Industries · Consulting
Win the work,staff it well,bill everymilestone.
We build operating systems for consulting firms that connect pipeline, proposals, staffing, engagement delivery, time, expenses and invoicing — designed around how your partners sell and your teams deliver.
- Pipeline & proposals
- Staffing & bench
- Engagement delivery
- Milestones & change requests
- Time & expenses
- Invoicing & WIP
- Knowledge library
- Partner dashboards
01Where consultancies lose margin
Selling and delivering happen in different worlds.
Most consulting firms keep the pipeline in a CRM, staffing in a spreadsheet, delivery in a project tool and finance in accounting — and partners stitch them together in Monday meetings.
01Proposals are won before anyone checks who will deliver them
What happens
A partner closes a six-month engagement for January while the people it was scoped around are already committed to two other clients.
What it costs
Teams are stretched, start dates slip, contractors are brought in at short notice and the margin assumed in the proposal disappears in week one.
With one system
Pipeline opportunities carry their proposed team and start date, so staffing sees weighted demand against real availability before the proposal is signed.
02The bench is invisible until it's expensive
What happens
Staffing lives in a spreadsheet the operations lead updates weekly, and partners only discover who's free by asking around.
What it costs
Consultants sit unbilled between engagements while other teams hire freelancers for skills the firm already has.
With one system
A live staffing schedule by person, skill and week shows bench, over-allocation and upcoming roll-offs, so partners can place people before they go idle.
03Scope creep happens in workshops and never reaches the contract
What happens
A client asks for one more workstream in a steering committee, the team agrees to keep the relationship, and nobody records it as a change.
What it costs
Fixed-fee engagements quietly overrun, budgets are blown by the third month, and the conversation about extra fees comes too late.
With one system
Each engagement tracks budget against actual effort by phase, with change requests logged, priced and approved before the work is done.
04Milestones are delivered but invoices go out weeks later
What happens
Finance waits for the engagement manager to confirm a milestone by email, then builds the invoice from the contract and a timesheet export.
What it costs
Cash arrives late, WIP grows, and some expenses incurred on site are never recharged to the client.
With one system
Milestones, time and expenses sit on the engagement; when a milestone is accepted, the draft invoice is ready for partner approval with recharges attached.
05Every proposal starts from a blank page
What happens
Past methodologies, CVs, case write-ups and pricing sit in individual laptops and old email attachments.
What it costs
Proposals take days to assemble, quality varies by who wrote them, and the firm can't easily show relevant prior work.
With one system
A knowledge library of anonymised case write-ups, approved CVs, methodologies and pricing benchmarks, linked to the engagements they came from.
02Consultancy platform preview
What your consultancy system could look like.
The views a partner, engagement manager, staffing lead and finance team would open every day. Each one is designed per firm in discovery — strategy, operations, technology or specialist advisory.
Illustrative interface with sample data — your system is designed around your service lines, fee models and team.
Illustrative demo · sample dataCan you picture your teams and pipeline on it?
Build your consultancy system03Solutions
The parts of a consultancy system — chosen for your firm.
Sales and delivery see the same future
Pipeline & opportunity tracking
Opportunities from referrals, existing clients and inbound enquiries tracked by stage, value, probability and proposed team — so demand flows straight into staffing.
- Stages with probability weighting
- Proposed team and start date
- Relationship and referral history
- Weighted demand by skill
Sales and delivery see the same future
Pipeline & opportunity tracking
Opportunities from referrals, existing clients and inbound enquiries tracked by stage, value, probability and proposed team — so demand flows straight into staffing.
- Stages with probability weighting
- Proposed team and start date
- Relationship and referral history
- Weighted demand by skill
Not every consultancy needs every module. We scope the ones your operation actually uses, and add the rest when you need them.
04AI inside the system
AI that does the firm's groundwork.
AI in your consultancy system works from your own pipeline, staffing, engagements and knowledge library. It finds, drafts and summarises — partners and engagement managers decide.
AI never decides what the firm recommends to a client, sets prices or commits people to engagements. It drafts from your approved material, and partners review everything before it reaches a client. Staffing changes and invoices need human approval, and confidential client work in the knowledge library is only reused once it has been anonymised and approved.
- 01
Proposal first drafts
Partner reviewsDraft a proposal for a retail cost review, 10 weeks.Assembles a first draft from your approved methodology sections, two relevant anonymised case write-ups and suggested CVs, with a pricing range from similar past engagements — for the partner to shape and price.
- 02
Staffing suggestions
Staffing lead decidesWho could join the clinic group engagement as a data lead?Lists consultants with data skills and healthcare experience who are free in the right weeks, with their current allocation and past engagements — the staffing lead makes the call.
- 03
Meeting and workshop notes
Manager editsSummarise yesterday's steering committee.Turns the notes or transcript into decisions, actions with owners and open risks, and flags a request that sounds like a change in scope so the manager can raise a change request.
- 04
Budget early warnings
Which engagements are at risk of overrunning?Compares effort to date against each phase budget and planned remaining work, and lists engagements likely to overrun before they do, with the phases driving it.
- 05
Knowledge search
Have we done operating-model work for a family business?Finds anonymised case write-ups, deliverable templates and the engagement leads involved, so the team can ask the right colleague rather than start from scratch.
- 06
Plain-language reporting
How much of next quarter's capacity is covered by won and weighted pipeline?Answers from your own staffing and pipeline data, showing coverage by practice and the opportunities behind it.
05A day with ORCHESTR
A busy Monday in the firm, two ways.
