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Playbook IT Consulting

Case Study Engine

A consulting or agency firm's case study is the one asset that keeps working when the pitch deck stops. The 7-line formula below is how we produce them in 20 minutes of founder time, and the weekly engine that keeps the flow running.

Why case studies are the only asset that survives a reorg

Consulting deals do not die in the pitch. They die in the procurement room nobody is in. When six proposals land on the same desk, the buyer does not re-read the pitch decks. The only artifact that carries weight then is the case study with a name attached. Two solid named case studies do in one meeting what 50 lines of claim in an email cannot do in a month.

The 7-line case study formula

Every case study we produce goes through the same 7 lines. The structure is the discipline:

  1. Situation: what the client came in with, in one sentence.
  2. Sought outcome: the change they wanted, framed as a business state, not a deliverable.
  3. Obstacle: the specific thing that made the build hard.
  4. Cause of success: the mechanism that actually fixed it. Not "our team". The specific choice.
  5. Metric: one before/after number. If you have two, use one now and save the other for the follow-up post.
  6. Named client: with their permission. Without it, describe the industry and team size. Naming is the multiplier.
  7. Call to action: one line. Usually "we do this on a fixed bid; the audit is free".
Full worked sample, 7 linesA mid-market logistics firm had three disconnected freight systems after two acquisitions. Sought outcome: one rate card, one booking flow, no dual-entry. Obstacle: the acquired firms could not agree on the rate table and nobody owned compliance on the merged side. Cause of success: we did NOT build a unification engine. We built a tiny rule engine that sits above both systems and translates on the fly. Two months instead of nine. Eventually the rule engine became the standard. Metric: rate card maintenance went from 14 hours a week of manual updates to 40 minutes. Client name withheld here, on record.

The post-to-case-study flow

Every completed project takes 20 minutes of founder time and converts into one case study plus two LinkedIn posts. The twenty minutes happen at the wrap meeting: what was the sought outcome, what fixed it, what is the number. Capture it at delivery time or it dies in the Slack graveyard. This is the mechanism that keeps a consulting firm's feed full without weekly writing pressure.

Cadence: one full case study per month published as a doc, plus the before/after post from the same win published in the same month, two weeks apart.

What actually kills it

Founders forget what the success criterion really was. Six weeks later, the Slack thread is dead, the client's memory is fuzzier than yours, and the metric you would have led with is unavailable. A case study dies in the project channel, not in a bad outcome. Capturing the 7 lines the day delivery ends is the habit that makes this work.

The weekly engine

In the $500/month system, case-study harvesting happens every week: from your happy emails, your Slack channels, your delivery notes. We write the 7 lines for you, you approve one item, we publish. Priced, no setup:

Book a 15-minute pipeline call, or reply "run it".

Back matter: the case-study client interview

Five questions, 15 minutes with the client, recorded. Run it the week the engagement ends:

  1. What were you trying to fix when you came to us, in your own words?
  2. What did the project break or threaten that made it urgent?
  3. What did the change feel like the first week it was live?
  4. What number moved, and can you name it?
  5. Would you let us quote you by name? What would you NOT want attributed to you?