Nine handoffs between the first call and the last rupee collected.
Money leaves a services business at the joins, not in the middle of the work. This page is organised around those joins — what each one is supposed to hand over, and what actually gets lost there.
Pick your role. See your slice first.
The same platform looks different from every chair. Choose yours and see what you would open on, what it fixes for you, and the modules behind it.
Portfolio margin — sold against delivered
Close the gap between what was sold and what was delivered
Where the margin goes.
ProjectX puts all nine stages on one record. The point is not that each stage gets a screen — it is that the assumption made at stage two is still visible, and still checkable, at stage eight.
Qualified, sized, and staffed on paper
Leaks here: a rate assumed by sales that delivery has never agreed to, and a skill mix nobody has checked against the bench.
Work starting before paper exists
Leaks here: effort burned against a deal that is still being negotiated, with no cost centre to carry it.
The gap nobody owns
Leaks here: people held for a start date that moves twice, then released to a project that pays less.
Sales to delivery, formally
Leaks here: the commercial assumptions never travel. Delivery inherits a number and reverse-engineers a plan to fit it.
Allocation against real availability
Leaks here: the profile sold at one grade delivered at another, either way costing someone margin.
Effort burn against plan
Leaks here: scope absorbed to keep a client comfortable, unpriced, and only visible when the burn chart bends.
Change requests, priced before work
Leaks here: the change agreed verbally, delivered fully, invoiced partially.
Timesheet to invoice to recognition
Leaks here: approved work that sits unbilled while the billing schedule waits for a monthly cycle.
Cash in, project closed
Leaks here: disputes that trace back to stage six and cannot be evidenced, so they get settled by discount.
Sixteen measures. One definition each.
Most services firms do not lack metrics — they have four versions of gross margin. ProjectX ships a governed library so the delivery review, the management financial review and the client report are drawing on the same arithmetic.
On-time delivery %
Sprint velocity
SLA compliance %
Defect density
Escaped defects
CSAT score
Net promoter score
Gross margin %
Budget variance %
Revenue realisation %
Invoice cycle time
Resource utilisation %
Bench %
Capacity forecast accuracy %
Risk closure rate %
Renewal rate %
The same data, arranged for the person looking at it.
A consultant filing time and a CXO reading the portfolio should not be given the same screen and told to filter. Each role opens on the thing it is accountable for.
| Role | Opens on | Answers the question |
|---|---|---|
| Executive / CXO | Executive overview | Is the portfolio going to make the year? |
| Delivery head | Delivery cockpit | Which accounts are about to go red? |
| PMO director | PMO governance | Which projects are non-compliant with our own process? |
| Portfolio manager | Portfolio planning | Are we investing where the benefit case said we would? |
| Project manager | My projects | What is at risk this week, and what do I need approved? |
| Resource manager | Resourcing | Who is free, who is short, and when? |
| Finance controller | Finance console | What can we bill, recognise and collect right now? |
| Sales director | Sales cockpit | What is the forecast worth, and can we deliver it? |
| Consultant | My work | What am I on, and what is due from me? |
| Risk & compliance | Risk and compliance | What is open, ageing, and unowned? |
| Client | Client view | Where is my project, in my language? |
Seven module groups.
You do not switch all of these on at once. Most engagements start with delivery and finance, because that is where the argument about margin usually is.
Portfolios, initiatives, benefits
Benefits realisation, scenario planning and portfolio analytics — the investment case stays attached after approval.
Opportunity to handoff
Opportunities, pre-PO, won-awaiting-PO, forecast, lost-and-recycle, customers, and the gated handoff to delivery.
Cockpit, programs, projects
Execution, quality, time and leave, and the financial plan the project manager actually enters.
Demand, capacity, bench
Requests and skills, directory, allocation, capacity and demand planning, workforce forecasting, utilisation analytics.
Billing to project P&L
Billing schedule, collections, revenue recognition, GL and journals, budget versus actual, payroll, project P&L, cash flow.
Reviews, risks, executive insight
Delivery governance, management financial review, risk register, executive insights and reports.
Master data, workflows, approval matrix, KPI library, security, audit logs, system health — and the predictive insight layer that reads across all of it
The AI layer is not a separate product. It reads the same records and posts its warnings against the project, the requirement or the invoice they concern.
Pick the join where your money goes.
Most firms already know which of the nine it is. Bring one live project and we will walk it stage by stage against ProjectX.