A U.S. mid-market accounting and advisory firm, recently acquired by a private equity sponsor, sought a forward-looking operating model to enable profitable growth over the next five years. The firm’s business spanned multiple offices with distinct local practices and client mixes.

The Challenge

The organization operated in geographic silos. Sales approaches, delivery models, and account management varied by office, reflecting legacy acquisitions and local autonomy. Common commercial strategies or views on the firm’s best-fit clients were limited. Leadership needed a data-grounded path to standardize where it mattered without losing the local agility that clients valued.

Our Approach

We began by establishing the “as-is” state: mapping client segments, revenue drivers, win/loss patterns, and delivery economics by office and practice. We paired this analysis with dozens of leadership interviews and near-daily working sessions with the COO and the PE sponsor to co-create decisions in real time and build day-one ownership. We pressure-tested options against the firm’s distinctive client base and brought comparative patterns from the accounting-services landscape, using them as inputs (but never a template) to design what would work for the client.

The result was a target operating model that aligned commercial strategy, account segmentation, role clarity across sales and delivery, as well as effective and efficient cross-office collaboration protocols.

Our Impact

We delivered a clear commercial strategy and a practical operating model with roadmap, governance, and success metrics. The work created a shared definition of best-fit clients and the motions to win and serve them, reduced office-to-office variability where it impaired scale, and codified where local autonomy should be preserved. Leadership reported higher decision confidence and a step-change in alignment across offices due in large part to the unrivaled level of depth and customization we were able to provide. The engagement concluded with implementation-ready actions and leadership advocates at both the client company and private equity sponsor.