The Challenge:
A firm providing managed security, compliance, and cybersecurity consulting to high-stakes clients in asset management and critical infrastructure faced a problem common to specialized service businesses: its attention was, by necessity, focused entirely on protecting clients, which left payroll, day-to-day accounting, and management reporting without a dedicated owner inside the leadership team.
The deeper issue sat beneath the surface. Utilization wasn’t being measured consistently across consultants and service lines, and pricing wasn’t tied to the actual cost of delivering the work. As a result, leadership had no reliable way to see which parts of the business were profitable and which were not.
How Liv Data Helped:
Liv Data took ownership of the finance function in full, then used the visibility that created to address the pricing and profitability problem underneath it.
Full CFO Office
- Ran bookkeeping, general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, monthly close, management reporting, and FP&A for three years — the complete function, not a portion of it
- Gave leadership a single, dependable point of ownership for finance, freeing their attention for client-facing work
Measurement Layer
- Built utilization measurement by consultant and by service line, replacing inconsistent or absent tracking
- Rolled the underlying numbers into business intelligence reporting leadership could act on directly, rather than raw ledger detail requiring separate interpretation
Pricing Strategy
- With utilization and delivery cost now visible, worked with leadership on pricing strategy and margin by service line
- Identified where price needed to move and where cost could be removed without affecting client delivery
Automation
- Automated project administration, close, and reporting, so the finance function could scale with the business rather than requiring proportional headcount growth
The Outcome:
- Profitability improved threefold over the course of a year
- The improvement was driven by utilization discipline and pricing strategy, not cost cutting
- Three years into the engagement, the full CFO office — from bookkeeping through FP&A — continues to run on Liv Data
Why It Worked:
Running the complete finance function, rather than a narrow slice of it, gave Liv Data the full picture needed to identify a profitability problem that wouldn’t have been visible from bookkeeping or reporting alone. Solving it required both the operational data and the strategic judgment to act on it — which is what running the office end to end made possible.
