# En Garde Consulting | Full Blog Corpus > Boutique strategy consulting for small and medium enterprises in the European Union. > Founded by Petar Zivkovic, Founder | Principal Consultant. > Fixed-fee pricing. No hourly billing. Advisory Board review on every deliverable. **Site:** https://www.engarde-consulting.com/ **Blog index:** https://www.engarde-consulting.com/blog/ **Contact:** enquiry@engarde-consulting.com **LinkedIn:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/en-garde-consulting This file contains the full text of every article published on the En Garde Consulting blog, concatenated for efficient LLM ingestion. Each article begins with a top-level Markdown heading. --- # Case Study: How an Operational Audit Cut Warranty Claims by 79% at a European Bathroom Equipment Manufacturer **URL:** https://www.engarde-consulting.com/blog/operational-audit-case-study-bathroom-manufacturer/ **Category:** Case Study / Manufacturing **Author:** Petar Zivkovic, Founder | Principal Consultant **Published:** 2026-04-27 **Updated:** 2026-04-27 **Word count:** 2065 *A family-owned European SME, founded in the late 1980s, had survived four decades and the slow downscaling that comes with a satisfied owner. Over a 10-month engagement from June 2025 to March 2026, En Garde Consulting reduced warranty claims on a flagship product line from 11.5% to 2.4%, lifted gross margin per unit on the same line by approximately 40%, eliminated regulatory fines that had been recurring for years, and brought average claim resolution time from above the legal response threshold to well within it. One employee was permanently freed from operational firefighting and reassigned to research and development.* > **Client snapshot** ## Key metrics - **79%** Warranty claims (Flagship line, from 11.5% to 2.4%) - **+40%** Gross margin per unit (Same line, net of warranty cost) - **Zero** Regulatory fines (Down from recurring annually) - **10 months** Engagement (June 2025 to March 2026) ## The challenge | A profitable company quietly accumulating risk The company was profitable every year. Margins were thin, but the bottom line was always above zero, and the cumulative profits the company had generated over decades were enough to keep the founder satisfied. He was on site six days a week and convinced he knew everything that was happening inside his own building. Underneath that surface, three problems were stacked on top of each other. ### 01. No clear ownership of any process Veterans of the company informally knew "who does what," because they had worked side by side for years. When something went smoothly, this worked. When something went wrong, the blame game began. There was no documented owner for procurement, lead management, fleet management, sales, or warranty handling. No reporting lines anyone could point to on paper. ### 02. No single source of truth Customer claims, vendor communications, and order tracking lived across personal notebooks, scattered email threads, and a handful of disconnected spreadsheets. Nothing was the canonical record, which meant everything was contested when it mattered. A representative incident: > **Before, an incident report** > > A customer called the headquarters with a warranty complaint. A team member, whom we will call Maria, took the call, accepted the claim, and promised that someone would reach out. The next morning, Maria called in sick. She was out for two weeks. She had not logged the call anywhere or mentioned it to a colleague. > > Ten days later, the customer called back for an update. Ana picked up, had no record of the original call, and told the customer that no such request existed. The customer reported the case to the consumer protection authorities. The company was fined. > > This was not the first time. ### 03. An aging owner who was content The company was making a small profit every year. Younger workers had repeatedly tried to introduce changes and had been met with resistance from the owner and the long-tenured staff. The status quo was defended out of comfort, not out of conviction. This is the most common deadlock pattern we see in family-owned SMEs of this generation, and it is often the hardest to break, because nothing is technically wrong. ## The approach | Map first, prescribe second The engagement followed the En Garde two-step model: the Organizational Healthcheck 360 first, then the Boutique Approach. The [Organizational Healthcheck 360](/blog/organizational-healthcheck-360) phase ran for three weeks in June 2025. We mapped every core process the company ran: procurement, lead management, fleet management, sales, inventory, manufacturing, warranty handling. The output was a single graphic representation of the company's operational reality, with discrepancies and inefficiencies marked in red. The owner, on seeing the map for the first time, said this: > *I knew everything that was happening in this company. I am here six days a week, one day more than my workers. But once they showed me the process map, glaring red with every issue noted, my first reaction was, 'this cannot be.' Inefficiencies and operational errors had built up so slowly that we never reacted. I am over 190 centimeters tall, but I could not tell you the day I became tall.