A decision and execution layer for firms that sell projects

See the miss while you can still fix it.

Petalo tells your firm what it will actually land, why, which move closes the gap, and whether last month’s moves worked. It runs every week on the systems you already use.

Talk to us See how it 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.

Forecastwhat the firm booked
$12.4M
Booked over leaveRe-plan the weeks · Delivery lead
−$0.3M
Fixed fee over scopeRe-scope it · Practice lead
−$0.4M
Billing below scheduleClose the billing gap · Finance
−$0.2M
Won work not staffedStaff it or move it · Resourcing
−$0.5M
Expectedwhat can be shown to hold
$11.0M
Budgetthe commitment
$12.0M

$1.0M short of budget

Illustrative numbers.

The week you just had

Overrun forming

A fixed-fee project is on pace for 450 hours against 300. It’s week 6, and the invoice goes out in week 12.

Staffing collision

The same architect was committed to two clients for the same two weeks. Nobody caught it until both project managers called.

Bench nobody saw

Two consultants roll off in three weeks with nothing sold behind them.

Invoice gone quiet

A client hasn’t acknowledged the last two invoices. Your finance lead noticed 47 days in.

RFP nobody budgeted for

A strong RFP landed and nobody scoped the hours to answer it. It either gets done poorly or it eats into delivery.

All of it was in your data. Nobody had put it together.

Problems show up early

By the time a problem is obvious, it has been visible as a pattern for weeks. Nobody ran the query.

Commitments are made in different rooms

Sales, delivery and staffing each commit on their own. They only collide once the fix is already expensive.

How a week with Petalo works

  1. Forecast

    Each week’s close freezes what the firm believes, and why, across pipeline, projects, people and finance.

  2. Brief

    Petra reads the close and tells you what changed, before Monday.

  3. Decide

    Leadership takes or declines each suggested move. Every move you take on gets an owner and a due date.

  4. Execute

    Owners follow through on the moves and their tasks.

  5. Score

    When the month closes, each move is scored against what was believed when it was made.

The new Monday morning routine

Every Monday the leadership team opens one page: whether you’ll hit the month and the quarter, what changed, where you’re off track, which moves would change the forecast, and whether last month’s moves worked. These screens show a made-up sample firm, and every client, person and number in them is invented.

Will you hit the number?

Each outcome against its budget, with Expected beside the forecast and the reasons it sits below it.

Petalo’s Overview: a sample firm’s revenue month by month against budget, with the forecast, Expected and the reasons between them

What the plays are worth

Every play the firm could take, added up through the profit and loss: what Expected says, what it would be with the plays done, and the difference, quarter by quarter.

Petalo’s Plays page for a sample firm: the year’s upside on revenue, people cost and gross margin, and the profit and loss with and without the plays

Each play becomes a plan

What Petalo recommends, who does what and by when, with an owner on every step. Nothing is sent until the play is taken.

A play’s plan in Petalo: the recommendation, then the hires it needs with a dated list of steps and an owner for each

Petra explains the numbers

Petra reads each weekly close and tells you what changed before Monday. Ask her about any number, by typing or out loud, and she shows where it 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.

Nothing changes upstream

Your firm keeps working exactly as it does today. Petalo runs on the exports you already have.

Project systemprojects, time, schedule
HR exportcost and capacity
CRMpipeline
Weekly exportsa file drop, nothing to install
Petaloreads where the systems disagree
Monday pagea 30-minute weekly review

Nothing new to fill in

There’s nothing to install, no new fields and no new data entry, and consultants don’t see a new screen. The controller or ops lead loads the files each week, and the only new habit is a 30-minute review of the Monday page, where each move gets an owner and a due month.

Messy data is expected

Petalo looks for contradictions between systems: hours against budget, schedule against capacity, pipeline against bench. A contradiction is real even when both numbers are rough. It also compares the firm with itself week over week, so a consistent bias cancels out. The one thing it can’t catch is data that’s wrong the same way everywhere.

See the forecast Petalo would run for your firm

Tell us a little about your firm and we’ll set up a 30-minute call. We’ll start with what last year’s miss cost you.