- 08:00Staffing already currentConfirmed and pencilled bookings are on the schedule, with this week's bench and over-allocation highlighted.
- 09:30Pipeline against capacityThe pipeline review shows each opportunity's proposed team against real availability by week.
- 11:00Draft from the libraryA first draft is assembled from approved methodology, case write-ups and CVs, ready for the partner.
- 14:00Change request loggedThe extra workstream is logged as a change request with effort and fee impact and sent for client approval.
- 16:30Invoice ready on acceptanceThe client approved milestone 3 in the portal; the draft invoice with expenses waits for partner approval.
- 18:00Dashboard before leavingUtilisation, WIP and engagement margin by practice are on the managing partner's dashboard.
An illustrative day — every system is designed around how your team actually works.
06Integrations
Works with the tools your consultants already use.
Integrations depend on what each provider exposes — we confirm every connection in scoping before committing to it. Names are examples of categories we work with, not partnerships.
- Email & calendar
- Microsoft 365 / OutlookGoogle Workspace
- Documents & collaboration
- SharePoint and OneDriveGoogle DriveMicrosoft Teams or Slack (where available)E-signature tools
- CRM
- HubSpotSalesforceZoho CRMExisting CRM (via API or export)
- Accounting & expenses
- Zoho BooksXeroQuickBooksExpense tools (via API or export)
- Project tools
- Existing project management tools (via API or export)
- Data
- Spreadsheets & exportsBI tools
07How we build your system
Built around your consultancy — not a template.
- 01
Understand your business
We learn how the business actually runs — people, tools, hand-offs and where time is lost — before proposing anything. - 02
Map your workflows
Every workflow is mapped end to end: who does what, when, with which information, and what should happen automatically. - 03
Design your system
Screens, records, permissions and integrations are designed around those workflows, and the scope is agreed in writing. - 04
Build and integrate
We build in stages and connect the tools you keep, so your team sees working software early and gives feedback as we go. - 05
Test and launch
We test with real scenarios, migrate the agreed data, set up roles and access, and onboard the team. - 06
Support and improve
After launch we support the system under an agreed arrangement and extend it as the business changes.
08Why it matters
What changes for the consultancy.
We don't quote savings we haven't measured. In discovery we baseline how your team works today, so improvements can be tracked against your own numbers.
Proposals the firm can deliver
Opportunities carry their proposed team, so partners see capacity before they commit to a start date.A bench you can see
Live staffing by person and week means people are placed before they go idle.Scope that stays agreed
Change requests are logged, priced and approved before extra work begins.Cash that follows delivery
Milestone acceptance triggers a draft invoice, with expenses attached, for partner approval.Reuse instead of reinvention
Approved methodologies, CVs and case write-ups are easy to find for the next proposal.One view of the firm
Pipeline, utilisation, margin and WIP by practice and partner, always current.
09Possible use cases
How different consultancies could use it.
Examples of what we could build — not completed client projects.
Partners selling, teams delivering
Pipeline, proposals from a knowledge library and staffing for a firm of a few dozen consultants, replacing a CRM, a staffing spreadsheet and shared drives.
Long engagements, controlled scope
Multi-phase engagements with effort budgets, change requests, steering committee actions and milestone billing through a client portal.
Consultants and contractors together
Staffing that mixes employees and contractors by skill, time and expense capture across client sites, and margin per engagement including contractor costs.
One firm across Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh
Office-level staffing with cross-office sharing of people, a group-wide pipeline and partner reporting across offices and practices.
FAQs
Consulting firm questions, answered.
Professional services
01We already use a CRM. Does this replace it?
Not necessarily. If your partners like their CRM, we can pull opportunities from it into staffing and delivery so the two finally meet. If the CRM is mostly unused, we can build the pipeline into the same system and migrate what's there.
02How is this different from a project management tool?
Project tools track tasks. A consultancy system connects tasks to the things that drive the firm's economics — who is staffed, how much effort has been spent against the fee, which milestones can be invoiced and what the pipeline needs next quarter.
03Can it handle different fee models on one engagement?
Yes — fixed fees, milestones, time and materials, retainers and success fees, including combinations. Each engagement tracks effort and expenses against whichever model applies.
04How is confidential client work protected?
Access is set per engagement and enforced on the server, so consultants only see the clients they work on. Material only enters the shared knowledge library after it's been anonymised and approved, and hosting and retention are agreed in scoping.
05Will AI write our recommendations?
No. AI drafts proposal sections from your approved material, summarises meetings and finds past work. What the firm recommends to a client, and what it charges, is decided by your partners and consultants.
06Can we include contractors and associates?
Yes. Contractors and associates can be staffed alongside employees, with their own rates and cost, timesheets and limited access to the engagements they work on.
07Can we bring across our existing pipeline and staffing data?
Usually, from your CRM, staffing spreadsheets and accounting exports. We import people, skills, open opportunities, active engagements and budgets, and check the numbers with your finance team before go-live.
08Does it work for a small firm?
Yes. A small consultancy might start with pipeline, staffing and time, then add proposal tools, a client portal and milestone billing as it grows.
09How is a consultancy system priced?
It's quoted after a discovery call, based on the modules, integrations, number of users and offices. Hosting and ongoing support are agreed separately, in writing.
Start here
Let's mapyour consultancy.
Tell us how work moves from first conversation to final invoice today. We'll show you how one system could connect selling, staffing and delivery.
- 01We get back to you to arrange a call.
- 02A focused conversation about how your consultancy runs today.
- 03If there's a fit, a written scope and quote — no obligation.