GLEAN® is a methodology which finds additional revenue, profit and cash in service businesses. It is based on the belief you should get paid for the work you do.
GLEAN® is based on methods first employed in a UK IT Services organisation in 2008, raising £7.8m in revenue and £11m in cash against a UK turnover of £600m. Thereafter it was repeated and refined across the organisation globally and was used to help de-risk the acquisition of a major subsidiary yielding €7m which had been hidden throughout the formal due-diligence process.
GLEAN® works on the following four principles:
- Clients are almost always willing to pay for services rendered;
- Third party vendors put a value on referrals;
- Account teams are often too focused on delivery to invoice for services; and
- “If you don’t ask, you don’t get!”
GLEAN® uncovers hidden cash and revenue:
GLEAN® uncovers hidden cash and under-recovered service revenue by taking a 360 degree look at each account within a service organisation’s portfolio.
GLEAN is effective because it reveals tacit agreements and assumptions held at account level which are often concealed from the corporate centre. An example might be the identification of additional effort spent to support a client requirement, but not recorded contractually.
GLEAN® takes a “whole account” approach to address and close knowledge gaps through the application of structured interviews, and consolidates responses into a quantified and risk-managed action log, which are verified at account level before being exposed to the corporate centre. This is because no single individual in a client account relationship has a complete and clear view of what is going on, so when their views are combined a richer picture emerges of the tangible actions the account can take to boost cash and revenue.
The GLEAN® method understands no two perspectives are the same:
An account manager might only look at events through the prism of sales.
A project manager might be focused on delivering to time but might have omitted to raise the invoice required to get paid.
The service manager might be absorbed in performance and miss additional costs like overtime.
GLEAN® is simple 3-step method which can be applied to your business:
GLEAN is a teachable methodology for service providers who want to identify hidden revenue and back billing from their customer accounts.
Step 1: Examine
GLEAN helps you select appropriate target accounts and then provides structured questions to help you uncover new sources of income and recovers cash put at risk, unlike reactive audit programmes that often just look at the numbers. The method inventory includes proven questions broken down by key account team roles (Account Executive, Commercial Director, Service Director etc.) with a structured questionnaire template and consolidated action logs.
Step 2: Analyse
The GLEAN responses are compared and consolidated in order to validate any cash, revenue or back-billing opportunities raised through the Interrogate step.
Step 3: Negotiate
You will now be in possession of information which can be used in negotiation - firstly with the client relationship owner and then with the client. Remember, "If you don't ask, you don't get!"
