NARRATIVE 05 / 05·The Dashboard Narrative

The management cockpit, at a glance.

Outlook and Funnel turn the firm's forward financial and commercial posture into one decision space: scenario posture, ranked drivers, pipeline movement, and open demand on the same calendar.

The pain

Monday morning. Pipeline lives in one tool, delivery capacity in another, and the firm's profit in last week's accounting close. Each tells you something; none of them line up until the month is over. The top line looked strong all month, so no one looked harder, and then the close lands: the firm kept about $60k less profit than the work should have produced. By the time you can see what caused it, those decisions are already in the run rate.

Profitdrive replaces three lagging views with one forward one. Posture, pipeline, and capacity move together as the business moves, so a margin shift shows up while it can still be addressed, not after the close confirms it.

What this narrative covers

Pipeline, projects, people, and profit, in one view.

Dashboard is the primary cockpit view that consolidates pipeline, projects, people, and financials into a single decision space. It is what executives see at login to make daily and weekly decisions about the firm's financial posture.

Three surfaces sit inside that cockpit. Outlook carries the headline financial and operational posture. Funnel carries pipeline stock, movement, and quality signals. P&L, KPIs, and Activity are roadmap tab shells, present in the structure, not yet operational. This narrative focuses on the two live surfaces that operators rely on today.

Open Demand is the aggregate view of unfilled roles from Pipeline and Projects: the staffing requirement that has financial consequence but no named person yet. The Open Roles entity itself lives in People; here it appears as a firm-level constraint signal alongside the other posture cards.

Three surfaces · two materially live · one on the roadmap

Surface

Function

Status

01

Outlook

Revenue, EBT, Utilisation, Open Demand, and the drivers moving those numbers.

Live

02

Funnel

Pipeline stock, movement, and quality signals that inform commercial decisions.

Live

03

P&L · KPIs · Activity

Tab shells in place; full implementation on the roadmap.

Roadmap

Unified calendar

Set the period once. Outlook and Funnel read the same calendar and the same comparison baseline (Budget, Forecast, or Last Year), so the posture and the pipeline movement tell one story, not two.

Four concrete front-end behaviours

What an executive reads on Monday and acts on the same week.

BEHAVIOUR 01 / 04

Read the firm's posture across three scenarios.

A posture card showing Revenue across three rows: Contracted (signed work), Contracted + Extensions (signed plus likely continuations), and Contracted + Extensions + Pipeline (the full forward view including qualified opportunities). Each row shows the amount and a delta against your selected comparison baseline. Below, identical cards for EBT and Utilisation.

Monday. You open the Dashboard. Contracted revenue is $2.3M; Contracted + Extensions brings it to $2.7M; the full forward view, if qualified pipeline converts as modelled, reaches $2.9M. You compare this month's Contracted + Extensions against last month's and notice extensions are down, worth investigating. You click into Funnel to see which projects are at risk.

The three scenarios read the same numbers as Financials. Dashboard shows the headline posture; Financials carries the full grid and the drill-down chain. Both surfaces resolve from the same underlying facts, so the cockpit view and the analytical view never diverge.

P//Caldera Group ▾

Dashboard

Outlook

Pipeline

P&Lsoon

KPIssoon

Activitysoon

‹Apr 2026›to‹Jul 2026›PeriodMonthly ▾Compare vsBudgetForecastLast Year

Revenue vs Last year ($1.0M)

ScenarioImpactTotalvs Last year

Pipeline$200K$2.9M150%

Extensions$400K$2.7M140%

Actual + Contracted$2.3M$2.3M125%

ContractedExtensionsPipelineActualCompare vs

EBT vs Last year (−$31K)

AmountMargin %

ScenarioImpactTotalvs Last year

Pipeline$168K$739K$770K

Extensions$115K$571K$602K

Actual + Contracted$455K$455K$487K

ContractedExtensionsPipelineActualCompare vs

Outlook posture · repeated metric panels · Revenue and EBT · scenario impact table + chart · Apr 2026 actuals · delta vs Last year

Outlook Posture · Revenue, EBT, Utilisation · three cumulative scenarios · delta vs comparison baseline.

BEHAVIOUR 02 / 04

Understand what is moving the forward P&L: four ranked drivers.

