The Handbook: The Operations Podcast

When firms merge, everyone celebrates the deal. But unless you’ve been through it before, few think through the nuances of what it takes to actually run as one business afterwards. 
That was the reality Luis Perez walked into at DGA Group, a global geopolitical strategy consultancy. As Head of Group Planning, Analytics and Systems, Luis joined a business that looked fine from the outside – hundreds of people, multiple offices, growing fast – but underneath was still running as two separate companies. 
Two accounting systems, two charts of accounts, and a reporting cycle so slow the board was seeing results that were two months old. 
In this conversation, Luis walks us through how he and his CFO fixed it: how they defined what they actually needed, why they brought in outside help rather than going it alone, and how they rolled out a new stack across three continents in just seven months, all while keeping the business running. 
Here's what we get into:
Why a business can look healthy on the surface while its systems are falling apart underneath
How to define system requirements before you start shopping for software
Why bringing in external help can be the difference between months and years
The staggered rollout approach that got three continents live in seven months
Why minimizing customization is the key to hitting your timeline
How change management, not technology, is what actually makes a system stick
Plus, Luis shares the results: margins up a third, utilization up 20%, and group reporting cut from six weeks down to two.

Additional Resources:
👉🏽 Follow Luis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luis-c-perez/ 
👉🏽 DGA Group: https://dgagroup.com/ 
👨🏽 Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/  
💰 The Missing Finance Course (free): https://learn.scoro.com 

➡️ This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system. Sign up for a free trial or a demo at https://scoro.com/demo – and for the VIP treatment, tell them Harv sent you.

Everyone talks about being "data-driven," but many professional services businesses are drowning in data, not actually using it. 
Rich Brett is back for episode three of our mini-series from inside The Missing Finance Course, the free FinOps course presented by Rich and Harv Nagra built to close the gap between finance and delivery. 
This episode leans into the delivery side of the business – the day-to-day decisions that end up written into your numbers, whether you meant them to or not.
Here's what we dive into:
Why utilization and capacity are two sides of the same coin, and why utilization should never be a surprise at month end
Where delivery leads go wrong on scoping, and how a duplicated quote can set a project up to fail before it starts
Why over-servicing to keep clients happy is often a decision nobody actually made, and how to take back control
What revenue recognition really means (it's simpler than it sounds), and why doing it once a year isn't good enough
What "recovery" actually measures, and why comparing it to an invoice tells you nothing
What being genuinely data-driven looks like, versus just having a lot of reports nobody reads
Plus, Rich and Harv get into why the best businesses are already looking at what’s going to happen next month instead of just explaining what happened last month.
The Missing Finance Course is free, self-paced, and built for three audiences: leadership, delivery teams, and individual contributors. Head to https://learn.scoro.com to get started.

Additional Resources:
👉🏽 Follow Rich Brett on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rich-brett-36903590/
👨🏽 Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/ 

➡️ This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system. Sign up for a free trial or a demo at https://scoro.com/demo – and for the VIP treatment, tell them Harv sent you.

Everyone wants AI to fix their messy data. Andrew McBarnett will tell you straight: it won't. In fact, it'll just help you reach the wrong conclusion faster.
Andrew is Group Financial Director at Lucid Group, a PE-backed medical communications agency. He joined in 2020 for what was meant to be a four month contract. Six years later, he's still there, and the numbers tell the story: EBITDA up from £3.6m to £18.1m, revenue more than doubled, legal entities cut from 25 to 15, and a finance team that's shrunk in headcount while transaction volume has nearly doubled.
In this conversation, Andrew explains how he diagnosed a business that looked successful on the surface but was being held back by its operating model. 
Here's what we get into:
Why numbers don't explain your business, they just reveal where the pain is
Andrew’s five pillars of an operating model that can actually scale
Why "businesses don't fail to grow, they fail to absorb their growth"
How Lucid built single sources of truth across accounting, project delivery, and expenses
Why AI was never the goal, it was the reward for doing the foundational work properly
What changing the culture of a team actually takes (it’s harder than the tech, according to Andrew)
Plus, Andrew shares the real reason finance teams get sidelined in the business, and how to fix it.

Additional Resources:
👉🏽 Follow Andrew on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmcbarnett/
👉🏽 Lucid Group: https://wearelucidgroup.com/ 
👉🏽 AMB Associates: https://amb-associates.com/ 
👨🏽 Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/  
💰 The Missing Finance Course (free): https://learn.scoro.com 

➡️ This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system. Sign up for a free trial or a demo at https://scoro.com/demo – and for the VIP treatment, tell them Harv sent you.

Most leaders in professional services are making decisions every day that come back to the finance – but no one ever actually taught them the numbers. 
In this episode, we're pulling back the curtain on the financial foundations that every leader needs to get a handle on, whether you're running a team, managing projects, or sitting in the hot seat at the top.

Rich Brett is a FinOps consultant with 15 years in finance, working with professional services businesses to close the gap between finance and operations – and answer that nagging question: why is everyone busy, but we're not making any money?

This episode is pulled directly from The Missing Finance Course – a free FinOps course Rich and Harv built to level up everyone from founders to individual contributors at agencies and consultancies. 

Here's what they get into:

• Why cashflow forecasting isn't an advanced topic – it's a survival skill
• What the P&L is really for, and why most senior leaders struggle to explain it to their own teams
• How a knowledge gap becomes a credibility gap – and why that erodes trust across the whole business
• Why so many businesses are pricing based on what they think something costs – not what it actually costs
• Why comparing your rates to competitors is a trap, and what to do instead

If you've ever sat in a finance presentation and felt a bit lost, or if you've been winging parts of your pricing strategy, this one's for you.

The Missing Finance Course is free, self-paced, and built for three audiences: leadership, delivery teams, and individual contributors. Head to https://learn.scoro.com to get started.

Additional Resources:
👉🏽 Follow Rich Brett on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rich-brett-36903590/
👨🏽 Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/ 

➡️ This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system. Sign up for a free trial or a demo at https://scoro.com/demo – and for the VIP treatment, tell them Harv sent you.

We've got 3 upcoming events over the next two weeks – including a live webinar, a breakfast in Toronto, and a conference in NYC. Which one can you attend?

Online Webinar – Tuesday 23rd June, 12pm UK 
Find out how a global, multi-entity consultancy went from spreadsheets, silos and missing timesheets to a 33% uplift in project profitability and 20% uplift in staff utilisation – all within 7 months. 
Free to attend, register here: https://bit.ly/DGA-webinar

The Handbook: Breakfast Sessions – Toronto, Thursday 25th June 
Harv is joining Galen Low from The Digital Project Manager to discuss the delicate balance between project pressures and profitability. For ops, finance and delivery folks. 
Free to attend, register here: https://bit.ly/BreakfastToronto 

Agency Hackers Operations Conference – NYC, Tuesday 30th June 
We’re gathering in NYC to try to answer the question: what does a more efficient, more profitable, AI-enabled agency actually look like operationally? And more importantly – how are other agencies already starting to make that shift? An excellent line-up including the brilliant Karl Sakas.  
More info: https://www.agencyhackers.com/events/nyc/
DM Harv for free tickets: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra

Hope to see you at one of the above!