A decision and execution layer for firms that sell projects.

Petalo builds one forecast from the systems you already use for sales, delivery and finance. Then it takes out anything your own data shows won’t happen, like people booked during their leave or won work nobody’s staffed, and tells you who can fix each one. What’s left is Expected, the number to run your quarter on.

Talk to us How Expected works

Q3 revenue, an example

Q3 is expected at $11.0M against a budget of $12.0M, $1.0M short. The forecast says $12.4M.

Forecast, if every assumption holds$12.4M
Booked over approved leaveRe-plan the weeks · Delivery lead−$0.3M
A fixed fee burning hours faster than its scopeRe-scope with the client · Practice lead−$0.4M
Clients billing less than they are scheduled forClose the billing gap · Finance−$0.2M
Won work nobody is staffed on yetStaff it or move the start · Resourcing−$0.5M
Expected$11.0M

$1.0M short of budget

Illustrative numbers.

Where Expected fits in

Budget

What you committed to.

Forecast

What your numbers say will happen if every assumption holds, built up from pipeline, projects, people and schedules.

Expected

The forecast, minus what your data shows won’t happen.

Actual

What actually happened.

Most forecasting tools compare the forecast to the budget and tell you you’re on track. Petalo compares Expected to the budget instead, and lists what makes up the gap: people booked during approved leave, a fixed-fee project using hours faster than planned, clients who bill less than they’re scheduled for, work you’ve won but haven’t staffed. Each of these is a rule you can see and switch off.

Expected is worked out from what your people, contracts and clients can actually deliver, rather than by knocking a percentage off the forecast. Each reason comes with a suggested fix.

How a week with Petalo works

  1. Forecast

    One forecast across your pipeline, projects, people and finance, pulled from the systems you already use.

  2. Brief

    A short written summary of where the quarter is off and why.

  3. Decide

    Your leadership team decides which suggested moves to take. Every move you take on gets an owner and a due date.

  4. Execute

    Each move and its tasks go to the person responsible.

  5. Learn

    When the month closes, Petalo checks each decision against what actually happened.

What it looks like

These screens show a made-up sample firm. Every client, person and number in them is invented.

Why each project is off track

Projects are grouped by client. Each one shows its status and the main reason it’s off, in plain words, like “a fixed fee worth less by the hour every week”.

Petalo’s Projects screen: a sample firm’s projects grouped by client, each with a status mark and its worst reason in plain words

What you could do about it

The moves Petalo suggests, grouped by what they would change, with the money at stake. Your team decides which to take, keeps an eye on them, and later sees whether each one worked.

Petalo’s Plays screen: proposed moves grouped by lever, such as scope burn, bill rate and over-booked hours, each with the value at stake

Ask Petra from any screen

Her panel opens next to whatever you’re looking at. Here it’s a table of how much of their scheduled time each person actually delivered.

Petra’s panel open beside the People screen’s realization table, with suggested questions and a box to ask by text or voice

Petra explains the numbers

Ask Petra about your firm’s numbers, by typing or out loud, and she answers in plain English and shows where each number came from. The numbers themselves come from Petalo’s engine, so what she tells you matches what’s on the screen.

Will we hit Q3?

Q3 revenue, running total

Petra

Probably not. Q3 is expected at $11.0M against a budget of $12.0M. The forecast says $12.4M, but four things take $1.4M off it, and the biggest is won work nobody is staffed on yet ($0.5M). Staffing that work before it starts would close half the gap.

From the Q3 forecast and its four named reasons.

An example using the numbers from the top of the page.

Why not just build this with AI?

You can connect an AI model to your CRM and ask it questions. What it can’t tell you is what your firm was forecasting three weeks ago, or whether last month’s decisions paid off, because nobody wrote that down. Petalo starts keeping that record in your first week.

You can see why the forecast won’t hold

Every gap between the forecast and Expected comes from a named rule. You can read each one and switch it off if it doesn’t apply to your firm.

It keeps a record of every week’s forecast

Petalo saves the schedule, pipeline and forecast every week. Most systems overwrite them, so this is often the first time a firm can see what changed and how accurate its forecasts have been.

It checks whether decisions worked

Every move has an owner and a due date. After the month closes, Petalo records whether it worked, and over time that becomes your firm’s track record.

Petra only sees agreed numbers

Each number has one agreed definition and is checked against your source files at every month-end close. Sensitive data like pay is kept away from Petra.

It gets more useful every week

Each week you run Petalo adds to a history you can’t go back and recreate later.

Who it’s for

We built Petalo for partner-led consulting and systems integration firms, especially ones doing fixed-fee or outcome-based work, where missing a quarter hurts the most.

It’s meant for the CEO or managing partner, the head of delivery, practice leads, the head of sales and finance. It works from exports of the systems you already use for delivery, sales, finance and people, and doesn’t replace any of them.

  • Will we hit the quarter?
  • Where is margin leaking?
  • Can we staff what we sold?
  • What should we do this week, and who owns it?

See the forecast Petalo would run for your firm

Tell us a little about your firm and we’ll set up a call. You can also email us at info@petalo.ai.