Case studies · Fuel & Forecourt Retail
A loss-making forecourt group, returned to profit by fixing its governance.
Revenue was falling and margin was leaking. The real problem was neither: it was that nobody could see what was happening until after it had happened. We rebuilt the controls, and the numbers followed.
Named on request, with permission
The challenge
Falling revenue was the symptom. The exposure building underneath it was the problem.
The group came to us with a straightforward brief: revenue was declining and margins were slipping. That is the version of the problem most forecourt operators arrive with, because it is the version the monthly numbers show.
What the monthly numbers did not show was the rest of it. Reconciliations were running late and incomplete. Purchasing decisions were being made without a current margin position. Stock control was loose enough that shrinkage could not be separated from mispricing. And behind all of it, a VAT exposure was quietly accumulating — not through avoidance, but because the records supporting the returns could not be reconstructed on demand.
None of those four things is a finance problem on its own. Together they are a governance problem, and a governance problem cannot be fixed by working harder on the management accounts.
Stage 1–2 · Discover and Diagnose
Every BAMML engagement starts by assessing the organisation, not by proposing a solution.
The IBPS™ assesses capability across five domains before any recommendation is made. The findings decide the scope — which is why two clients with the same presenting symptom rarely get the same programme.
Domains marked Primary focus set the scope of the engagement.
The IBPS™ operating model
Six stages, in order, on every engagement.
The method does not change between clients. What changes is what each stage finds. Here is what it found here.
Discover
Understand the organisation's context, objectives and challenges.
Stakeholder interviews across the group and a document review of the prior two financial years. The brief we were given — declining revenue — was recorded, then set aside until the diagnostic could test it.
Outputs: stakeholder interviews · document review · baseline assessment
Diagnose
Evaluate organisational capability across the five strategic domains.
Financial Governance and Risk & Compliance were the primary gaps, and leadership had no current, interrogable numbers to decide on. That combination — not the revenue line — set the scope.
Outputs: diagnostic report · capability maturity assessment · gap analysis
Design
Develop integrated strategies and practical solutions.
A structured financial and tax review was designed to run alongside a control rebuild rather than after it, so that each reconciliation finding fed straight into the control that should have caught it. Purchasing and margin discipline were brought into the same workstream.
Outputs: strategic roadmap · governance improvements · implementation plan
Deliver
Implement agreed initiatives with clear accountability and milestones.
Controls, reconciliations, purchasing discipline and margin management were implemented with a named owner against each.
Outputs: project plans · change support · capability development
Measure
Monitor outcomes through defined performance indicators.
Gross margin, operating expenses, trade payables and the operating result were tracked against the opening baseline — the same four measures the diagnostic had flagged, so improvement could be attributed rather than assumed.
Outputs: executive dashboards · KPI reports · Board reporting
Improve
Review lessons learned and identify opportunities for continuous improvement.
With the financial controls stable, Workforce Governance — assessed and scoped out at Diagnose — stays flagged for review in the next cycle.
Outputs: improvement recommendations · updated roadmaps · governance actions
The loop closes at stage six. Every engagement ends by feeding the next one.
The outcome
Measured against the baseline the diagnostic set, not against a good feeling.
Figures are the client's own reported results over the engagement period, measured against the opening baseline recorded at Discover.
“Revenue was the symptom. Governance was the fix — once the controls worked, the margin followed.”
The BAMML viewBAMML INC
What made the difference
Three principles did the work, and they are the same three on every engagement.
Governance before growth
We did not go looking for revenue. Sustainable growth depends on controls that work, so the controls were fixed first and the margin recovery followed from them.
Evidence-based decision-making
The brief said revenue. The diagnostic said governance. We scoped to what the evidence showed rather than to what the symptom suggested.
Integration
The tax review, the control rebuild and the purchasing discipline ran as one workstream. Run separately, each would have found a piece of the problem and missed the shape of it.
Talk to the person who led it
Is this your situation?
Every engagement starts the same way: a free 60-minute Health-Check that scores your organisation across the five IBPS™ domains. You get the diagnostic whether or not you go further.
Lydia Bam
Led the financial governance and tax workstream on this engagement.
info@bamml.co.za · +27 65 904 5667