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. Executive Advisory Systems installs the operations ExOS: one reconciled operational truth, governed workflows with human review gates, and a cadence that surfaces problems before they become fires.
The problems
What Actually Breaks at This Size
The recurring failures Executive Advisory Systems is built to answer in the office of the coo.
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 layers, built bottom-up and consumed top-down. The governed data layer comes first: an expert system on unreconciled data is a faster way to be confidently wrong.
The operations ExOS
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.
The operational data layer
One reconciled version of the truth across the ERP, ops systems, and finance, with data contracts, lineage, and access. Built first, because an expert system on unreconciled data is a faster way to be confidently wrong.
Operational expert systems with HITL gates
Governed agentic 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 cadence rather than presenting to it, transferring the playbooks and certifying the client's own operators on the gates.
Engagement
Diagnostic, Build, Operate, Transfer
Four phases. The client keeps the systems, the playbooks, and the data.
Diagnostic, weeks 2–6
Instrument reality: where the data actually lives, which numbers reconcile, how decisions really get made. Output is a systems map, a problem ledger with costs attached, and a sequenced build plan.
Build, months 1–4
Stand up the governed data layer, build the first expert systems and their review gates, and install the operating cadence. The advisor operates inside the cadence from day one.
Operate, months 3–9
The system runs the function's real rhythm. Your operators progressively take the controls; the advisor shifts from driving to reviewing.
Transfer, by design
Playbooks documented, operators certified on the gates, model review handed to named owners. You keep the capability, the code, the data, and the documentation.
Success is measured in your numbers, not consulting artifacts: days to close, forecast error, cash visibility, pipeline reconciled to the P&L, margin recovered. And your team running the system without us.
Related
The Rest of the System
Each office is one seat in the same operating system. The offices share one data layer, one cadence, 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.