Evidence, not promises.
In short. Every engagement on this page produced a working TDABC model built on the client's own data, not a slide deck. Six industries, five countries, one method: attribute cost to where it is actually consumed, then let the client decide. Identities are withheld; the numbers and the method are real.
Cost and Profitability Consulting · TDABC on the client's own data · Identities protected
Consulting websites are full of adjectives. This page is full of models.
Each case below follows the same discipline. A structured operating model of the business. The data the client already had. Cost attributed with TDABC down to the customer, product, route or patient. And a model the client owns and runs after we leave.
The industries change. The blind spot rarely does.
A P&L healthy in aggregate, silent on the detail.
TDABC showed 830 of 1,951 customers contributing negatively: EUR 1.335M in total. The client re-priced, refocused and consolidated orders. The loss-making cohort has roughly halved.
EUR 670K of negative contribution recovered.
Read the study → Logistics · Saudi Arabia525,000 shipment rows and no cost-to-serve view.
We built a TDABC model that priced every route and client at true cost, and drew the operator's first whale curve.
Cost-to-serve by route and client, from raw shipment data.
Read the study → Manufacturing · UAEPress, anodising and fabrication, each with its own capacity economics.
TDABC put a true cost on every profile and finish, and reordered the product mix conversation.
Margin by product and finish, at the level pricing decisions are made.
Read the study → Retail · Supermarket chainCategory margins looked fine until promotions and handling were counted.
A cost-to-serve model showed which categories and customer segments actually paid their way.
Promo economics made visible, category by category.
Read the study → Healthcare · Dialysis unitThe true cost per patient across the full treatment pathway.
A TDABC study measuring cost per patient across the pathway. Published in the APDH hospital magazine, referenced, and repeatable in other units.
Published cost per patient.
Read the study → Tourism & PortsVessels, berths and crews are capacity. Most of the year they are not full.
Capacity costing separated the cost of doing the work from the cost of being ready to do it, season by season.
The price of seasonality, finally on one page.
Read the study →What should you expect from a case study?
Not testimonials. Each study answers four questions: what the client could not see, how the model was built, what the client decided to do, and what changed. Where a client has approved a figure, we publish it. Where they have not, we describe the shape of the result and leave the bragging out.
One number is worth stating up front. In the New Zealand engagement, the first model made EUR 1.335M of hidden negative contribution visible. The client has since roughly halved it. That is what "evidence" means here.
Why do the same problems keep appearing?
Because ERPs report cost by account, and money is lost by activity. General ledger categories cannot tell you what a small order, a promoted SKU or an off-peak sailing really costs. TDABC can, because it starts from time and capacity rather than from allocation keys.
The pattern across all six: a minority of customers or products builds well over 100% of profit, and a long tail quietly gives it back. The whale curve looks different in every industry. It exists in all of them.
How were these models built?
The same four steps, every time.
Map the operating model
Revenue streams, activities, cost pools, objects of cost.
Use the data the client already has
ERP extracts, shipment logs, till data, treatment records. No replatforming.
Attribute cost with TDABC
Capacity cost rates and time equations turn transactions into cost-to-serve.
Hand the model over
It lives in CostCtrl and the client's finance team runs it.
The model is the deliverable. The report is a by-product.
SIX ENGAGEMENTS, ONE METHOD
Fair questions.
- Are these real clients?
- Yes. Identities are withheld at the clients' request, and every published figure has been approved by the client it belongs to. Where a client has not approved a figure, we do not publish one.
- Why are some numbers missing?
- Because we do not invent them. A case study without a number is still a case study; a case study with an invented number is fiction.
- Can I speak to a reference client?
- Sometimes, by mutual arrangement and depending on the industry. Ask during a scoping call and we will tell you honestly what is possible.
- How long does an engagement like these take?
- Most first models are built in weeks, not quarters, because they run on data the client already has. The multi-year part is what the client does with the model afterwards.
- Do you only work in these six industries?
- No. These are the studies we can currently show. The method transfers to any business where cost is consumed by activities: services, public sector, non-profit, manufacturing of any kind.
Which study looks most like your business?
A 30-minute call to map your cost-to-serve. A senior partner. No preparation, no pitch.
- Reply
- Within one working day
- Who answers
- A partner, not a bot
- Commitment
- None
Who you would be talking to
Miguel Guimarães, Founding Partner
Cost and profitability practitioner for 25+ years. Lectured alongside Professor Robert S. Kaplan at the CFO conference in Amsterdam (2009).
Call +351 910 313 731