* > > -- The Founder, on first seeing the process map That moment unlocked the rest of the engagement. The Boutique Approach phase ran from July 2025 to March 2026. Eight months of staged implementation, working alongside the team rather than over them, delivered in this order. ### 01. RACI charts for every function Sales and marketing, inventory, fleet management, procurement, manufacturing, warranty handling. Every recurring task received a Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed designation, with names attached to roles. Once roles were on paper, the blame game lost its oxygen. ### 02. Standard Operating Procedures, drafted with the people who do the work Each SOP was tied to a specific section of the process map, drafted with the relevant team members, and rolled out in stages. Effort became measurable. Execution became predictable. New hires no longer needed a veteran shadow to function. ### 03. A single source of truth, built without buying anything No new software was purchased. A shared spreadsheet, properly designed and rigorously used, became the operational database for the sales pipeline and for every customer claim. The discipline was the deliverable, not the technology. As the engagement progressed, an in-house task manager was built on top of the same data. Warranty claims now trigger an automatic alert if no response is logged within three days, escalating to a backup owner if the primary owner does not act. Status changes trigger automated emails to the customer. When a replacement unit ships, the customer receives both an SMS and an email. The procedural rigor was retrofitted into automation only after the procedure itself worked on paper. ### 04. Reactivation of dormant accounts Once the sales pipeline lived in one place, dormant accounts that had drifted out of view were systematically re-engaged. Several returned to active purchasing within the engagement window. Resistance was real for the first two months. Once the early SOPs and the shared single source of truth started removing daily friction, the same workers who had pushed back became internal advocates and pushed for more. A team member, looking back at the change, described it this way: > *Now it is a completely different story. I used to have trouble waking up, having to explain to myself why I needed to go to work that day. Now I feel energized, and my potential is actually being put to good use.* > > -- Team member, manufacturing function ## The results | By the end of the engagement - **11.5% ↓ 2.4%** Warranty claims on the flagship product line: Once one team member had been freed from operational firefighting, that person was assigned to research and development. Their first project was a structured vendor search for a problematic imported product line. They identified a new supplier whose product showed a 2.4% defect rate in independent batch testing. The company switched. The 11.5% line was retired. - **+40%** Gross margin per unit, same product line: This is the net figure, calculated after all costs including the new (lower) warranty exposure. The new lineup is better designed and commands a higher unit price; the elimination of middlemen on direct sourcing accounts for the rest of the lift. - **Zero** Regulatory fines since implementation: The company had received several consumer-protection fines over the years, primarily driven by dropped-claim incidents of the kind described above. Since the SOPs and the shared single source of truth went live, fines have stopped completely. Not reduced. Stopped. - **Above threshold ↓ Within** Average warranty-claim resolution time: The average response time used to sit above the legal threshold for responding to consumer claims. It now sits comfortably within the threshold, and the company routinely receives written commendations from customers and partners on responsiveness. Same people, same product, different operating model. - **1 role to R&D** One headcount permanently freed for product development: Before the engagement, every employee carried multiple operational roles, often duplicated across the team. After, the elimination of duplicated work and the introduction of light automation meant a senior team member could be permanently moved off operations and into product research. This is the role that found the 2.4% supplier. - **Blame ↓ Ownership** Cultural shift: The hardest result to quantify, and the one the team itself talks about most. Once roles were documented and the single source of truth was canonical, the question stopped being "whose fault is this" and started being "what do we do next." ## What this engagement says about the model | Three takeaways **A process map shown on one page changes minds faster than any presentation.** The owner had run the company for nearly four decades. Three weeks of mapping was enough to dislodge a position he had held for twenty years. We see this pattern often enough that we now consider it the central mechanism of the Healthcheck 360. **A single source of truth does not require buying anything.