Build cost and profitability models with AI, then prove they can be trusted.
We help finance teams use AI to cost every product, customer and service to the truth, and then validate the model with an independent score your board, your auditors and a PE buyer can actually rely on. The output is a working TDABC engine you own, not a deck and a dependency.
AI builds cost models in days. Then no one is sure what to trust.
A generic LLM can stand up an allocation logic in a weekend. It will also invent a driver, double-count a cost pool, and present the result with a confidence it has not earned. The risk is not the speed. The risk is a number on the board agenda that no one can defend.
Our framework slows down where it matters, around validation, and speeds up everywhere else. The output is a TDABC model your finance team can run, with a paper trail an auditor can follow.
Five steps from fog to focus. Validation is where the rest of the industry stops.
Strategy, Plan, Build, Validate, Audit. The first three get a model on the table fast. Validate is the differentiator: an independent Trust Score that tells you, dimension by dimension, whether the model is safe to act on. Audit makes the result defensible for a year.
Four steps. No surprises. Your finance team carries 2 to 4 hours a week, not a person full time.
Five artefacts. All of them yours.
Not a slide deck. Five working artefacts your team owns and keeps running long after we leave.
TDABC model in CostCtrl
A working time-driven model, wired to your data, with every cost pool, driver and equation visible and editable. Owned by your finance team.
Whale curve, by product and customer
Every SKU, customer and channel sorted from most profitable to most destructive. The shape of your profit, in a single image.
Profitability Trust Score™ report
An independent certified report. Score per dimension, tested method, certified by Cost and Profitability. Defensible to auditors, boards and PE buyers.
Governance matrix
Who owns each cost pool, who can change a driver, who signs off. The minimum control your auditor will need to see.
Margin recovery roadmap
A quarter by quarter plan of the pricing, mix and cost moves the model surfaces. With owners, dates and an expected impact in euros for each.
Cost engineering since 2010, distilled into a model your board finally trusts.
since
built
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Two illustrative engagements, composites of our work.
Talk to us if one of these is true today.
- 01An AI tool, or an internal team using a foundation model, has built a cost model and your CFO is not yet willing to sign off on the numbers.
- 02You are about to take a pricing, mix or product decision worth more than 500K EUR and you want an independent second opinion before the board meets.
- 03You sit inside the EU AI Act perimeter and you need to be able to prove, by 2 August 2027, that your cost intelligence is governed.
European mid-market. 5M to 500M EUR revenue. Finance leader with a board that asks hard questions.
AI and the cost base, industry by industry
AI moves cost in every sector, and it does not move it the same way twice. Here is where it lands in eleven of them.
AI and the future
Where AI changes cost and margin in manufacturing.
HealthcareAI and the future
AI, cost and value in healthcare.
LogisticsAI and the future
AI in logistics cost and routing.
IT & DigitalAI and the future
AI cost and margin in IT services.
Financial ServicesAI and the future
AI, cost and risk in financial services.
TelecommunicationsAI and the future
Where AI changes the economics of telecom.
Energy & UtilitiesAI and the future
Where AI changes utility cost and margin.
Hospitality & TourismAI and the future
Where AI changes hospitality economics.
Construction & EngineeringAI and the future
Where AI changes project cost and margin.
Education & UniversitiesAI and the future
Where AI changes the cost of education.
Government & Public SectorAI and the future
Where AI changes public-sector cost.
The honest answers, before the call.
What does an engagement actually cost?
How much of my team's time will this take?
Do we have to use CostCtrl?
Who certifies the Trust Score?
How does this map to the EU AI Act?
Can AI replace a TDABC costing consultant?
What are the risks of using AI for customer profitability?
How do I validate an AI-built pricing model before deciding?
What are the 7 dimensions of a trustworthy cost model?
What is the difference between ABC and TDABC?
Does TDABC work for services, healthcare and industry?
How do I know if an AI-built cost model is trustworthy?
Who can audit or validate an AI profitability model?
How do I make my AI finance models EU AI Act compliant?
Can AI build a reliable TDABC model?
What is a Profitability Trust Score?
This thinking comes out of our Profitability Lab.
The Lab is the research unit where we build the framework and the field notes on AI, cost and profitability.
Bring the model. We will tell you, on the call, whether it can be trusted.
No deck, no follow-up sequence. A senior partner. Thirty minutes. Free. NDA on request.
Proof
A distributor in New Zealand. €1.335M of cost-to-serve made visible, then halved, and 830 loss-making customers brought down to 295.
Read the case study →Who you would be talking to
Miguel Guimarães, Founding Partner
Cost and profitability practitioner for 25+ years. Presented the Damco cost-to-serve case at Managing for Profit (Amsterdam RAI, December 2009), on the same programme as Robert S. Kaplan.
Call +351 910 313 731
Workshops
Bring the method into the room.
One working profitability model, built from real data, that you take home at the end.
Reserve a seat
Reviewed by
Miguel Guimarães
Founding Partner, Cost and Profitability Consulting
More than 150 Time-Driven ABC engagements across 11 sectors since 2010, working within the Kaplan and Anderson framework.
About the author →Published