Business Consulting FAQ

A financial diagnostic or digital readiness audit usually takes three to four weeks from kick-off to final report. Operational efficiency and growth strategy projects run four to eight weeks for the diagnostic and report phases. If you add implementation support, the total timeline extends to three to nine months depending on the scope of changes.

We agree on a schedule with specific milestones before we start, and we flag delays early if they arise.

Yes, provided the business has at least three employees and enough financial history for us to analyse. Sole traders and brand-new start-ups are usually better served by a business mentor or an enterprise agency like Business Gateway, and we are happy to point you in that direction if that is the case.

We have the most experience in food and drink manufacturing, logistics, professional services and retail. That said, about a third of our engagements are in sectors outside those four. The analytical frameworks we use transfer well across industries, though we always pair them with sector-specific research during the diagnostic phase.

We offer half-day advisory sessions for £650. These are useful when you have a specific decision to make, such as whether to lease or buy equipment, how to structure a new department, or whether a particular market entry makes financial sense. You send us background materials in advance, and we spend four hours working through the problem with you. You receive a written summary of our recommendations within two working days.

Every engagement starts with a set of agreed metrics. For a financial diagnostic, that might be cash-flow improvement measured in pounds. For an operational project, it could be fulfilment time, defect rate or overtime hours. We document these metrics in the engagement letter and revisit them at the three-month review.

We do not claim credit for changes that were already underway before we arrived. The review meeting is designed to isolate the impact of our recommendations from other factors.

For the discovery call, nothing. Just be ready to describe the problem in your own words.

Before the on-site diagnostic, we will send you a short checklist. It typically includes profit-and-loss statements and balance sheets for the last three years, a current organisation chart, any process documentation you already have, and a list of the software tools your team uses daily. If some of these do not exist, that is fine. We work with what is available.

Yes, always. We sign a mutual NDA before any confidential information changes hands. If you have a preferred template, we are happy to use it. Otherwise we provide our own, which has been reviewed by our solicitors and covers the usual protections: non-disclosure of financial data, trade secrets, customer lists and strategic plans for a period of five years.

Our presentation meeting is interactive for exactly this reason. If a recommendation does not sit right, we want to hear why. Sometimes the pushback reveals information we missed, and we revise the recommendation. Other times the discomfort is about the difficulty of the change rather than its validity, and we can discuss how to phase it in gradually.

If after that conversation you feel the report has not delivered value, we will negotiate the final fee in good faith. We have done this twice in over 180 engagements. In both cases we reduced the fee by 30 per cent and parted on reasonable terms.

Some of our clients have used Scottish Enterprise or Highlands and Islands Enterprise funding to cover part of the cost. Eligibility depends on your location, sector and the nature of the project. We can help you check whether a relevant scheme is open, but we do not submit grant applications on your behalf.

Ring us on +44 141 731 8764 or send a message through the contact form on our home page. We will arrange a discovery call within two working days. There is no cost for that call, and no pressure to proceed afterwards.