** A shared spreadsheet that everyone actually uses is more powerful than a CRM no one fills in correctly. Discipline beats tooling. Automation is a layer added on top of working procedure, never a substitute for it. **Resistance is a phase, not a verdict.** The same people who pushed back hardest in the first two months were the loudest internal advocates by the fourth. Early changes have to remove genuine friction from the day, not add ceremony to it; once they do, the team starts pulling. > **Verification** > > ### This case study can be verified directly > > The client is anonymized to protect the company's commercial relationships. Prospective En Garde clients who would like to confirm the engagement and the results can request a 15-minute reference call with the client's head of business development and sales. Email [enquiry@engarde-consulting.com](mailto:enquiry@engarde-consulting.com?subject=Reference%20call%3A%20bathroom%20equipment%20manufacturer) with the subject line "Reference call: bathroom equipment manufacturer," and we will arrange it. ## Frequently asked questions ### How long did the full engagement take? Ten months end to end, from June 2025 to March 2026. The first three weeks were the Organizational Healthcheck 360 (audit and roadmap). The remaining eight months were the Boutique Approach implementation phase: RACI assignment, SOP drafting, the single source of truth, and the staged rollout of the in-house task manager. ### How quickly did the warranty-claim numbers actually move? The procedural change (logging every claim in the shared single source of truth, with automatic three-day escalation) eliminated dropped-claim incidents almost immediately, within the first month of go-live. The drop in claim rate from 11.5% to 2.4%, however, came later, after the supplier switch on the flagship product line. Two distinct improvements stacked on each other. ### Did you replace any of the company's existing software? No. No new software was purchased during the engagement. The single source of truth was built on a shared spreadsheet, properly designed and rigorously used. The in-house task manager was added later, on top of the same data, only after the procedure itself worked on paper. Discipline beats tooling, and automation is a layer on top of working procedure, not a substitute for it. ### Can the engagement be verified by a prospective client? Yes. The client is anonymized publicly, but qualified prospective clients can request a 15-minute reference call with the client's head of business development and sales. Email enquiry@engarde-consulting.com with the subject line "Reference call: bathroom equipment manufacturer," and we will arrange it. ### Is this case study representative of typical SME engagements? The size (21 employees), the family ownership, the deadlock pattern (a satisfied founder and a younger team trying to push change), and the absence of a single source of truth are all common. The specific results (warranty claims down 79%, regulatory fines eliminated) are unusually clean because the company had a single, very visible operational symptom (warranty claims) that responded quickly once the underlying procedural and sourcing issues were fixed. Other engagements show similar mechanics with different headline numbers. ### What did the pricing look like for this engagement? The Healthcheck 360 phase was the standard fixed fee for the company size band (more than 50 employees was not applicable here; the company was below 50 at engagement). The Boutique Approach phase was scoped and priced at the end of the Healthcheck, based on the findings, on a fixed monthly retainer with a defined scope and exit points. Total engagement cost was agreed in writing at the start of each phase, with no hourly billing. --- # Operational Audit for SMEs: What the Organizational Healthcheck 360 Delivers **URL:** https://www.engarde-consulting.com/blog/organizational-healthcheck-360/ **Category:** Operational efficiency **Author:** Petar Zivkovic, Founder | Principal Consultant **Published:** 2026-04-24 **Updated:** 2026-04-27 **Word count:** 1337 *A 2 to 3 week, fixed-price operational audit that maps how work actually flows through your company, scores each process for risk and impact, checks how well you are using your data, and hands you a tailored roadmap. Standalone product. No hourly billing. No scope creep mid-engagement. The deliverables are yours to keep, whether you continue with us or not.