The company runs on tribal knowledge
Process lives in the heads of long-tenured people. Onboarding is shadowing, quality varies by who ran the job, and a resignation removes capability the org chart says still exists.
Who we serve
The Office of the COO
Operations at a $10M–$70M company usually runs on tribal knowledge and heroics rather than an engineered system. F3 Insights installs a designed operating rhythm: one reconciled set of operational numbers, automated workflows with a person approving each consequential step, and a cadence that surfaces problems before they become fires.
The problems
What Actually Breaks at This Size
The recurring failures we see in the Office of the COO at companies with $10M–$70M in revenue.
No single operational truth
The ERP, the spreadsheets, and the floor disagree. Meetings begin by reconciling numbers instead of deciding with them, and the version that wins is whoever argues best.
Firefighting as the operating model
The day is spent on exceptions. Nothing is instrumented to catch a problem while it is small, so operating leverage never compounds and the team mistakes motion for throughput.
Margin erosion nobody can locate
Gross margin drifts a few points and no one can decompose it: mix, price, freight, scrap, labor, or rework. Without unit-level operational data reconciled to finance, the cause is a debate rather than a finding.
Scaling by headcount because scaling by system was never engineered
Volume growth is met with hiring because no one designed the throughput. Cost scales linearly with revenue and the P&L never earns the leverage growth was supposed to buy.
Supplier and tariff shock with no scenario capability
Mid-market companies absorb the same supply and tariff volatility as the enterprise without hedging infrastructure or a scenario engine. Response is reactive because there is nothing to run the scenario in.
The system
What F3 Insights Builds
Four pieces, built from the numbers up. Reconciled numbers come first, because automation on numbers nobody trusts is a faster way to be confidently wrong.
How operations runs day to day
A daily, weekly, and monthly operating rhythm with standard agendas, owners, and escalation thresholds. This is the cadence that converts what the systems produce into decisions people actually make.
One set of operational numbers
One reconciled version of the truth across the ERP, ops systems, and finance, with clear rules for where each number comes from and who can change it. Built first, because automation on unreconciled data is a faster way to be confidently wrong.
Automated workflows with a person approving
AI-assisted workflows for exception detection, scheduling, and variance explanation, each with decision classes, approval thresholds, and audit trails, so a person stays between the model and the consequence.
The embedded senior operator
A practitioner who has run operations, inside the rhythm rather than presenting to it, handing over the playbooks and certifying the client's own operators on the review steps.
Every engagement ends with your team running what we built. How we work
Related
The Rest of the Leadership Team
Each office is one seat at the same table. The offices share one set of numbers, one operating rhythm, and one set of playbooks.
Office of the CEOYou are the integration layer. Every decision routes through one calendar.Office of the CFOA fifteen-day close, a forecast nobody defends, and cash visibility that stops at the bank balance.Office of the CMOAttribution collapsed, and marketing cannot prove contribution to the CFO.Office of the CROThe forecast is a negotiation, and the pipeline number nobody fully believes.
Next step
Bring a systems answer to the COO seat.
A diagnostic runs two to six weeks and ends with a systems map, a problem ledger with costs attached, and a sequenced build plan. Start with a conversation about the Office of the COO.