing tactics.
β±
"We've outgrown our procurement."
A business whose buying habits were set when it was smaller. Long-term contracts no one has re-negotiated, supplier relationships inherited from the founder, no real category management. Strategic sourcing programs against a real spend cube.
β« Β
"Our margin is leaking somewhere. We just can't tell where."
Margin leakage diagnostic β pricing leakage, discount authority drift, returns and rebates, channel claims, freight and handling. The places where invoiced revenue and earned revenue separate, and what to do about each one structurally.
The depth in each is built through engagement. The scope below is what the firm has actually delivered and continues to deliver.
i Cost programs
Structural cost reset, not another round of cuts.
Zero-based budgeting programs across overhead, support, and operating functions
Overhead reset and function redesign
Spans, layers, and management structure cost diagnostic
Strategic sourcing and procurement transformation
Make-versus-buy reviews and shared services architecture
Cost-to-serve analysis at customer, product, and channel level
ii Pricing strategy
Price as a discipline, not a campaign.
Pricing architecture and price list design
Value-based pricing for B2B businesses with named accounts
Subscription, freemium, and tiered pricing for SaaS and services
Promotional design and discount-policy reset
Price elasticity testing and willingness-to-pay studies
Pricing governance βauthority, exception process, and audit
iii Revenue management
Where revenue is captured, by whom, on what terms.
Customer-level profitability analysis and segmentation
Channel mix optimization and channel economics
Sales force effectiveness and commercial productivity
Promotion and trade investment effectiveness
Returns, rebates, and trade claims discipline
Customer lifetime value and cohort-based growth allocation
iv Margin architecture
The structure that decides what gets kept.
Gross-to-net analysis and reconstruction
Profit pool analysis at category, geography, and channel level
Contribution margin architecture and waterfall design
Activity-based costing and profitability cubes
Margin leakage diagnostic and structural remediation
Margin governance β what gets reviewed, by whom, on what cadence
Five operating principles for cost, pricing, and revenue engagements. Margin programs fail when the firm is too polite about where the money actually is. These principles guard against that.
i Find the money where it lives
Margin lives in places that are unflattering to look at. Categories no one has owned in five years. Customers everyone is fond of who lose money on every order. Procurement decisions made by people who left the company. The work begins by going to those places β not the visible ones.
ii Pricing is a discipline, not a campaign
One-time pricing exercises generate one-time results. Real pricing work installs the architecture, the governance, and the operating cadence that allow pricing to be a continuous discipline. The price list is a living document or it is decoration.
iii Sustainable, not just one-time
A margin program that delivers a number in year one and loses it in year two has not delivered. We design programs against quantified outcomes and the operating model changes that protect those outcomes. Without the second, the first is theatre.
iv AI as method, not as theatre
Artificial intelligence is genuinely useful in this practice β building spend cubes from messy ledgers, modelling pricing elasticity at scale, identifying margin leakage patterns across millions of transactions. The firm uses AI as a method that lets a small team cover ground a large team would need. Not advertised as a feature.
v The number is not the output
Every engagement names the quantified outcome it is going to deliver. The number is the discipline. But the output is the operating model β pricing committee, procurement governance, margin review cadence, customer profitability dashboard β that produces the number, again, next year.
Format is decided by where the margin actually is. A pricing engagement runs differently from a ZBB program; both run differently from a margin diagnostic.
i Margin diagnostic
Six to ten week engagement. Structured diagnostic across cost, pricing, mix, and procurement. Output is a quantified margin opportunity map and a sequenced implementation plan against named outcomes.
ii Pricing program
Eight to sixteen week engagement. Pricing architecture redesign, price-list rebuild, governance design, and rollout through the commercial organisation. Outcome is a measurable pricing discipline that holds.
iii Cost program (ZBB or overhead reset)
Twelve to twenty-four week engagement against quantified cost-out targets. Function-by-function reset, with operating governance and sustainability mechanisms built in from day one.
iv Procurement transformation
Sixteen to thirty-six week program. Spend-cube build, category strategy, supplier consolidation and renegotiation, procurement function redesign. Designed with the operating teams, not from procurement alone.
v Sustained margin partnership
Quarterly or rolling engagement supporting a CEO, CFO, or COO through a multi-year margin journey. Operating cadence, governance support, and selective deep-dive work as the program demands it.
Margin work happens inside a sector and almost always touches operations, organisation design, and finance. Where the question reaches across, we extend with it.
πΎAgribusiness & food
πΒ Advanced manufacturing
ποΈ Consumer products
π Education
π¦ Financial institutions
π₯ Healthcare & life sciences
π¦Β Industrial goods
π Private Equity
ποΈ Public Sector
ποΈ Retail
π Transport & logistics
𧳠Travel & tourism
π Urban & real estate
βΎοΈ Adjacencies
Operations, Supply Chain and Manufacturing β when cost lives in operations.β
Marketing, Sales and Customer β when revenue lives at the front line.β
Corporate Finance and CFO Services β when margin needs to be measured before it can be moved.β
Transformation and Turnaround β when margin reset is part of a larger reset.β
Organisation and People β when overhead and structure are entwined.β
Strategy and Value Creation β when the margin question is really a portfolio question. β
For cost, pricing, and revenue engagements, please get in touch.
start@aadiprojects.com