The Hidden Margin Leaks in SMEs: Leanne Bridges Highlights Inter-Departmental Gaps

In a recent LinkedIn post, Leanne Bridges discusses how seemingly minor communication breakdowns between roles within a business can lead to significant, unbilled work and lost revenue. Bridges uses a compelling real-world example to illustrate how a lack of clear process and communication between site managers and project managers resulted in tens of thousands of dollars in unbilled contract variations for years, a problem that went unnoticed by senior leadership.

Bridges highlights the common scenario where operational teams are completing work diligently, and clients are satisfied, yet the financial implications are not captured. She writes:

“The MD only found out when he personally reviewed a job and spotted what was missing. By then, some of it was unrecoverable.”

The Root Cause: Small Gaps, Big Impact

Leanne Bridges argues that the core issue in many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) isn’t a deliberate failure in performance but rather an “easy to fix” gap in communication between individuals or departments. In the case she describes, the site manager was focused on client satisfaction and completing additional scope requested on-site, while the project manager was unaware of these changes. This disconnect meant that the extra work was never added to an invoice.

“Nobody was deliberately doing a bad job. The site manager was being responsive. The project manager was invoicing everything he knew about,” Bridges explains, emphasizing that the problem stemmed from a lack of a simple, connecting process.

The Solution: Process Mapping and Visibility

According to Bridges, the solution became apparent only after mapping out the actual workflow between roles. Once the gap was identified and addressed, the company began capturing variations as they occurred. This led to the recovery of previously lost revenue within weeks, directly improving the business’s margin without requiring additional time from the MD.

Bridges points out the broader implication of this finding:

“Most margin problems in SMEs don’t come from big failures. They come from small gaps between roles that nobody’s joined up.”

She stresses that these issues are often invisible from a leadership perspective but can have a substantial financial impact over time. The key, as Bridges suggests, is to gain visibility into how work truly flows through the organization and to implement processes that bridge these inter-departmental divides.

Identifying and Fixing Revenue Leaks

Leanne Bridges advocates for a proactive approach to identifying such inefficiencies. She suggests that businesses suspecting similar revenue leaks should seek to understand their internal processes more deeply. By fixing the root cause of these communication gaps, businesses can not only recover lost revenue but also improve overall profitability and operational efficiency. Bridges concludes by offering a path forward for businesses looking to address these challenges:

“If you suspect your business is leaking time or money through gaps like this, book a free strategy call and we’ll find where.”

This approach, according to Bridges, moves beyond addressing symptoms to solving the underlying structural issues that hinder financial performance in SMEs.