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Longacre

Consulting services

Five practices. No general consulting.

Each practice exists because we kept being called for the same problem and decided to get properly good at it. Every one is led by a partner who has run the function before they advised on it, and every one ends with a client-owned operating rhythm rather than a report.

i

Margin Recovery

10–16 weeks · Partner + 2

  • Cost-to-serve
  • Price architecture
  • Procurement reset

Gross margin has slipped three quarters running and nobody agrees on why.

We work from invoices and freight bills rather than the standard-cost model — which is usually where the error was introduced. Fixes are then sequenced in the order they actually pay: price first, procurement second, structural work last rather than first, where it flatters the plan.

What you get

  • Cost-to-serve model at SKU and customer level, built in your systems
  • Tiered price architecture with named exceptions and approval rules
  • Customer-by-customer negotiation pack, with walk-away positions agreed in advance
  • A commission plan that pays for the behaviour the new price book needs

When not to call us

Not for a one-off price rise. If the commission plan does not change, the price book reverts within two quarters.

ii

Post-Acquisition Integration

6–9 months · Partner + 3

  • Integration office
  • Synergy realisation
  • Org design

The deal closed, day one went fine, and month five is chaos.

The integration office reports to the chief executive and the deal sponsor jointly, because those two rarely want the same thing at the same speed. Synergies are tracked against the model the board approved, not the one that was marketed.

What you get

  • Integration office with a single ranked plan, owned by named client executives
  • Synergy register reconciled to the approved deal model and to the management accounts
  • Day-one-to-day-200 sequencing, ordered by revenue risk rather than by function
  • Organisation design and the difficult conversations that go with it

When not to call us

Not for deals still in diligence. We do not write synergy cases we might later be paid to deliver.

iii

Operating Model Redesign

12–20 weeks · Partner + 2

  • Spans & layers
  • Decision rights
  • Shared services

Headcount has grown faster than revenue for two years running.

This is the work most likely to be resisted internally, so we do it with the leadership team in the room rather than presented back to them. Spans, layers and decision rights are agreed by the people who have to live inside them.

What you get

  • Decision-rights map with current and target cycle times
  • Span-and-layer model with the cost and headcount implications made explicit
  • Target operating model, including what moves to shared services and what does not
  • A transition plan sequenced so no function is leaderless at quarter end

When not to call us

Not for headcount reduction with a target already set. We will not reverse-engineer a design to justify a number.

iv

Supply Chain & Network

8–14 weeks · Partner + 2

  • Network design
  • Inventory policy
  • S&OP cadence

Service levels and working capital are being traded against each other with no model behind it.

Service level and working capital are the same decision; treating them separately is how businesses optimise one against the other by accident. The deliverable is a model your planners maintain after we leave.

What you get

  • Network model with footprint options costed to cash, not only to EBITDA
  • Inventory policy by SKU class, with the service-level trade-off stated explicitly
  • Supplier concentration and dual-sourcing assessment
  • A monthly sales-and-operations cadence your planners run without us

When not to call us

Not for clients who want the answer without the model. That answer has a shelf life of one season.

v

Performance Turnaround

3–12 months · Partner-led, scaled to the situation

  • 13-week cash
  • Lender reporting
  • Stabilisation

Covenants are close and the board wants a plan with dates on it.

We take operational authority where the board grants it, and we say plainly when a business needs a different kind of help than ours. Fee-at-risk from day one, because this is where a client can least afford to be wrong about us.

What you get

  • Thirteen-week direct cash-flow model, maintained weekly by your finance team
  • Ranked stabilisation register: cash impact, owner, date, and what it costs to stop
  • Lender and board reporting pack, issued on the same day each week
  • Refinancing or restructuring support through to signature

When not to call us

Not for situations below about six weeks of liquidity. There the useful advice is legal, not operational.

06 — Engagement

Four phases, in this order, every time.

How an engagement runs, in the order it runs. The first phase is fixed-fee and ends at a point where stopping costs you nothing further.

A typical 30-week engagement
A typical engagement: four weeks diagnostic, six design, eighteen mobilise, two handover — with a stop point at the end of the diagnostic.4w6w18w2wstop point — about 1 engagement in 9 ends here
The diagnostic is fixed-fee
Three to four weeks, priced before we start. It ends with a written finding and a decision point where stopping is a legitimate outcome.
A fifth to two-fifths is at risk
Contingent on impact your finance function verifies, against a baseline agreed in writing. On turnarounds it is at risk from day one.
No retainers, no extensions by default
Median duration fourteen weeks. No partner here has an incentive tied to extending one. If your team can run it from here, we say so.
We come back and check
Two audits at month three and six, included in the fee, reported to the board whichever way the numbers read.

07 — Sectors

Where we have enough depth to be useful.

We take work in five sectors and turn down enquiries outside them, including ones we would like to have.

Engagements by sector · 2019–2024
Engagements by sector: industrial manufacturing 31%, consumer and retail 24%, healthcare delivery 18%, logistics 15%, agri and food 12%.Industrial manufacturing31%Consumer & retail24%Healthcare delivery18%Logistics & distribution15%Agri & food processing12%

  • Industrial Manufacturing

    Multi-plant footprints, capex sequencing, OEE recovery, and the make-versus-buy calls that set a decade of cost structure.

    Auto components · Building materials · Speciality chemicals

  • Consumer & Retail

    Trade spend nobody can reconcile, assortment economics, and cold-chain distribution where margin dies in the last 40 kilometres.

    Packaged foods · Household goods · Multi-format retail

  • Healthcare Delivery

    Throughput and theatre utilisation, diagnostics network design, and the clinical governance that makes generic advice unusable here.

    Hospital groups · Diagnostics networks · Day-care chains

  • Logistics & Distribution

    Line-haul design, last-mile cost per drop, 3PL contract structure, and warehouse labour models that survive a peak.

    3PL · Express & parcel · B2B distribution

  • Agri & Food Processing

    Procurement at the farm gate, yield loss before the pack-house, and the seasonal working capital swings that wreck healthy businesses.

    Spices & plantation · Seafood export · Edible oils

08 — What we decline

Work we will not take.

A firm that does everything is telling you it has no practice at all. These are the four things we are asked for most often and decline.

Diligence on deals we may integrate
We do not write synergy cases we might later be paid to deliver. The conflict corrupts both numbers.
Sectors we do not know
A partner who has not run a plant cannot usefully challenge a plant manager.
Systems implementation
We will specify what a system has to do and hold the integrator to it, but we take no fee from either side.
Strategy without a delivery phase
If nobody owns the execution, the document is the expensive part of doing nothing.

09 — Questions

What prospective clients ask first.

Who actually turns up?
A partner and two principals. All ran the function being fixed before they advised on it. No analyst pyramid.
How big does a business need to be?
Between $40M and $900M in revenue — where one operating decision still moves the whole P&L.
Do you work for private equity?
Around 41% of fee revenue. We report to sponsor and management jointly, on the same pack, and carry one version of the numbers.
Can we speak to your clients?
Named references go directly to prospective clients. The people who give them are the operators we worked beside.
How do we start?
Three lines by email. A partner replies within two working days, with a call or the name of a better-suited firm.

10 — Enquiries

Tell us which of these it is. Or that it is none of them.

A partner reads every enquiry and replies within two working days — with a first call, or with the name of a firm better placed to take it.

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