Multi-location services operator: COGS down 24%, contribution margin up 24%.
The Friction Point
A multi-location services operator was scaling revenue but bleeding contribution margin to manual post-sale operations. Sales-to-onboarding handoff, customer data collection, and mid-lifecycle communications were all human-in-the-loop, and headcount was scaling linearly with bookings.
The Systemic Intervention
Compress onboarding COGS without hurting customer experience or NPS. Every automation had to be measurable, reversible, and validated against a control cohort.
What we built
Data & Experimentation
Instrumented COGS at the workflow-step level. Established a control cohort so every automation could be measured against a real counterfactual.
CRM & Revenue Systems
AI-powered sales-to-onboarding handoff, agentic data collection, and middleware connecting CRM to post-sale systems. Lead-response and lifecycle sequences automated.
Revenue Engineering
Sequenced rollout of automations, each with a pre-registered hypothesis and stopping rule. Feedback loop from NPS and support tickets back into the workflow model.
The Statistical Proof
The Compounding Economic Result
A 24% reduction in post-sale COGS at held ARPU expanded contribution margin by an equivalent amount, unlocking capital that was redirected into acquisition. Because the savings came from automation rather than headcount reduction, gross margin scales with bookings instead of degrading with them. NPS and support ticket volume held steady against the control cohort, confirming the margin gain did not come at the expense of customer experience.
"The instrumentation alone was worth the engagement. We finally have visibility into the data that drives our numbers."