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Economics · Performance & Turnaround
Identify what value must be protected now, and what must change next.
A rapid, economically disciplined view of revenue quality, margin, cost, cash and capacity when performance has materially deteriorated: calm prioritisation, handled confidentially. This is not insolvency or restructuring advice: if solvency or directors' duties are in question, seek qualified legal, accounting or insolvency advice immediately.
- Stabilise → Diagnose → Recover → Govern
- Confidential by default
- Not insolvency advice
Trusted by established businesses
The constraint
Situations we recognise.
Underperformance rarely announces itself as one clean problem. These are the forms it usually takes: select the ones you are living with.
Every week without an economic baseline, options narrow and cash decides for you. The work is to establish the facts fast, protect what carries the business, and sequence what must change, calmly, and in the right order.
The approach
Calm prioritisation, with the boundary stated first
This is performance consulting for businesses in material difficulty, not insolvency, restructuring or legal advice. The sequence is Stabilise → Diagnose → Recover → Govern: establish which actions cannot wait, build a rapid economic view of where value is made, lost and leaking, prioritise structural recovery, then put a review rhythm around it. Everything is handled confidentially, and the first step is always a triage: if the situation involves solvency, directors' duties, tax, lender enforcement or statutory restructuring, those matters go to qualified specialists immediately (before, not after, the economics work).
What we analyse
The rapid economic baseline
Decisions
Stabilisation now, structural recovery next
Two clocks run at once: immediate actions that protect cash and value in the coming weeks, and structural changes that fix the economics so the problem does not return. These principles govern both.
Protect
Valuable revenue and capability come first
The revenue, customers, people and capability that recovery depends on are identified before any cut is considered: protecting them is the point of the exercise.
Discipline
No indiscriminate cuts
Across-the-board percentage cuts feel decisive and destroy value evenly. Every action is targeted at the baseline's findings, not at a round number.
Sequencing
Reversible before irreversible
Actions that can be undone are taken ahead of ones that cannot. Irreversible decisions (exits, redundancies, contract terminations) wait until the evidence justifies them.
Honesty
Trade-offs stated, not hidden
Every recommendation names what it costs as well as what it saves. A stabilisation action that mortgages the recovery gets called exactly that.
Horizons
Cash actions and economics actions kept separate
Buying time and fixing the business are different workstreams with different owners. Conflating them is how businesses stabilise into a slower decline.
Boundaries
Regulated concerns escalated immediately
Anything touching solvency, directors' duties, tax, employment law or lender enforcement is logged on the escalation register and routed to qualified advisers, never analysed around.
Deliverables
What you receive
- ✓Rapid economic baseline: the business as it economically stands, stated plainly
- ✓Value-leakage map: where margin and cash are being lost, ranked
- ✓Rationalisation analysis: keep, fix or exit options across products, customers and locations
- ✓Cost and revenue opportunity register with trade-offs stated
- ✓Recovery scenarios with explicit assumptions
- ✓30/60/90-day action plan with named owners and milestones
- ✓Benefits tracker: every action measured against what it was meant to deliver
- ✓Escalation register: matters requiring qualified specialist advice, logged and routed
How we work
How the work runs
Triage first, facts fast, immediate decisions separated from structural change, then a governance rhythm so the plan survives contact with the next quarter.
- 01
Urgency and risk triage
We establish what kind of situation this is: what cannot wait, what decision authority exists, and whether any matter belongs with insolvency, legal, tax or lender specialists.
GateIf solvency or directors' duties may be in question, we pause and refer to qualified advisers before any further work.
- 02
Rapid evidence review
Working from the financial and operating evidence you already have (management accounts, sales data, contracts, commitments), we build the rapid economic baseline. No polished data required; labelled estimates beat delayed precision.
- 03
Immediate decisions
The stabilisation moves: actions that protect cash and value in the near term, filtered through the decision principles: reversible first, capability protected, trade-offs stated.
- 04
Structural workstreams
The changes that fix the economics rather than the symptoms: portfolio rationalisation, pricing and revenue-quality repair, cost-structure resizing, each scoped as a workstream with an owner.
- 05
Scenario and ownership planning
Recovery scenarios with explicit assumptions, and a 30/60/90-day plan that names an owner and a milestone for every action, so the plan is executable, not aspirational.
- 06
Recurring review
A governance rhythm: the benefits tracker against plan, actions re-prioritised as evidence lands, and the escalation register reviewed, so momentum survives beyond the first month.
