Think of your consultancy like a leaky bucket.

You win the work. The team kicks off. Everyone’s sharp, motivated, moving fast. But somewhere between project scoping and final delivery, time starts to disappear. Not in huge, obvious ways. But in a steady drip.

Hours spent looking for the right version of a slide.

An afternoon lost recreating a landscape chart someone built last quarter.

A consultant chasing data that another team has already found… twice.

The work gets done. The client’s happy. But the margin? Not what it could have been.

This is the quiet cost of a broken process.

And it’s the reason many consultancies feel busy, even successful - while quietly bleeding profit in the background.

The leaks aren’t in the talent, they’re in the workflow

If you’ve been in market access consulting long enough, you know this truth: great people can’t overcome broken systems forever.

The biggest drag on profitability isn’t lack of expertise. It’s the repeated friction that slows teams down, wastes time, and erodes strategic energy.

Let’s break down the three biggest culprits.

1. Manual research: the never-ending trawl

Every project starts with research: TPP inputs, competitor profiles, clinical endpoints, evidence requirements. And every time, your team starts from scratch.

Because the last time someone built that view?

It’s buried in a deck, lost in a shared drive, or left in someone’s head.

So you burn time. Not researching, but re-researching.

Digging. Checking. Piecing together things your firm already knows.

Multiply that across brands, teams, and therapy areas… and the cost adds up fast.

Value loss, plain and simple.

2. Repetitive analysis: solving the same problem over and over

You’ve probably seen this one too: your team builds a brilliant model for pricing benchmarks or value messaging. Everyone loves it. Then a new project starts, and instead of building on that foundation, they reinvent it.

Because the original wasn’t structured for reuse.

Or no one remembered it existed.

So consultants burn hours rebuilding frameworks that already work.

Slightly different data. Same logic. Same lost time.

And the deeper issue? This repetition takes time away from real thinking: the high-value, strategic insight your clients are actually paying for.

3. Disconnected delivery tools: building with duct tape

Let’s talk about the endgame: delivery.

You’ve gathered the insights. You’ve done the analysis. Now you need to turn it into something client-ready. And that’s where most teams hit the wall.

One tool for content. Another for timelines. Slides here. Excel there. Comments in email. Sources in a buried reference file. Nothing flows together. Nothing talks to anything else.

So what should be a final polish becomes a rush job.

And consultants spend more time formatting and chasing context than delivering clarity.

The outcome? Delays, rework, and diluted impact.

More resource won’t fix it, the answer is infrastructure

You need a system that holds your institutional knowledge, speeds up analysis, and connects the dots between insight and execution.

A Knowledge Operating System, one that:

• Centralises internal and external evidence
• Structures analysis so it’s reusable, not disposable
• Surfaces relevant inputs instantly
• Connects work across teams, projects, and timelines

We’re definitely not talking about replacing consultants, rather, giving them a foundation that doesn’t leak.

What’s at stake?

The difference between a profitable firm and a stretched one often isn’t revenue.

It’s efficiency at scale.

If every project drips 10–20% of effort into duplicated tasks, slow research, or disconnected delivery - you’ll never feel it on day one. But across a year? It adds up.

Fix the leaks, and you’re recovering margin, time, energy, and momentum.

Because the firms that scale in this space won’t be the ones with the most people.

They’ll be the ones with the smartest process.