Below the posture cards, the Outlook Drivers panel with four sections: Extension drivers (projects with upcoming continuations), Funnel opportunity drivers (active opportunities ranked by revenue impact), Projects ending soon (delivery commitments ending in the next 30 days), and Overruns (fixed-price or fixed-fee projects running over budget). Each section shows the top three rows by default; a Top 7 toggle reveals more. Each row shows the driver name, the client, and the revenue and margin impact.

You see the top extension driver is a $400k retainer ending next month at 48% margin, a renewal priority. A qualified opportunity in the funnel is worth $600k at 38% margin. You drill into the retainer to check whether the continuation is staffed, then flag the $600k deal with sales for close timing. Two decisions made before the first meeting of the week.

The Drivers panel ranks by revenue impact, not by probability: a $100k certain extension ranks above a $150k pipeline opportunity. The scenarios themselves carry the funnel composition; Drivers shows the underlying deals so the executive can act on a specific row, not an aggregate.

Overruns is currently a roadmap tab on the Drivers panel; the row will surface once actual-vs-planned days materialisation is live. The other three sections are operational today.

P//Caldera Group ▾

Dashboard

Outlook

Pipeline

P&Lsoon

KPIssoon

Activitysoon

‹Apr 2026›to‹Jul 2026›PeriodMonthly ▾Compare vsBudgetForecastLast Year

Extension driversTop 3Top 7

ClientProjectOpen rolesRevenueCM%

NorthwindERP retainer renewal$182K48%

HelixData platform, Ph2$124K42%

Brent CrossFit-out programme$97K36%

Pipeline opportunity drivers

ClientOpportunityStageRevenueCM%

Aurora GroupClaims platformnegotiation$472K38%

NorthwayLogistics rebuildqualification$103K35%

Coastal BankKYC reviewlead$33K30%

Outlook Drivers · what is moving the forward P&L · Extension drivers and Pipeline opportunity drivers · Top 3 / Top 7 · ranked by revenue

Outlook Drivers · four ranked lenses · ranked by revenue impact · Overruns on roadmap until actual-vs-planned materialisation lands.

BEHAVIOUR 03 / 04

See what changed in the funnel: won, slipped, lost, or revalued.

The Funnel surface shows a waterfall: pipeline stock at the start of the period, columns for deals won this period, deals that slipped (moved from a near-close stage to a later stage), deals that closed without being signed (lost), deals that changed value, and pipeline stock at period-end. Below the waterfall, a Movement Drivers table: the specific deals that moved the most, ranked by revenue impact.

End of the month. $5.0M pipeline at start. $400k won, $200k slipped (one client running late, not a sales issue), $150k lost, $80k value delta. $4.53M at end. You click the slipped deals and see they are concentrated in two opportunities from the same client, a known schedule delay. You plan follow-up next week with revised close dates. No surprises, no spreadsheet reconstruction.

The movement view answers the executive question that aggregate pipeline reports cannot: not where is the funnel today but what changed since the last anchor point, and which specific deals account for the change. The anchor period is configurable (week, month, quarter), and the comparison baseline (Budget, Forecast, or Last Year) is the same one Outlook reads.

P//Caldera Group ▾

Dashboard

Outlook

Pipeline

P&Lsoon

KPIssoon

Activitysoon

‹May 2026›to‹Jul 2026›PeriodMonthly ▾Compare vsBudgetForecastLast Year

$5.00M start · $4.53M end · net −$0.47M

Anchor 1 May snapshot

Pipeline movement waterfall

1 week ago ▾

Movement drivers

Top 3Top 10

REPORTING POINT 30 MAY 2026 · COMPARE ANCHOR 23 MAY 2026 · BY REVENUE IMPACT

won

Aurora Insurance, claims platform

Aurora Group · Closed 09 May

+$260k

won

Tindale BI rollout, Phase 2

Tindale Foods · Closed 14 May

+$140k

slipped

Northway logistics rebuild

Northway · Negotiation to Proposal

−$200k

lost

Greenfield CRM consolidation

Greenfield Co · Lost · price

−$150k

Pipeline stock by close month

WonActivePast

Pipeline quality trend

Weighted CM% of open pipeline

37%+3pp vs Q1

Hygiene

Deal Model coverage86%

Stale over 30d4 deals

Missing close date2 deals

Funnel · Pipeline tab · waterfall and movement drivers · Stock by close month · movement waterfall · quality trend · movement drivers · hygiene

Funnel waterfall · stock movement against baseline · Won / Slipped / Lost / Value Δ · with movement drivers.

