Compliance reporting, from four spreadsheets to one product
A services business whose best asset was a spreadsheet it gave away. We turned the method into a product with a price on it.
The brief
Ledgerline's consultants produced regulatory reports for mid-sized lenders using a set of spreadsheets refined over six years. The spreadsheets were the moat, and every engagement re-derived them by hand. Growth meant hiring, and hiring meant the quality drifted.
What was actually wrong
The method worked and did not scale. Turning it into software risked flattening the judgement calls the consultants made along the way, and any product handling regulated reporting has to be auditable: every number on a filing needs a defensible trail back to its source.
How we worked
- 01
Separated the rules from the judgement
We worked through three real engagements and split every step into the mechanical parts and the parts a consultant decides. Only the mechanical half was automated. The rest became prompts in the workflow.
- 02
Made the trail the feature
Every figure links back to the source row and the rule that transformed it. What was a compliance obligation turned out to be the thing prospects asked about first in demos.
- 03
Priced it as a product
We moved them from day rates onto per-filing pricing with a tier for firms that self-serve, which changed who they could sell to without changing the headcount.
- 04
Shipped to their own consultants first
The internal team used it for a full quarter before an external client saw it, so the rough edges were found by people who could describe them precisely.
What changed
The same consulting team now covers substantially more filings per quarter, with the audit trail generated rather than assembled. Revenue is no longer strictly a function of how many people they employ.
“The hard part was deciding what not to automate. They pushed back on us more than once, and the product is better for the things it deliberately leaves to a human.”
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