Most firms answer “no” or “probably not” or “we’d need to hire someone first.”
That’s the operational ceiling. Your capacity to grow isn’t limited by your ability to win clients. It’s limited by your ability to serve them efficiently without drowning your team in administrative work. Our teams work with hundreds of advice firms facing this challenge every day.
Jigsaw Tree’s operational excellence services exist to break that ceiling:
- Income reconciliation outsourcing converts fixed costs to variable, removes single points of failure, and saves 10-15 hours monthly per firm
- Business process mapping establishes ‘one best way’ across your firm, creating culture of accountability and scalable foundation for growth
- Evergreen outsourced administration provides ongoing paraplanning and admin support that flexes with your business
We have closed over 1,000 month-ends closed annually. We have also mapped over 2,000 processes, with measurable efficiency gains. These aren’t theoretical improvements; they’re proven delivery backed by 14 years of battle-tested methodology. Have a look at our case studies to find out more: Financial advice firm case studies and proven results | Jigsaw Tree
The Hidden Opportunity
While your competitors are hiring their third administrator to handle the same workload you’re processing with one person plus smart outsourcing, you’re deploying freed capacity to growth activities. Whilst they’re training new staff on seven different systems, you’re refining processes that work consistently regardless of who executes them. While they’re hoping their key person doesn’t quit/get sick/win the lottery, you’ve eliminated single points of failure across your operations.
That’s operational excellence. It’s not flashy. Your clients will never ask “wow, how do you reconcile income so efficiently?” But the difference to your work/life balance? Your team capacity? It really makes a difference.
Operational excellence is the foundation that allows everything else to work. It requires clean processes first. The AI augmentation that could save you 83% of meeting documentation time? It needs consistent workflows to automate. The make-build-partner decisions about what to own in-house? They require understanding what you actually do versus what you should do.
The Starting Point
Operational excellence begins with a free 30-minute discovery call with one of business consultants. No sales pitch. Just expertise from people who’ve seen your exact challenges 350 times before and solved them systematically. They’ll explore where your operational ceiling exists, identify quick wins that deliver immediate value, and map what operational excellence looks like specifically for your firm’s structure, size, and growth ambitions.
Often you will discover that your processes aren’t as efficient as you think. Your team is working harder than they should. And the invisible waste consuming 40-60% of your productive time has a quantifiable cost that compounds monthly.
The question isn’t whether operational excellence would help. The question is whether you’ll address it proactively from strength, or reactively when your best person hands in notice and you realise nobody else knows how anything actually works.
Our team works with financial advice firms of all sizes and stages of their move towards operational excellence. The first step can start tomorrow.
Gemma Lowndes, Operations Director