Scope
What this is, and what it isn't
What's included
- A rapid, decision-focused economic baseline across revenue quality, contribution, cash, portfolio, overhead and commitments
- Stabilisation actions separated from structural recovery, each with owners and milestones
- Prioritisation governed by explicit decision principles: protect capability, no indiscriminate cuts, reversible first
- Confidential handling throughout: engagement terms agreed before any sensitive information is shared
- Work alongside your accountant, board and any qualified advisers already engaged
- A recurring review rhythm so the plan is governed, not filed
What this is not
- Insolvency, voluntary administration or safe-harbour advice: that requires a qualified insolvency practitioner
- Restructuring under statutory frameworks, or legal advice of any kind
- Tax advice or tax structuring
- Negotiating with, or representing you to, lenders or creditors
- Business valuation, formal audit or any assurance opinion
- A guarantee of recovery: we establish the economic facts and the best available sequence of actions
- Margin or cash materially deteriorating, not just a soft quarter
- Plans repeatedly missed and credibility eroding
- An expansion or acquisition absorbing cash and attention
- Cost escalation that pricing has not kept pace with
- A demand step-down the cost base has not adjusted to
- Portfolio decisions (keep, fix, exit) that keep being deferred
- Owner, board or lender questions that current reporting cannot answer
- An executive with authority to act, able to share evidence confidentially
Probably not the right fit
- −Situations where solvency or directors' duties are already in question: seek qualified legal, accounting or insolvency advice immediately
- −Businesses seeking formal restructuring, administration or creditor negotiation: that is regulated specialist work
- −Leaders wanting reassurance rather than the economic facts
- −Engagements without executive decision authority: turnaround actions need an empowered owner
- −Businesses unable to share timely financial and operating evidence: the baseline depends on it
Adjacent pathways and specialists
Where the recovery work routes next
The baseline names what deteriorated; recovery workstreams then draw on the specialist analysis each finding justifies, and anything regulated goes to qualified advisers, immediately and explicitly.
Performance & Turnaround Economicsthe stabilise-and-recover entry point
Owns: urgency triage · rapid economic baseline · stabilisation vs structural recovery · 30/60/90-day plan.
Performance & Turnaround EconomicsUnit Economics & Profitability
When it comes into play
The baseline shows contribution leaking, but the decomposition needs to go deeper.
What it owns
Contribution, cost-to-serve and margin analysis at full depth.
Relationship to Performance & Turnaround Economics
The turnaround baseline is rapid by design; this stream does the granular profitability work it points to.
Proof
Selected work.
Payment Processing Cost Reduction. An ecommerce retailer was losing a significant percentage of revenue to payment processing and invoice platform fees. Web Lifter redesigned the entire sales and payment workflow, replacing Stripe and Paycove with a direct Westpac PayWay integration and a custom-built invoicing platform. The new architecture reduced transaction costs, streamlined operations, and delivered immediate profit improvements without requiring any increase in sales volume.
Read the caseWhat clients say
“We can't recommend Web Lifter highly enough … a digital partner who could understand our operations, connect the dots between marketing and backend systems, and deliver real results.”
Questions
Common questions
Urgency & boundaries
No, and the distinction matters. This is performance consulting: economics, prioritisation and recovery planning for a business in difficulty. Insolvency, voluntary administration, safe harbour and statutory restructuring are regulated specialist work. If solvency or directors' duties may be in question, obtain qualified legal, accounting or insolvency advice immediately; we can work alongside those advisers, but never in their place.
It goes on the escalation register: named, logged and routed to qualified advisers straight away. One of our fixed decision principles is that regulated concerns are escalated, never analysed around. The economics work continues only where it remains appropriate.
At the speed the triage says the situation requires. The first step establishes what cannot wait, and immediate cash and value decisions are deliberately separated from the structural workstreams, so urgent actions are not queued behind analysis that can follow.
Confidentiality
The engagement starts with a confidential discussion, and we never ask for sensitive financial documents through the website or before engagement terms are agreed. Once terms are in place, information is shared through channels you control, and the circle of who knows what stays as tight as the work allows.
That is scoped with the sponsor. Triage and the initial baseline can run with a small executive group; the structural workstreams eventually need access to cross-functional leaders, because recovery actions land in their areas. We plan that widening deliberately rather than letting it happen by accident.
Scope & inputs
Four things: an executive with the authority to make decisions, timely financial and operating evidence (management accounts, sales and cost data, polish not required), visibility of contracts and commitments, and access to the cross-functional leaders whose areas the actions will touch.
No, and indiscriminate cost cutting is explicitly against the operating principles. The baseline usually shows that revenue quality, pricing realisation and portfolio cross-subsidies matter as much as cost. Where cost action is needed, it is targeted, reversible-first, and never allowed to remove the capability recovery depends on.
A working plan. The 30/60/90-day actions carry named owners and milestones, the benefits tracker measures each action against what it was meant to deliver, and a recurring review keeps the plan governed. A report that gets filed would be a failure of the engagement's own economics.
If it's not urgent
Probably not. If nothing is materially deteriorating, the Business Economics Diagnostic is the calmer entry point: a broad current-state review at a considered pace, without the triage-led urgency of turnaround work. If your question is how the business would cope with a downturn that hasn't happened yet, the Scenario and Stress Test Starter Workbook on our Sensitivity, Scenario & Stress Testing page is a self-serve place to begin.
Same economic discipline, different clock. The diagnostic reviews a stable business's economics broadly and routes deeper analysis deliberately. This service exists for material deterioration: it opens with an urgency triage, separates the actions that cannot wait, and carries explicit boundaries around insolvency and regulated matters, because in genuine difficulty, sequencing errors are expensive.
When it cannot wait