* > **At a glance** ## The problem | Why audit before you advise? Most companies ask the consulting company a vague question, thinking they will get more value for their money. Consultants, in turn, cannot anchor themselves in vague questions, so they fall back on their best slide deck to create a wow effect. Companies do not know what to ask first; consultants do not know what to prioritize. We want to put an end to this practice. The Organizational Healthcheck 360 puts us on the same page as the client. Before we suggest anything, we spend 2 to 3 weeks doing nothing but mapping. We map your current processes as they actually are, not as your org chart claims they are. We talk to the people who do the work. We trace what happens when a customer enquiry arrives, when an invoice goes out, when a new hire starts, when a key supplier is late. Every process is evaluated for its (in)efficiency. The Healthcheck is, in effect, evidence-gathering for an informed decision. ## The deliverables | What the Healthcheck 360 actually delivers It is an inward, operational audit of how work actually flows through the company. There is no guesswork. There are no sugarcoated statements. It produces evidence, not opinions about strategy or about specific suppliers, although those conversations sometimes follow naturally from the findings. Five deliverables, in this order: ### 01. A graphic representation of your "as is" processes Not as they should be, not as they are written down somewhere, but as they actually run today. This map is often the first time the founder sees the full operational reality of the company in a single document. We use a process-map format adapted from established consulting practice (a useful public reference is the [Stratechi process maps library](https://www.stratechi.com/process-maps/)), tuned for SME-scale operations rather than corporate-scale ones. The point is not the visual style; it is that every step, every owner, and every handoff sits on one page. ### 02. Discrepancies and misalignments map Building on the process map, we clearly highlight process discrepancies and inefficiencies. Where do steps duplicate? Where does information get re-keyed? Where do approvals stall? Where does work cross silos and lose momentum? Each finding is logged with a brief description and a location in the process map, so nothing floats free of context. ### 03. Risk vs. Impact Matrix Not every inefficiency deserves the same attention. A tornado has a devastating impact, but how many tornadoes hit your area? The matrix plots each finding on two axes: how likely it is to cause a problem, and how big the problem is when it does. You cannot afford to leave anything in the high-impact, high-risk quadrant. ### 04. High-level data governance assessment Where does your data live? Is the employee's notebook a relevant database? How many places hold the same customer record? Are the numbers in your CRM, your accounting system, and your spreadsheets actually the same? And if they show different values, who gets priority? Who do you trust most? This is the first cut at a Single Source of Truth diagnosis. ### 05. A tailored roadmap Rather than guessing, or building on past experience, this roadmap is the product of an audit of your company's operational health. It is, therefore, completely tailor-made. The roadmap shows what issues need to be resolved immediately, what updates and upgrades should be implemented for better results, and what could be done further down the road. ## Pricing | How the price is set There is no hourly billing. There are no scope adjustments mid-engagement. The price you agree on at the start is the price you pay at the end. The only exception is if, after kickoff, we discover the company is genuinely much larger than initially described, in which case we re-quote in writing before continuing. That has yet to happen. This matters more for small and medium-sized enterprises than for large corporations. A corporation has the budget to absorb a wrong consulting recommendation; small businesses (SMEs) do not. An audit-first model gives you the right to say, after three weeks, that you have learned what you needed and that no further engagement is required. The roadmap is yours to keep. | Company size | Fixed fee | | --- | --- | | Up to 50 employees | EUR 3,500 | | More than 50 employees | EUR 4,500 | ## Engagement | What happens after the Healthcheck? You can do nothing, or you can sign a monthly retainer with us with a clear project scope tailored to your company's needs. The Healthcheck has standalone value, and there is no contractual obligation to continue. The roadmap is yours regardless. Our mission is to leave you better off than you were three weeks ago. You can take the deliverables and act on them yourself. We accept the risk that you will conclude this is more than enough to fix things with your own team, and that no further engagement is needed. Not many owners will openly admit this, but some are unwilling to make substantial changes. Afraid, conservative, or reluctant: it is all fine. The good news is that this exit option keeps your expenses modest. You can engage us for the second phase, the Boutique Approach, in which we work alongside you to fix the prioritized findings, starting with the most critical. The price for that phase is set at the end of the Healthcheck, based on the findings. We will discuss the investment needed for this stage and find the most suitable model. In every case, absolute cost control and pricing transparency remain paramount (a separate blog post on pricing is coming soon). No hidden costs. ## Frequently asked questions ### How long does the Organizational Healthcheck 360 actually take? Two to three weeks of elapsed