Margins dropped from 22% to 11% in 18 months. This assessment surfaces four cost levers — and a clear path back to 18%.
Cedar Studios runs three categories of contract labor — writers, developers, and designers. All of it flows through QuickBooks. What hasn't been quantified is how much of it follows predictable, repeating patterns — and what that means for automation potential.
| Category | Annual | Engagements |
|---|---|---|
| WritersBlog production, email copy, social content | $112,000 | 67 |
| DevelopersLanding pages, CMS updates, integrations | $98,000 | 31 |
| DesignersCampaign assets, brand materials, presentations | $70,000 | 38 |
| Total | $280,000 | 136 |
Campaign social sets, landing page updates, email newsletter copy, and monthly blog production account for 79 engagements — the same deliverable types, different clients, repeated every cycle.
The contractor line isn't a vendor problem. It's an automation opportunity.
Harvest captures where staff time actually goes. Over the past 12 months, 12 team members touched RFP production — at an average of 6.5 hours per pitch, at a blended rate of $200/hr, against a 22% win rate.
Cedar Studios submitted 18 pitches last year. Four wins. Total cost of that activity: $280,800 — none of it visible in QuickBooks.
reclaimed annually as billable capacity — without changing win rate or headcount.
QuickBooks shows 31 active software subscriptions across seven vendors and a dozen individual SaaS billings. Most were added incrementally — a tool here, a team request there. This is the first time they've been aggregated and categorized in one view.
| Category | Annual | Tools |
|---|---|---|
| Design & creativeAsset production, proofing, brand management | $28,400 | 7 |
| Project management & collaborationTask tracking, docs, communication | $22,800 | 9 |
| Analytics & reportingWeb, paid media, client dashboards | $19,600 | 6 |
| Everything else18 tools across security, HR, misc. SaaS | $23,400 | 9 |
| Total | $94,200 | 31 |
That's the monthly run rate — and it's never been looked at as a single number. No one approved $94,200 in software. It accumulated.
A one-time audit of active vs. actually-used tools typically surfaces 15–25% in cuts without touching any workflow that's working.
This is the fastest lever in the assessment — no process change, no headcount impact. Just a contract review.
Harvest shows four senior strategists averaging 44% billable utilization over the past 12 months. At a healthy 65%, this team represents $350K in idle revenue capacity annually. But the reason matters more than the number.
These four staff logged 847 combined hours on RFP production and internal reporting last year — hours that couldn't be billed to clients.
This isn't a capacity problem. It's a workflow problem.
Finding 02 and Finding 04 are the same problem seen from two angles. Fix the RFP workflow and you recover two lines on this assessment simultaneously.
Adjust each lever. Watch the gap close in real time.
You close $277K of your $308K target — 90% of the gap — without eliminating a single position. Pull any lever further to close the remaining $31K. The real question isn't whether you can get there. It's sequencing: the subscription audit closes in days, RFP and contractor workflows take 60–90 days to realize.