BEHAVIOUR 04 / 04

Spot open demand before it becomes a capacity surprise.

The Open Demand card aggregates unfilled roles from Pipeline and Projects: how many roles, how many FTE they represent, which months they fall into, and the revenue and cost exposure attached to them. The headline reads "8 Open Roles · 5 Pipeline / 3 Projects · 6 FTE · $180k revenue at risk / $70k cost at risk."

You drill into the card. Five roles sit on pipeline deals, planning ahead. Three roles sit on active projects, needing to fill now. A per-role breakdown shows the top open roles with their source (Pipeline or Project), FTE, and either revenue at risk (pipeline) or cost at risk (committed project). You open the People area to start recruiting, reassign from bench, or flex contractor capacity.

This is the executive's capacity-constraint signal. If 8 roles are open and the recruitment runway is short, the firm has a problem to solve now, not in the variance report after the close. The specific cost resolution, fulfilment workbench, and Open Role lifecycle (filled, open, cancelled) live in the People narrative. Dashboard shows the aggregate consequence.

P//Caldera Group ▾

Dashboard

Outlook

Pipeline

P&Lsoon

KPIssoon

Activitysoon

Open Demand · firm-level constraint signal

Sits beneath the Outlook drivers, which already flag open roles per driver. On the surface it is just the count; open it for the detail.

On the surface

Open demand

Open role count

Open roles (FTE)

open ↓

On open · detail

Open demand8 roles · 6 FTE×

Where the roles sit

Pipeline 5 Active projects 3

Revenue at risk

$180k

5 pipeline roles

Cost at risk

$70k

3 active roles

Top open roles

DeveloperMeridian · Platform ModernisationPipeline$72k

Senior ConsultantBrindle Bank · PlatformActive$34k

Business AnalystMeridian · Platform ModernisationPipeline$48k

Open the People area to fill →3 OF 8

Open Demand · a count on the surface, the detail one click away · Pipeline / Active split · revenue at risk · cost at risk · per-role breakdown

Open Demand · unfilled roles across Pipeline and Projects · revenue at risk · cost at risk · per-role breakdown.

How this connects to the rest

This narrative does not stand alone.

To Pipeline

The Outlook and Funnel surfaces show the consequences of pipeline and deal decisions. When a Deal Model is built with cost and margin assumptions, those assumptions flow into the Pipeline scenario on the Outlook. When a deal is won, it moves from the Pipeline scenario into Contracted. Outlook Drivers highlights which deals are moving the forward P&L most. The deal margin and staffing details live in Pipeline; Dashboard shows the aggregate firm-level consequence.

See the Pipeline narrative

To Projects

Projects contribute to the firm's forward P&L through the Contracted scenario. When a project extension is signed, it appears as an Extension driver. When a project is ending within 30 days, it appears in the Projects ending section of Outlook Drivers. Funnel monitors pipeline opportunities; Projects monitors delivery commitments. Dashboard surfaces both sides, demand and capacity, in one cockpit.

See the Projects narrative

To People

The Open Demand card aggregates unfilled roles across Pipeline and Projects, a people-constraint signal. The Utilisation posture card shows whether consulting staff are billable or on the bench across the three scenarios. Falling utilisation, rising open roles, and growing bench cost appear together as a coordinated signal, not three separate metrics needing reconciliation. The cost resolution and Open Role lifecycle live in People.

See the People narrative

To Financials

Dashboard Outlook surfaces the firm-level P&L across three scenarios, simplified to the headline rows. Financials carries the full P&L grid (Revenue → Delivery Cost → Contribution → Non-Billable Production Cost → SG&A → EBT) and the drill-to-source chain. Dashboard is the cockpit view; Financials is the analytical view. Both surfaces resolve from the same underlying facts.

See the Financials narrative

Closing

See the posture, find the drivers, watch the pipeline move, read open demand: all from one cockpit, on the same calendar.

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