Prices set on old cost data
UAE input costs, rents and wages have moved materially. A price list built on a 2023 cost base is quietly transferring margin to customers.
COST & MARGIN
Find the margin you are already earning and losing.
Product and channel costing, pricing architecture, procurement review and cost control for UAE businesses — quantified in dirhams, sequenced by payback, with owners attached.
Fixed-fee project, typically AED 22,000–70,000 · Fixed fee agreed in writing before work starts
AT A GLANCE
Indicative scope. Final deliverables confirmed after the diagnostic.
AnalysisLine-level
OutputQuantified in AED
SequenceBy payback
OwnershipNamed
THE PROBLEM
Margin improvement is usually treated as a cost-cutting exercise, which is why it so often damages the business. Cutting across the board reduces cost in the places that were working as readily as in the places that were not.
The productive version is narrower: find where margin is leaking, quantify each leak in dirhams, and fix them in order of payback. In most UAE SMEs the leaks are consistent — products priced on cost data that is two years old, discounts granted with no authority framework, procurement that has never been retendered, delivery channels whose true contribution after commission has never been calculated, and a variance between theoretical and actual cost that nobody measures.
One percentage point of gross margin on AED 40 million of revenue is AED 400,000 a year, permanently. That is usually more than any realistic cost-cutting programme delivers, and it does not damage anything.
IS THIS YOU?
Where the margin goes.
If two or more of these are true, the diagnostic is the cheapest place to start. It is a fixed fee and it ends in a written findings note you own.
Discounts granted without a framework
Undocumented discretionary discounting is one of the largest and least visible margin leaks in SME businesses.
Suppliers never retendered
Terms drift and volume changes. Retendering a major category typically finds between five and fifteen percent.
Delivery and channel contribution unknown
Aggregator commissions, packaging and platform-specific promotions can turn a headline-profitable channel into a contribution-negative one. Very few operators have calculated this properly.
Theoretical versus actual variance not measured
The gap between what a product should cost and what it did cost is waste, theft, over-portioning or a pricing error. If nobody measures it, nobody manages it.
Product-level profitability unknown
Almost every business has products that lose money. Without line-level costing you cannot know which, and you may be actively promoting them.
THE ANALYSIS
Line level, quantified.
Build the true cost
Full cost per product, service, cover or unit — direct inputs, direct labour, packaging, wastage allowance and channel-specific costs including commission. Not standard cost from three years ago; current cost from current invoices.
Contribution by line
Rank every product, channel and customer by contribution. The distribution is always more extreme than management expects, and it is nearly always the case that a portion of the range is destroying value while being actively promoted.
Price architecture
Where to move price, by how much, and in what sequence — informed by contribution, competitive position and demand elasticity, so it is a structured move rather than a blanket increase. Blanket increases lose the wrong customers.
Discount and authority framework
Who can discount, by how much, with what approval, and what it costs. Making discount cost visible at the point of decision changes behaviour immediately and at no cost.
Procurement review
Spend analysis by category, supplier concentration, price benchmarking and a retendering plan for the categories where the opportunity is largest.
Variance control
Establishing theoretical cost, measuring actual against it, and building the weekly routine that keeps the gap visible and owned.
WHAT YOU RECEIVE
Deliverables, listed — so scope is never a debate.
Everything below is included as standard at the scope agreed in your engagement letter. If something falls outside it, we tell you before we do it, not after.
Included as standard
- Full cost build-up by product, service or unit
- Contribution ranking across the range
- Channel profitability including commission and fulfilment
- Pricing recommendations with expected AED impact
- Discount policy and authority matrix
- Procurement spend analysis and retender plan
- Theoretical versus actual variance framework
- Implementation plan sequenced by payback
- Named owners and tracking mechanism
- 90-day follow-up review
HOW WE START
Four stages. The first one is small on purpose.
Measure
Build true cost and contribution across the range.
Diagnose
Identify and quantify each leak in dirhams.
Prioritise
Sequence by payback and implementation difficulty.
Implement
Execute with owners, then measure the realised impact at 90 days.
QUESTIONS
Before you engage.
Clear scope is a feature. Where work requires a separately licensed professional — a registered tax agent, a licensed auditor, a lawyer — the engagement says so in writing.
How much margin improvement is realistic?
For businesses that have not done structured margin work, one to three percentage points of gross margin within six months is a common outcome. We quantify the specific opportunity during the diagnostic before you commit to the full project, so you are deciding against a number rather than a promise.
Is this just cost-cutting?
No, and cost-cutting is usually the least productive part. Most of the value is in pricing architecture, mix, discount control and channel decisions. Cutting cost indiscriminately reduces capability along with expense.
Will price increases lose customers?
Some, deliberately. Not every customer is worth retaining at every price, and the analysis identifies which relationships are contribution-negative. Structured increases with sequencing and communication behave very differently from blanket increases.
Do you work with F&B specifically?
It is our deepest specialism. Prime cost, theoretical versus actual food cost, recipe costing, menu engineering, portion control and delivery aggregator contribution are core territory for us.
How long does the project take?
Four to eight weeks for analysis and recommendations, then implementation support over the following quarter. We return at 90 days to measure what was actually realised, because recommendations that are not tracked tend not to be implemented.
Can you do this without disrupting operations?
The analysis is done from data and structured interviews, with limited operational time required. Implementation needs operational involvement — that is unavoidable, since the changes happen in operations, not in a report.
NEXT STEP
Start with the actual problem, not a proposal.
Tell us the current setup — entities, systems, transaction volume, what is going wrong. We aim to reply within one business day with a scoped next step and an indicative fee range.