What is a point of utilization actually worth?
Utilization is the number every professional services firm manages and realization is the number that quietly decides the year. Put both on ranges against a fee target and the model prices one point of each, so you know which meeting to hold.
Work Intermediate Monte Carlo Pro engine
After you install, this is the model to open.
Will the Team Bill Enough Hours?
- In your spreadsheet, click the Sortia icon in the strip of icons down the right-hand edge. No strip? Click the arrow at the bottom-right to open it. You can also use Extensions, then Sortia, then Open Sortia.
- Click Start from a template and put that name in the search box.
- Pick the card with that name and click Load this template. It arrives on a new tab with real numbers already in it.
This one runs on a Pro engine, and every free install includes five full-quality runs on your own numbers, shared across all five Pro engines rather than five for each. After that, Pro is $199/year.
The answer
- Miss the target
- 51% the $2.25M target is set with no buffer
- Fee revenue
- $2.24M expected; P5 $1.98M, P95 $2.50M
- A utilization point
- $33,756 a realization point is worth $24,682
- Utilization needed
- 66.65% at plan realization, not the 68% being argued about
Twelve consultants, 218 working days after leave and public holidays, 7.5 chargeable hours a day: 19,620 available hours. At 68% utilization, 93% realization and a $185 blended rate that is $2,295,422 of fee revenue against a $2,250,000 target, which clears by two percent. Before you run anything, read the last line on the sheet, the utilization the target needs at plan realization.
It says 66.65%. Everybody in the room has been arguing about a 68% target when the number that actually has to be beaten is 66.65%, and nobody had calculated it because realization lives on a different tab. Now click Run with utilization, realization and the rate on ranges. Fee revenue averages about $2,243,000 with a median about the same, a fifth percentile near $1,981,000 and a ninety-fifth near $2,498,000, and the miss flag comes back at about 0.51.
The target is exactly a coin flip, which is what happens when a target is set at the expected value with no buffer on it. The useful output here is not the odds, it is the price of a point. One point of utilization on this team is worth $33,756 of fee revenue and one point of realization is worth $24,682, so a utilization point is worth 1.37 realization points.
That ratio should decide which conversation the partner has on Monday, because the two conversations are completely different: utilization is a sales and resourcing problem and realization is a scoping and billing hygiene problem. Second run. Realization is the easier of the two to move, because it is mostly about writing scope down properly and billing on time.
Tighten it to a triangular 0.91, 0.95 and 0.98 and rerun: fee revenue rises to about $2,308,000 and the miss flag falls from about 0.51 to about 0.36. Fifteen points of miss probability, bought with billing discipline rather than with more sales. The tornado puts utilization first at about 0.84, then the rate, then realization, and that ranking is about spread rather than about leverage: realization matters more per point and moves less, which is exactly why it gets ignored.
What this model cannot see is that it has one blended rate, so it cannot tell you the year is being carried by two senior people, and it treats the twelve as interchangeable, so it has nothing to say about a partner at 30% utilized and a graduate at 90%. To make it yours, use your own headcount and working days, take realization from the WIP write-offs rather than from the rate card, and put your real target into the fee revenue target line.
The model
It arrives on a tab called Template: Will the Team Bill Enough Hours:
| Billable consultants (count) | 12 |
| Working days a year after leave and public holidays | 218 |
| Chargeable hours in a working day (decimal hours) | 7.5 |
| Available hours | 19,620 |
| Utilization, share of hours billed (%) | 0.68 |
| Hours billed | 13,341.6 |
| Realization, share of billed hours invoiced (%) | 0.93 |
| Chargeable rate ($ an hour) | 185 |
| Fee revenue ($) | 2,295,422.3 |
| Fee revenue target ($) | 2250000 |
| Misses the target (1 = yes) | 0 |
| Utilization the target needs at plan realization | 0.6665 |
Once it is in your sheet
- The model arrives with real numbers in it and runs as it stands, so you can press the button first and understand it second.
- Change the numbers to yours. The sheet marks which cells are inputs and which hold formulas, and most labels carry a note explaining the row.
- Press the run button at the bottom of the panel. It is labeled for the tool you are in, and the result lands on its own tab, with a written reading of it beside the figures.
Never used Google Sheets? Start here goes the whole way, in seven steps, and assumes nothing.
Next question
- Twelve recurring tasks timed before and after an automation rollout. The paired test makes the 23-minute average saving certain, the sheet turns it into a 13-week payback, and the two tasks that got worse are the real finding.Did the Automation Deliver?
- Which big clients are quietly the expensive ones?Which Kinds of Client Do We Actually Have?
- Is the bigger fee the better client?Which of Two Clients Should Get the Slot?
- Score four early-warning signals against client renewal with a correlation matrix, so you know which metric actually predicts churn. Free Sheets template.What Moves With a Client Leaving?
- Which stream will move the delivery date?When Does This Engagement Actually Finish?
- How many hours will this scope actually take?What Should This Engagement Cost to Deliver?
Every model like this one, and the method behind them: Monte Carlo simulation.