time. The active engagement involves a kickoff, a series of structured interviews with key process owners, a document review, and a closing presentation of the deliverables. We aim to keep the time burden on your team to roughly half a day per process. ### Do I have to commit to long-term consulting after the Healthcheck? No. The Healthcheck is a complete product on its own. The five deliverables are yours to use however you choose, including using them with another consultant or implementing the roadmap with internal staff. ### What information do I need to prepare in advance? Before kickoff, we will ask for a high-level org chart, a list of your core systems (CRM, accounting, communication, document storage), and a who is who in the company. We do not require you to prepare process documentation, but we will need every existing procedure that you have in place. ### Who does the actual work on a Healthcheck engagement? The principal consultant runs the audit personally, end-to-end. The deliverables go through an Advisory Board review before being presented to you, which provides a second pair of external eyes from a network of vetted senior professionals. There are no junior consultants billed against your engagement. ### Is the Healthcheck 360 only for European SMEs? The product is designed around the realities of European SMEs (regulatory landscape, typical tooling, scale of operations), but it is applicable to any small or medium-sized company that wants an operational audit before committing to a longer consulting engagement. ### What if I only want one of the deliverables? The five deliverables are sequential and build on each other. The roadmap, for example, makes no sense without the risk matrix, which makes no sense without the process map. The product is sold as a complete package. --- # Fixed-Fee vs Hourly Consulting for SMEs: Why Predictive Billing Wins (and When It Doesn't) **URL:** https://www.engarde-consulting.com/blog/fixed-fee-vs-hourly-consulting-for-smes/ **Category:** How to hire a consultant **Author:** Petar Zivkovic, Founder | Principal Consultant **Published:** 2026-04-30 **Updated:** 2026-04-30 **Word count:** 1951 *Hourly billing is the consulting industry default. For SME owners it quietly creates the wrong incentives on both sides. Predictive billing is not always cheaper, but it is almost always more honest, and the price on the kick-off email matches the number on the final invoice.* > **At a glance** ## Definition | What is predictive billing? Predictive billing is a consulting fee structure in which the price for a defined deliverable is agreed in writing before the work begins, and does not change based on how many hours the consultant spends. The invoice at the end matches the number on the kick-off email. A working analogy: hourly billing is a taxi meter on a rainy holiday night. You do not know what the fare will be until you arrive, and the route is not entirely under your control. Predictive billing is a train ticket. Once you pay, it is what it is. The journey may take longer than expected. That is not your problem. ## The problem | Why hourly billing creates the wrong incentives Hourly billing is not, in itself, dishonest. Plenty of consultants who bill by the hour deliver excellent work. The problem is structural, not personal. When a consultant is paid by the hour, the consultant is rewarded for taking longer, and the client is rewarded for asking shorter questions. On the consultant's side, there is no upside to working faster. Spending an extra two hours documenting a process more carefully, or running an additional interview, looks the same on the invoice as spending those two hours stuck. There is no penalty for going slowly and no bonus for going quickly. Honest consultants resist this. Pressured ones do not. On the client's side, every conversation is a meter running. The owner who could spend twenty minutes explaining the full context of a problem cuts it down to five, because the meter is running. The consultant gets a partial picture and makes a partial recommendation. The owner then spends another month dealing with the consequences. ## Why SMEs? | Why this hits SME owners harder than corporates A corporate has internal procurement teams, framework agreements, and middle managers whose job is to ride herd on consulting bills. The hourly model is contained, even if the incentives are still wrong. The consultant who runs over budget loses the next engagement. An SME owner has none of that infrastructure. The owner is the procurement team. The owner is also the person who has to approve each invoice while running the business. Most SME owners we speak with have at least one story of an hourly engagement that ended with an invoice they did not expect, for work they could no longer cancel. There is also an asymmetry of information. The consultant knows roughly how long a piece of work should take. The SME owner does not. With hourly billing, that asymmetry becomes pricing power. ## Side by side | Hourly vs fixed-fee consulting Seven dimensions worth comparing before signing. | Dimension | Hourly billing | Predictive (fixed-fee) billing | | --- | --- | --- | | Who carries the risk of complexity? | Client | Consultant | | Consultant's incentive | Take longer | Work efficiently within scope | | Final invoice amount | Unknown until delivery | Agreed at kick-off | | Scope changes | Absorbed silently, billed later | Require written change request | | Best fit | Pure ideation, open-ended R&D | Diagnostics, defined improvement projects | | SME owner's mental load | High, every call is metered | Low, price is fixed | | Information asymmetry | Becomes pricing power | Becomes shared baseline | ## Our model | What predictive billing looks like at En Garde Consulting The orthodox consulting industry treats price as something to be revealed late and adjusted often. We treat it as the contract. Two fixed-scope engagements, both priced upfront. ### 01. Step 1, Organisational Healthcheck 360: a standalone diagnostic A defined diagnostic engagement, EUR 3,500 or EUR 4,500 depending on company size, delivered in 2 to 3 weeks. Five named deliverables. The price on the kick-off email is the price on the final invoice. To date, 100% of Healthcheck 360 engagements have been delivered at the originally quoted price. If our advisory board needs an additional week to verify findings, that is on our clock, not yours: no change order, no surprise line item. The Healthcheck 360 is designed as a standalone product. It is a proof of concept before any further commitment. At the end of the diagnostic, the decision to continue sits entirely with you. Three reasons an owner might stop there, and all three are legitimate outcomes: **You are not ready to engage in the improvement phase.** Timing matters. A diagnostic that sits on the shelf is still a diagnostic you own. **You do not yet feel you are getting enough value to justify the next step.** That is useful signal, and we would rather you say it than sign a retainer you regret. **You believe your team can address the findings internally.** If the Healthcheck shows you the problem clearly enough that you can mend it yourself, that is a good result. The engagement has done its job. There is no sales pressure built into the structure, because the structure does not require it. ### 02. Step 2, Boutique retainer: sized from evidence, not guesswork A monthly fixed fee for the implementation work that follows the diagnostic. Duration is 4 to 12 months depending on company size, typically 6 months for organisations up to 50 FTE, longer for larger ones. Most consulting firms estimate how long a retainer should run before they have seen the inside of your business. They price from a brochure template: a default duration, a default scope, a default fee. We do not do this. The retainer at En Garde Consulting is sized from the findings of the Healthcheck 360. You receive a duration estimate calibrated to your actual problem, not to what looks reasonable on a slide. This means two things in practice: the engagement is neither longer than your situation requires nor shorter than it needs to be to deliver results. And once the monthly fee is set, it does not move. For a worked example of how this plays out in practice, see our [operational audit case study on a bathroom manufacturer](/blog/operational-audit-case-study-bathroom-manufacturer/). ## Trade-offs | What are the trade-offs of fixed fee? Fixed fee is not a free win. Three real trade-offs. **You cannot expand scope mid-engagement without renegotiating.** With hourly, you can add a new question on day twelve and the consultant absorbs the time. With fixed fee, that question requires a written change. This is more disciplined but less flexible. **Fixed fee requires good scoping.** Bad scoping produces either an inflated price (you overpay) or a margin-squeezed engagement where the consultant cuts corners. Good fixed-fee work is preceded by scoping conversations that take the engagement seriously before any number is quoted. **Fixed fee suits fixed-scope engagements better than open-ended strategy.** Pure ideation is genuinely hard to fix-fee, because nobody can know in advance how many iterations a strategy needs. For diagnostics and well-defined improvement projects, fixed fee is the cleaner model. For ideation, hourly may be the more honest choice. ## Quality signals | Three signs a 'fixed fee' is hourly in disguise Some firms quote fixed fees that are, in practice, hourly fees with extra paperwork. The signs are worth knowing. **01. The deliverables describe effort, not output.** A genuine fixed fee names specific outputs: a process map, a written report, a presentation. A disguised hourly fee describes "five workshops" or "twenty analyst-days." If the contract pays for hours of effort rather than units of output, the fee is hourly with a cap. **02. Invoices come monthly with timesheets attached.** A genuine fixed fee invoices at milestones: kick-off, midpoint, delivery. If you are reading timesheets, you are being billed by the hour regardless of what the contract says. **03. Scope additions appear as line items, not change requests.