For consulting firms
What Ermetis builds for a consulting firm.
A consulting firm sells judgment, and most of it is already written down: a proposal library, deliverable templates, a playbook, a rate card, years of readout decks. Several versions of each template exist, the scoping assumptions predate the way the firm now works, and the lessons from each engagement sit in a final deck. New consultants learn the method by asking. Ermetis writes the firm's method and positions down, with a name on each, and runs software on them: a language model drafts, plain code checks the figures, all of it inside the firm's own Microsoft 365 tenant, and a partner approves.
The memory
The firm's judgment, written down once with a name on it, and applied by every proposal, every readout, and every new hire.
Each entry is a position somebody in the firm decided, with the reason and the owner next to it, or a record kept with its source. Where the firm has no position yet, the gap is kept visible and routed to the person who would know, once.
The memory as the seven samples read it: six pieces of software and one person, all citing the same entries, and every decision made on top of it written back in.
Scoping and fees.
How the firm's standard engagements are staffed and how long they run, when a data-readiness week goes in, what the rate card says this year, and how discounts work for a repeat sponsor and a new one.
The playbook and the deliverable standard.
One approved version of each playbook module and template, the rule that every number on a slide traces to the client extract it came from, and the partner review that happens forty-eight hours before a readout.
Sponsor and client records.
What each sponsor's deal team reads first, how it wants a readout structured, and what every past engagement found, kept with the deck it came from.
Staffing, utilization, and the Monday numbers.
Who may lead a module alone and who may be on site alone, how utilization and realization are defined, and what the Monday brief reports and flags.
Confidentiality in marketing.
What a thought piece may draw on, what it may never name, and who approves it before it posts.
The sample of the memory itself, for the fictional firm, shows the entries, the two tiers of authority, how a question travels through it, and how it is maintained.
The founder of Ermetis spent the past decade in consulting and operating roles at private-equity-backed companies, on both sides of the engagements shown here. More about the founder.
The samples
Seven working samples run on one fictional firm.
Whitlow Ferris Partners is a made-up management consulting firm working for private-equity portfolio companies. It runs Microsoft 365, BigTime, and HubSpot, and its method has been written down and approved. Each sample is the screen a real person would be looking at, and each one cites the entry behind every figure and scope sentence.
A sponsor asks for a proposal. The drafter builds it from the scoping rules, the rate card, and the comparable past engagements, cites every fee line, and a partner reviews it and adds the week the scope missed.
It builds the readout skeleton from the playbook module and the engagement's own data extracts, with the source on every slide, and the engagement manager edits it before the partner review.
A new consultant asks how the firm does something and gets the answer with the module cited. When the firm has no position, the desk says so and routes the question once, and the answer comes back as an entry.
It drafts a LinkedIn piece from the pattern across four closed engagements, lists them for the approving partner, names none of them in the draft, and a check confirms no client or figure survives.
Utilization, pipeline, realization, unbilled work, receivables, and the bench, every number linked to its record, and the three exceptions flagged with an owner.
After an engagement closes, the lessons are matched to the playbook module, the scoping rule, and the case example they bear on, and the owner decides each change with the source attached.
A partner, twenty minutes before a sponsor call, asks the memory four questions from her phone and gets four cited answers. A fifth question gets an honest refusal. No software drafts anything.
The written samples
The assessment and the diagnosis, for the same firm.
The assessment is what comes back after the thirty-minute call and makes the case for starting with proposals. The diagnosis measures what the firm's proposal development is costing it and works out which tasks should move where.
The free assessment
Seven sheets. The standing ledger against how proposal development runs at firms that run it well, three things to do this month that need no AI, and a value calculator that leaves both inputs for the reader to set.
The diagnosis
Fourteen sheets. Realization on twenty-one comparable diagnostics by the partner who scoped them, where the fee goes, the value model, and fifteen proposal tasks allocated one at a time.
The same structure runs at other firms that sell judgment. At a law firm the drafter works from the precedent bank and the fee arrangements; at an accounting firm, from the engagement letters and the methodology; at an agency or an architecture practice, from the past proposals and the fee schedule. The firm's positions are written down, and the software reads from them.
The free assessment does the same thing against one of your firm's own workflows.
It starts with a thirty-minute call on one process that is costing you something, and the written assessment comes back within two business days.