/01 The practices
Choose a practice to see the detail
Each panel lists the questions the practice answers, the work involved, what you receive and how the fee is usually structured.
Strategy and growth advisory
Where the business should compete, what it should charge, and which growth path the balance sheet can actually carry.
Strategy work at NorthBridge starts with customer and product profitability, because most strategic confusion is really an accounting problem wearing a suit. Once we can show which customers, lines and channels earn their keep, the choices usually become obvious and the argument in the leadership team ends.
- Customer, product and channel profitability analysis
- Competitive and market position assessment
- Pricing architecture and quoting discipline
- Value proposition and offer design
- Three year plan with capital requirement
- Scenario modelling and sensitivity testing
- Strategic initiative sequencing and owners
- Board level strategy facilitation
Operations and performance management
How work actually moves through the company, where it stalls, and what the delay is costing every month.
We map the real process rather than the documented one, usually by walking it with the people who run it. The gap between the two is where most of the recoverable margin sits. Then we rebuild the planning and review rhythm so improvements are held rather than celebrated once and lost.
- End to end process mapping and bottleneck analysis
- Capacity, scheduling and demand planning
- Procurement review and vendor renegotiation
- Inventory, waste and rework reduction
- Standard operating procedure development
- Key performance indicator design and dashboards
- Weekly management operating rhythm
- Interim operations leadership where a seat is empty
Financial planning and CFO advisory
Seeing next month before it arrives, and being able to prove the number to a lender, a board or a buyer.
Bookkeeping tells you what happened. This practice is about what happens next: rolling cash forecasts, unit economics that hold up under scrutiny, budgets built from operational drivers rather than last year plus five percent, and reporting that survives contact with a credit committee.
- Thirteen week rolling cash flow forecasting
- Unit economics and contribution margin modelling
- Annual budget and quarterly reforecast
- Management reporting pack design
- Fractional chief financial officer support
- Lender, investor and board reporting
- Cost structure and overhead review
- Transaction readiness and diligence preparation
Organisation and leadership
Structure, roles, pay and the coaching that turns senior staff into managers who can decide without escalating.
Growing companies usually keep the structure that fit them two sizes ago. Everything routes through the owner, good people leave because there is nowhere to go, and the payroll rises faster than output. This practice fixes the shape of the organisation and then develops the people inside it.
- Organisational design and span of control review
- Role definition and accountability mapping
- Compensation banding and incentive design
- Hiring plan and recruitment support
- Performance management framework
- Management and delegation coaching
- Succession and key person risk planning
- Culture and engagement diagnostics
Market entry and expansion
A new territory, a new line, a second location or an acquisition, tested before the capital is committed.
Expansion failures are rarely caused by the market. They are caused by a business that could not absorb the second thing while still doing the first one well. We test both sides: whether the opportunity is real, and whether your current operation can carry it.
- Feasibility study and market sizing
- Site selection and location analysis
- Entry model and go to market plan
- Capital requirement and funding options
- Acquisition screening and commercial diligence
- Integration planning after a purchase
- First ninety day execution support
- Post entry performance review
Risk, compliance and governance
The controls, contracts and reporting that a lender, insurer, auditor or buyer expects a properly run company to have.
Governance work is unglamorous until the moment it is not: a diligence request, an insurance claim, a key person leaving with the only copy of a supplier agreement. We put the framework in place while it is still cheap and voluntary.
- Contract review and commercial terms register
- Internal financial controls and segregation of duties
- Policy framework and employee handbook
- Risk register and mitigation planning
- Business continuity and key person risk
- Board structure, cadence and reporting
- Regulatory and licensing compliance review
- Pre sale governance and diligence readiness
/02 The method
Diagnose, design, deploy, hand over
Same four phases in every practice. What changes is the depth and the length, both agreed in writing before the first invoice.
Diagnose
Two to three weeks reading the ledgers, contracts and system exports, and interviewing people at every level. You receive a findings memo naming the three problems that matter most, each with a monthly cost attached.
Design
A plan short enough to be read in one sitting: target operating model, sequenced initiatives, named owners, budget, and the specific measures that will show whether it is working.
Deploy
We work beside your managers rather than in a separate workstream. Weekly reviews, unblocking, supplier and lender negotiation, and interim cover only where a seat is genuinely empty.
Hand over
Documented processes, a maintained dashboard and coached managers. The scope names the exit condition, so both sides know what finished looks like before we start.
/03 Engagement formats
Four ways to buy the work
Diagnostic
A fixed fee, fixed scope assessment ending in a written findings memo and a costed recommendation. Yours to act on with or without us.
- Two to three weeks
- From $4,800
Project
A defined deliverable with a fixed fee and a delivery date: a pricing rebuild, an organisational design, a feasibility study, a controls framework.
- 4 to 16 weeks
- From $9,500
Advisory retainer
Ongoing counsel and oversight at a monthly rate, in one of three published tiers, with a stated minimum term and thirty days notice after it.
- 3, 6 or 12 month minimum
- From $2,750 monthly
Interim management
We hold an operating seat for a defined period, with a named advisor, agreed authority limits and a written handover plan from day one.
- 3 to 12 months
- Day rate from $1,350
Not sure which practice you need?
That is what the diagnostic is for. Describe the symptom, and we will tell you which practice owns it, including when the honest answer is that you do not need us at all.