** A genuine fixed fee requires a written amendment for new work. A disguised hourly fee allows the consultant to add line items unilaterally for anything outside the original brief. ## Boutique vs name-brand | Why a small firm and not a global one? Worth addressing directly. Big consultancies have logos and credibility, and credibility matters. They also have retainers built for organisations whose budgets do not flinch at six-figure quarterly invoices. The same digit that stress-tests an SME's cash position is a rounding error to a global firm, and the engagement model reflects that. You are not the priority client. You are the line at the bottom of the slide. A boutique like ours competes on a different axis: transparency, named accountability, and pricing that an owner-operator can sign off without convening a board. The lowest-risk way to test the fit is a [free 30-minute call with the founder](/#contact). After that, the Healthcheck 360 itself costs a fraction of a single month's retainer at any major firm. The downside is bounded. The upside, if we are right about your business, is not. ## Frequently asked questions ### What does the Organisational Healthcheck 360 actually cost, and what do I get? The Healthcheck 360 is priced at EUR 3,500 for smaller companies and EUR 4,500 for larger ones, delivered in 2 to 3 weeks. You receive five named deliverables: a structured diagnosis of your organisation's operational health, prioritised findings, and a clear view of where the highest-leverage improvements sit. Every engagement to date has been delivered at the price quoted on the kick-off email. ### Do I have to commit to a retainer after the Healthcheck? No. The Healthcheck 360 is a standalone product. If the findings show you can address the issues internally, or if the timing is not right for an improvement phase, the engagement ends there. The diagnostic is yours regardless. We size the retainer only if you choose to continue, and only from what the Healthcheck actually found, not from a default template. ### How long does the retainer last? Duration is calibrated to your actual situation from the Healthcheck findings. For organisations up to 50 FTE, six months is typically sufficient. Larger organisations generally require longer. The monthly fee is fixed for the agreed duration and does not move. ### Is fixed fee always cheaper than hourly? Not necessarily, and any consultant who promises otherwise is not being straight with you. Fixed fee sometimes carries a small premium because the consultant prices in the risk of complexity. What the premium buys is certainty: the invoice at the end matches the number you agreed at the start. For an SME owner managing cash carefully, that certainty often has real financial value; it is the difference between a planned cost and a surprise. ### What if the scope changes mid-engagement? A written change request: the new work is described, priced, and agreed before it begins. This is more deliberate than the hourly default, where additions get absorbed silently and surface on next month's invoice. ### Can I negotiate a fixed fee with a large consulting firm? Sometimes, particularly for a defined diagnostic phase. But large firms have utilisation models built around hourly billing and tend to default back to it for delivery work. Boutique consultancies are typically more comfortable with fixed fee end to end because their cost structure does not require the hourly model. ### What regions does En Garde Consulting serve? We work with SME owners across Benelux, Scandinavia, and the DACH region. Engagements are run remotely with on-site phases as required by the diagnostic. --- # How small and medium businesses build Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) **URL:** https://www.engarde-consulting.com/blog/standard-operating-procedures-for-smes/ **Category:** Operational efficiency **Author:** Petar Zivkovic, Founder | Principal Consultant **Published:** 2026-04-24 **Updated:** 2026-04-24 **Word count:** 1103 *Tribal knowledge is not a feature of close-knit SME teams; it is an unmanaged risk. A practical guide to turning what is in your veterans' heads into something the business owns.* ## Tribal knowledge vs institutional knowledge In a small business, there is almost always one person who knows how the customer reorder process really works, and a different person who knows how to handle the awkward supplier, and a third who knows the password to the accounting system that nobody uses any more but cannot be deleted yet. None of this is written down. All of it lives in the heads of people who have been with the company for years. This is tribal knowledge. It is one of the things that makes small companies feel warm and competent. It is also one of the things that makes them fragile. When the keeper of a piece of tribal knowledge takes a holiday, the business slows down. When they leave, the business loses the knowledge entirely. Institutional knowledge is the same information, but written down in a form that the company owns. It is not better in every way; tribal knowledge is faster to update and more flexible to apply. But institutional knowledge is durable. It survives turnover, holidays, illness, and