Billed hours, utilization, top-line revenue — the numbers that feel like a good year. Realization, collections, write-offs, the cost of the capital you've got locked up, the margin under every engagement — the numbers that decide whether it was.
Insight Horizons builds the systems that put the numbers that actually pay in front of the partners who can move them — the data foundation underneath, the pipelines that keep it current, and the analytics on top. So the scoreboard your firm watches is the one that reflects the cash it keeps. Insight, then action, then performance.
Illustrative structure, not a benchmark.
The floor beneath the floor is margin — what's left after what it cost to earn.
We come out of the numbers themselves — realization, margin, working capital, forecasting. Not a generalist BI shop learning your business on your budget.
Data foundation, automated pipelines, and executive analytics — engineered together as one system, not a dashboard bolted onto a spreadsheet.
Realization tells you what you kept of what you billed. It says nothing about what the work cost to earn. Even the cash you keep isn't profit — not until you subtract the loaded cost of the people who delivered it, and the firm it takes to keep them. Most firms, and most of the tools they buy, never put cost and revenue on the same line. This is the layer that does.
Realization is only the first drop. The two beneath it — the cost of delivery and the overhead it carries — are larger, and invisible on a revenue report.
At healthy realization, an engagement can still be underwater once delivery cost is loaded. We surface the revenue riding on work that doesn't pay — named and ranked, not averaged into a number that hides it.
When cost outruns price, the top line can climb for years while contribution margin quietly slips. A report that only tracks revenue never shows it — this one makes the divergence the headline.
Leverage inversion — expensive people on cheap work — reads like a cost problem but is a staffing one. Every hour re-staffed down the pyramid is margin recovered, with no change to the fee.
Figures shown are illustrative, developed on representative data to show the method — not a benchmark or a result any particular firm should expect.
This is what changes when the firm stops grading itself on effort and top line and starts on what actually reaches the bank — category by category, from where most firms sit today to where a working system puts them.
Billed hours and utilization feel like a good year. Realization, collections and the cash you actually keep tell you whether it was — so those are the numbers we put at the center.
Which clients cost more to serve than they pay, which partners write down the most, which engagements bleed — named and ranked, not averaged into a number that hides them.
DSO, aged WIP, write-offs and the cost of the capital you're financing for free — the leaks between a billed dollar and a banked one, finally measured.
Where the number is heading, which lever actually moves it, and what it costs to leave it alone. The story behind the figure, not just the figure.
Realization, margin, cash conversion — each broken down to the person who can move it and tracked over time, so an improvement is a habit, not a quarter.
A real data model on the stack you already own — documented, maintainable, and yours. No black box, no key-person risk, no platform lock-in.
Three stages, in order — insight, then action, then performance. Each one produces something your leadership can use before the next begins, so you are never funding a build on faith.
We evaluate what you already run and what it would take to go further — the systems in place, what still needs building, and which of the numbers that actually pay you're flying blind on today. You leave with a findings brief and a prioritized roadmap.
We build the system that keeps those numbers in front of the people who can move them — the data layer, the automated pipelines, and analytics scoped to the decisions your leadership actually makes. Delivered in modules, each useful on its own.
A standing monthly review against the same numbers, so the improvement holds after the novelty wears off — and so the next question gets answered without scoping a new project.
The Performance Assessment is a fixed-scope evaluation of your data and reporting. We look at what you already run, which of the numbers that actually pay you can't see today, and what a purpose-built system would be worth. Read-only, delivered as a written brief and a working session — and the timeline is agreed before we begin, so nothing is open-ended.
A thirty-minute conversation, no deck. If the systems you already run answer the question, we'll tell you that too.