How it works
How working with us works
Three steps to begin, and a plain answer to the four things owners actually want to know before they hand anything over — including how to undo it.
Handing a function to somebody outside your company is an act of trust that most owners have had a bad experience with. So this page describes the mechanism rather than the benefits: what the sequence is, what we need from you, what happens to work that is already moving, and what you do if you want out.
Two starting points exist and they are not the same engagement. Some companies have a workflow — imperfect, undocumented, but real — and the task is to join it, learn it, and then recommend changes from inside it once we can see where it binds. Others do not have one, and the task is to build the back office rather than to staff a gap in it. The discovery call establishes which of the two you are, and it is usually obvious within the first fifteen minutes to both of us.
Efficiency begins within a week. That is an expectation we are willing to state and one we deliberately will not put a number against, because any figure we attached to it would be invented. What it means concretely is that the first function moves early, and the person who was carrying it notices before the week is out.
The path in
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Discovery call
We find out what actually happens now.
Not a pitch. We go through the functions one at a time and establish who currently does each, what tool it happens in, and where the work backs up. Most of this call is you talking. It is also where we find out whether there is a workflow to join or whether one has to be built, because those are different engagements and pretending otherwise helps nobody.
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A proposal of services, in writing, with pricing
Scope first, then a number attached to that scope.
You get a document naming the functions we would take, what we would do inside each, what stays with you, what we need access to, and what it costs. It is written down because a scope agreed in conversation is a scope that drifts. If something in it is wrong, that is the point of sending it before anyone commits.
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Implementation call
Access, rules, and the order things move in.
Credentials get issued by you, the escalation rules get agreed and recorded, and we set which function moves first. Nothing moves all at once. The first function is usually whichever one is currently costing you the most attention, because that is the one where the difference is felt soonest.
What we need from you
Less than owners expect, and more than they want to give on day one. Access to the systems the work lives in, issued under your own credentials so you can revoke them without asking us. A named person who can answer a question that only you can answer. And an hour, roughly, in the first week, in pieces.
What we do not need is a tidy operation to start from. A company whose records are behind, whose inbox is unmanageable and whose procedures live in one person’s memory is the ordinary case rather than a disqualifying one. The state of things is an input to the plan, not a prerequisite for it.
What happens to work already in flight
It finishes where it is. Jobs mid-production, claims mid-cycle and invoices already issued stay on their existing path, because moving live work between processes is how things get dropped. We pick up new work in a function from an agreed date and take the tail of the old work only where you ask us to.
The exception is anything with a date attached that is close. If something is about to lapse or expire, that gets handled immediately regardless of whose column it technically sits in, and then handed back into the normal path.
What changes, and what does not
Your systems do not change. We work inside the tools you already run, under your configuration, and nothing is maintained in a copy we hold. If a tool is genuinely the wrong tool we will say so, but that is a recommendation with reasons attached, not a condition of working together.
What does change is where the work sits and how it is recorded. Requests stop arriving as interruptions and start arriving as a queue with rules. Decisions that used to happen in someone’s head get written down, first because we need them written to do the work consistently, and then because having them written turns out to be worth more than the original task.
We also recommend changes for faster turnaround as we go, since the first month of doing a function is when its bottlenecks are most visible. Those are proposals. You decide which land.
How a handover is reversed
By revoking the credentials you issued, and taking back a set of documents that were written to be handed back. That is the whole mechanism, and it is worth stating plainly because almost nobody in this market does.
It works because of two choices made earlier rather than anything generous at the end. Everything is maintained inside your systems, so there is no export step and no data of yours sitting in ours. And the procedures written during onboarding are yours — the documented process for each function is a deliverable in its own right, not a description of our internal method.
A company that leaves is therefore in a better position than it started, holding written procedure it did not have before. We would rather that than a client held in place by the cost of leaving, which is not a relationship worth having on either side.
Which functions this applies to
All of them, separately. The sequence above is the same whether you are handing over one desk or rebuilding the whole back office, and each department page sets out what that function covers and where its boundary sits.
Questions owners ask before starting
How quickly does anything actually improve?
Efficiency begins within a week. We state that as an expectation rather than a metric, and we will not attach a figure to it, because any number we gave you would be one we made up. What happens in practice is that the first function moves, the queue for it stops being interrupt-driven, and the difference is noticeable to whoever was carrying it before the end of the first week.
We do not really have a process. Is that a problem?
It is the more common starting point of the two, and it changes what the engagement is rather than whether it can happen. Where a workflow exists we join it and suggest improvements from inside. Where there is not one, building it is the work — the functions get defined, the sequence gets written down, and what you end up with is a back office rather than a set of tasks somebody is absorbing.
Do we have to hand over everything at once?
No, and we would push back if you wanted to. Functions move one at a time in an order agreed at the implementation call, because moving several at once means that when something goes wrong you cannot tell which change caused it. Starting with the function that is costing you the most attention gets you the clearest signal soonest.
Who do we talk to once it is running?
The same desk that does the work, on a cadence set at the start rather than whenever something goes wrong. Reporting is part of the scope of work and not a favour, and it is deliberately shaped around what moved and what did not rather than around volume, because a report that only counts activity is easy to make flattering.
What if we are not happy with how something is being done?
You say so and it changes, and if the disagreement is about judgement rather than execution then the escalation rules get rewritten. Those rules are the most revised document in any engagement and that is healthy — the first version encodes what you thought you wanted, and the third encodes what you actually do.
Are you going to try to sell us more functions?
We will tell you when we can see a function that is visibly costing you, because not saying so would be strange. But the scope is what the written proposal says, and it changes only when you change it. Nothing gets added silently and nothing gets billed that is not on a document you have agreed to.
Related
- What it costs Why scope comes before a number, and what shapes the number once scope is known.
- Comparing the two models Where a single point of contact is the right answer, and where a department is.
- All nine departments What each function covers, and the limit each one works inside.
- About Roofing Back Office Who runs this, and why the roofing work got its own brand.
Start with the discovery call
It is a conversation about what happens in your company now, not a presentation about us. If nothing comes of it you will still have a clearer list of what is costing you.