Hiring a Strategic Planning Consultant
in HealthTech & Digital Health

The short answer

A revenue forecast and a decision on which at-risk contracts to accept are different objects, and the planning cycle reliably produces the first while the business needs the second to keep gross margin from eroding under signed outcomes risk. The version of this question that applies to digital health companies is not the generic one. Outcomes risk is being signed faster than the company can learn whether it can carry it — a 12-month measurement window against an 11-month sales cycle — so an answer that ignores at-risk revenue share will be confidently wrong. The analysis has to start from engagement rate and gross margin rather than from revenue.

Planning in digital health typically starts with each team listing additional at-risk share it could sign, rolls the PMPM figures into a total, finds the sum exceeds what the 12-month measurement window can support against an 11-month sales cycle, and then reduces every line by the same percentage so the published plan still shows growth to 340,000 enrolled members without any contract being rejected.

Consultants are often brought in to force choices between contracts that both look accretive on paper, yet the real limit is that dropping one means the CEO or CFO must tell a payer the attributed outcomes will not be pursued, an admission that immediately raises logo churn risk for the remaining book and is therefore avoided until the numbers force it.

The second reason to engage outside help is narrower: internal teams lack capacity to pull the five-year history of engagement rates and gross margin by cohort, isolate the PMPM contribution of each at-risk arrangement, and show the arithmetic of keeping versus shedding specific contracts while the business continues to sell.

Corporate Strategy & Transformation assembles those cohort-level margins and states the exact revenue and churn consequences of each possible book, but it cannot compel the CEO or CFO to accept a loss on any single payer; when the constraint is unwillingness to lose rather than missing arithmetic, only a facilitator who can surface the authority issue will change the outcome.

How to tell this is actually your problem

These three together are the signature. One on its own usually points somewhere else.

✓ The last planning deck listed every existing at-risk contract as continuing without any line showing termination or renegotiation of a cohort whose engagement rate has already produced negative gross margin.
✓ The rolling initiative tracker still contains the same three pilots to raise engagement rate that were carried forward from the prior two cycles and have not moved past design stage.
✓ The finance model that sets next year’s PMPM targets is completed only after the sales team has already committed the at-risk revenue targets rather than the other way around.

The move that usually makes it worse. Hiring a facilitator to run the offsite when the actual blocker is that the CEO or CFO has not yet decided which at-risk share must be declined, so the meeting ends with an updated list that still contains every contract.

Who this is for — and who it is not

It is for you if you run or finance a digital health company and the last plan contained no decision to stop doing something. It is the situation where the numbers are available but nobody has put them in an order that produces a decision.

It is not for you if Percision is the wrong tool if you already know the answer and only need execution capacity, or if the business is pre-revenue — then the constraint is evidence about the market, not analysis of your own figures. Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library. Also wrong if you need facilitation, politics, or someone to sit with a lender or buyer. Those are human jobs.

Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library.

What this looks like when the analysis is actually run

Below is an excerpt from a real run of this analysis on a digital health company. It is a sample profile rather than a customer, and it is unedited engine output — this is the format you get, on your own numbers.

The subject is Vantabridge Health, a sample company profile used for testing rather than a customer — $62M ARR, 340,000 enrolled members.

This is one move out of a full analysis. Read a complete report — every page, no email required.

What the engine does with this question

This question routes to Corporate Strategy & Transformation, one of 29 engagements the platform runs. For digital health companies it works through at-risk revenue share, engagement rate, gross margin and logo churn, then produces the sequence rather than a list of options — which move first, what it funds, and the observation that would say the sequence is wrong.

You watch the analysis get built before paying anything. Read a complete report here if you would rather see the depth first.

Questions people ask about this

What does a strategic planning consultant charge?

An independent facilitator running an offsite and producing a plan is commonly £8k–£30k. A firm running a full planning cycle with analysis is £60k–£200k. The range is wide because the two jobs are different: one is facilitation, one is evidence. Decide which you are short of before you compare quotes, because the cheap version of the wrong one is still wasted.

How long should a strategic plan be?

Short enough that the trade-offs are visible. A useful plan states where you will win, what you will stop, and the two or three things that must be true. Most of the length in a typical planning document is evidence supporting decisions that were already made, which belongs in an appendix nobody needs to read twice.

Should the plan cover three years or one?

Set direction over three and commit resource over one. Three-year financial detail is invented precision in almost every business, and treating it as a commitment makes the plan brittle. The parts that genuinely need a three-year view are capacity, capital and capability, because those are the ones that cannot be changed inside a year.

Is this different in healthtech & digital health than in other industries?

Materially, yes. Outcomes risk is being signed faster than the company can learn whether it can carry it — a 12-month measurement window against an 11-month sales cycle — which changes both the diagnosis and the order of the fixes. The metrics that decide it here are at-risk revenue share, engagement rate, gross margin, and an answer built on industry-general benchmarks will usually point at the wrong one first.

What data do I need before this analysis is worth running for a digital health company?

Less than most people expect. Your last twelve months of revenue and cost split the way you already split it, plus whatever you hold on at-risk revenue share and engagement rate. The analysis is explicit about what it is assuming where your data stops, which is more useful than waiting for numbers you may never have.

When is Percision the wrong tool?

Percision is the wrong tool if you already know the answer and only need execution capacity, or if the business is pre-revenue — then the constraint is evidence about the market, not analysis of your own figures. Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library. Also wrong if you need facilitation, politics, or someone to sit with a lender or buyer. Those are human jobs.

Does Percision replace a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, or AI implementation team?

Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library.