the occasional acquisition. For an SME that wants to grow, the transition from tribal to institutional knowledge is one of the most important investments the business can make. ## What is a Standard Operating Procedure, exactly? A Standard Operating Procedure is a written description of how a defined piece of work should be done. It is not a manual, not a process flow chart, and not a job description. It sits between those: more detailed than a flow chart, more focused than a manual, more action-oriented than a job description. A good SOP answers five questions. What is this procedure for? When does it apply? Who does each step? What does each step look like in practice, with enough detail that a new hire could follow it? What does the output look like when the procedure is done correctly? An SOP that answers those five questions is short, useful, and worth maintaining. An SOP that tries to be a comprehensive manual is long, ignored, and quietly out of date within six months. Brevity is a discipline, not a shortcut. ## RACI: who is responsible for what? RACI is a simple framework for assigning ownership in any process: who is Responsible (does the work), Accountable (owns the outcome), Consulted (provides input before the decision), Informed (told after the fact). One person should be Accountable for any given step. Multiple people can be Responsible. Consulted and Informed lists should be deliberately short. RACI matters for SOPs because the most common operational failure in an SME is not that nobody could do the work, but that nobody was clearly accountable for ensuring it got done. Two people both thought the other one was handling it, and a week later the customer noticed. When you write an SOP, write the RACI grid first. If you cannot agree, in writing, on who is Accountable for the procedure, the procedure does not yet exist. The SOP document is the artefact; the agreement on accountability is the actual work. ## How do you write SOPs people will actually use? There is a paradox at the heart of SOP work. The people who know enough to write a good SOP are the same people who do the work; if they spend their days writing SOPs, the work does not get done. The people who have time to write SOPs do not know enough to write good ones. The way out is to use the doer as the source and someone else as the writer. The doer talks through the procedure for thirty minutes, ideally while doing it. The writer captures, structures, and asks the awkward questions. The doer reviews the draft. The writer revises. The result is an SOP that is grounded in real practice but written in a form that is usable by someone who is not yet an expert. Length matters. Anything over two pages will not be read. If a procedure cannot be described in two pages, it is probably more than one procedure pretending to be one. Split it. ## How do you keep SOPs from going stale? An SOP that is six months out of date is worse than no SOP at all, because it actively misleads. The defence is a maintenance cadence built into the document itself. Each SOP should carry a review date and an owner. The owner is the person Accountable in the RACI grid. Their job, once a quarter or once every six months depending on how fast the business changes, is to read the SOP, decide whether it still describes reality, and either confirm or revise. The single biggest predictor of SOP rot is whether anyone ever revisits them. A simple recurring calendar reminder, owned by a real person, is more effective than any document management system. ## Frequently asked questions ### How many SOPs does a small business actually need? Fewer than you think. Most SMEs run their business on twenty to forty truly load-bearing procedures: how a sale closes, how an order is fulfilled, how a hire is onboarded, how an invoice is collected, how a complaint is handled. The Pareto principle applies: identifying which twenty matter is more valuable than writing down all eighty. The Organizational Healthcheck 360 is partly a tool for finding which procedures are load-bearing in your specific business. ### Should I document every process or just the critical ones? Just the critical ones, and start with the ones where tribal knowledge is concentrated in a single person. Those are the highest-risk procedures: if that person leaves, those processes break. Comprehensive process documentation is a multi-year project; high-risk-first documentation is achievable in a quarter. ### What software do I need to write SOPs? None, beyond a shared document store. Word, Google Docs, Notion, or a simple wiki all work. Software complexity tends to substitute for actual writing. The cost of an SOP is the time spent thinking and revising; the tool is incidental. Pick one and stop discussing it. ### How long does an SOP project take for an SME? For the load-bearing twenty to forty procedures, a focused project takes three to six months elapsed time, with the doer giving roughly two hours per procedure spread across that period. Trying to do it faster than that produces SOPs that look complete but describe how the work used to be done, not how it is done now.