GROWTH
“Our sales kept growing,
our cash didn’t.”
An established, family-owned consumer products company called us about a collections problem. Sales were climbing. Cash receipts weren’t keeping pace. The money, they figured, was stuck in accounts receivable — and what they needed was help chasing it down.
They were right that collections were part of it. What they couldn’t see was how much was sitting underneath it.
Here’s what they gained:
People
A stretched, under-resourced team → a function staffed to see and act
Process
Built for a smaller company → rebuilt for the business it is now
Technology
Disparate systems and Access databases → one integrated source of truth
What was really happening...
We started with a revenue-cycle assessment: the whole order-to-cash process, end to end.
Collections was real. The team was behind, and focused effort would free up cash quickly. But chasing harder only treated the surface. The receivables were backed up because the revenue cycle feeding them had quietly broken.
They weren’t blind to it. Over years of fast growth the business got much bigger and its industry transformed around it. But they were so busy keeping up that no one had the room to step back and rebuild the foundation underneath. So it never got rebuilt. Systems stayed outdated and disconnected, patched together with siloed databases. The accounting team stayed the same size while volume multiplied. The processes never caught up to how customers now did business.
The real problem lived in the three places it almost always does: people stretched past what they could carry, process that hadn’t kept pace, and technology a decade behind the business. The cash crunch wasn’t the problem. It was where all three surfaced at once.
How we worked
How we work holds steady even as the specifics change: we assess, recommend, then deliver. Alongside you, not from the sidelines. We don’t hand over a list of ideas to execute alone; we bring a practical solution, built to solve the problem underneath, and work beside your team until it’s in place and working.
Get grounded in reality
What we build & hand over: A revenue-cycle assessment
We met the team, learned how the work really got done, and studied the tools holding it together — to find the real problem, not the one they walked in with.
Get the cash moving first
What we build & hand over: A prioritized collections plan
The AR aging ran hundreds of pages, most of it small balances not worth chasing. We cleared the clutter so the team could focus on the balances that actually moved the number.
Resource the function the business runs on
What we build & hand over: A staffing plan for the revenue cycle
Collections was carrying a company several times its old size on the same headcount. We said add people. They did.
Name the deeper problem
What we build & hand over: The recommendation that reset the work
The quick wins were real, but they wouldn’t last. The harder truth: the strain would keep coming back until the foundation underneath. People, process, and technology was rebuilt.
Choose the system on purpose
What we build & hand over: An ERP selection, run end to end
One source of truth, chosen deliberately. We documented what the business needed, evaluated every vendor the same way, and backed the team as they led the negotiations.
Make the implementation land
What changed...
Two years of close, shared work, carried by strong executive backing and a team that redesigned its processes, retrained, and took on a new way of working.
The team could finally see the whole business and act on it, from one source
Processes rebuilt around how the business actually works
Disparate tools and siloed databases became one system, built to grow with the business
And the cash moved — collections finally had direction, and a foundation under it
The takeaway:
This is one of the most common shapes of trouble we see. A company grows fast, everyone pours into keeping up, and the foundation never gets rebuilt to carry the new weight. The top line looks great — until something cracks. Usually, like here, it’s cash. That’s when the call comes.
The instinct, when a number looks wrong, is to go to work on the number: reclassify, adjust, re-forecast. But the number is telling the truth. It almost always is. The only way to move it for good is to change the business underneath.