The targeted diagnostic
1 named process. Your own records.
You already know which process is bleeding — invoices that follow the truck by a week, payment chased from a spreadsheet, approvals that crawl. You just don’t have the hands to fix it. The Targeted Diagnostic takes the process you name and verifies it on your own records — typically one to two weeks: what it costs per day, the target state, and the build plan. You see the numbers before you decide whether it was worth the fee.
The rule
We never build straight from a self-diagnosis.
Plenty of shops will build whatever you ask for. That’s exactly the problem: the stated problem often isn’t the real one, and an automated wrong step is just a faster wrong step. Your hypothesis is where the reading starts — it’s never the spec.
So the verification pass runs before anything is built. The reading has to be allowed to come back with “your real leak is one step upstream” — or with “this is not worth building” — and the fee at risk is what makes both sayable. That verification is the difference between buying a build and buying an answer.
Three honest outcomes
- ConfirmedThe process you named is the right leak. Here's what it costs per day, the target state, and the build plan.
- RedirectedThe leak is real, and the reading found a larger one upstream or downstream of where you pointed. The plan targets what the records say, and says so.
- Not worth buildingThe reading says the cash case isn't there. Said plainly, with the math — the fee at risk is what makes this outcome survivable for you and credible from us.
The four steps
You know the shape before you book.
Four steps, typically one to two weeks start to readout — stated as a range on purpose, because your calendar is real. We need the one or two people who actually run the process for the interviews and the design session — the rest of the load is ours.
- Step 1
Baseline the process
Records in for the named lane. One process reading: the clock on every hand-off, the stuck forms, the named step priced at the daily flow. Desk work.
- Step 2
Interviews
The one or two people who actually run the process — where the work happens versus where it's documented. About an hour each.
- Step 3
Design
One working session with those same people: validate the reading against what they live, design the target state.
- Step 4
Verification readout
The verdict, the numbers, and the build plan — walked with the owner/CFO. The fee is at risk until this session.
Who this is for
Three things have to be true. All three are published.
- 01The process moves cashQuoting, order entry, invoicing, collections follow-up, change-order capture, purchasing and PO chasing, payment runs, inventory visibility. If it shows up in working capital or operating cash flow, it's on our lane.
- 02Someone does it by hand todayA controller, an office manager, a clerk — keying invoices, chasing payment, shepherding approvals. That person is both the proof the process exists and the one who helps us read it.
- 03You invoice B2B on net termsThe reading prices days against dollars owed, so it needs invoices with a due date and a gap between shipping and getting paid. Point-of-sale businesses have neither.
And the polite no, up front: we only work the processes that move cash. A marketing chatbot, a shop-floor system, an HR workflow — if it doesn’t show up in working capital or operating cash flow, we’re the wrong shop, and we’ll say so in one sentence instead of a fee.
What you get
One verification readout, five sections, yours to keep either way.
Every figure computed from your own records, with the math shown — the same discipline as the full Diagnostic, scoped to the one process you named.
- 01
The process baseline
The named process read end to end on your trailing twelve months: the clock on every hand-off, where the stuck forms, and the named step priced at the daily flow — with the math shown.
- 02
The verdict
Confirmed, redirected, or not worth building — in dollars and days, stated as directional ranges rather than false precision, because you'll check this math, and it's written to survive that.
- 03
The target-state workflow
How the process should actually run, drawn beside how it runs today — designed with the people who run it in the design session, so what you get back is something they already agreed to.
- 04
The fix, specified as a product
Who owns it, the least clever mechanism that holds, the metric it will be verified on, and the control that keeps it working after we leave. Nothing we build ships without one.
- 05
The build plan — or the honest don't
What building it takes under the month-to-month partnership, priced before you commit. And when the numbers say the case isn't there, the plan says so instead.
Terms
The fee is at risk until you have seen the verdict.
- 01A fixed feeAgreed before any work starts — one bounded verification pass, no hourly meter, no change orders. You know the number when you book; we scope it to your entity rather than publish a figure that would be wrong for half the companies reading this.
- 02At risk until the verification readoutYou see the reading — including a redirect or an honest don't-build — before you decide whether it was worth the fee. If it wasn't, you don't pay it. That's the whole clause.
- 03The build bills from day oneUnder the same month-to-month partnership at thirty days' notice, priced in the build plan before you commit. Nothing is bundled in — you came for the build, so the risk reversal here is the fee itself, not a free sample of the thing you asked for.
Explicitly not included
One process. That’s the product.
- The other four leaks — nothing here ranks them
- The full leak map and opportunity map
- The whole-cycle baseline
- Anything outside the process you named
A single process that moved a number tends to raise its own question — what’s the rest of the cycle worth? The full Cash Conversion Diagnostic reads every lane and ranks everything found in one map. That’s the one sentence of it this page carries.
Name the process. We’ll tell you what it costs per day.
Typically one to two weeks, a fixed fee at risk until the readout, and a verdict you can hold us to either way.