Finance & Investment

Cost Base Review

Aggregates a spend extract by category and supplier, exposes concentration, scores each material line for reducibility, and sizes a savings pipeline with the lever, confidence and effort per opportunity.

  • Finance & Investment
  • Traceable reasoning
  • Runs anywhere
Preview methodology

2–3 weeks ~40 minutes

For a full population, not a sample

No coding required

Input
Documents, exports or uploads you already hold
Output
A structured, review-ready deliverable
Runs in
Skillsize · ChatGPT · Claude · Copilot
Export
SKILL.md · MCP
Time saved
~2–3 weeks per run

— USE CASES

What people use Cost Base Review for

Repeatable client analysis

Run the same structured analysis for every client or business unit so quality no longer depends on who picked up the work.

Faster first drafts

Turn raw source material into a working draft in minutes and spend your time on judgement instead of assembly.

Comparable results over time

Produce the same shape of output each cycle so movement is measurable rather than re-argued.

What it works from

  • Documents, exports or uploads you already hold
  • Your own criteria, framework or house method

What you get back

  • A structured, review-ready deliverable
  • A traceable record of what informed each conclusion

— HOW IT BEHAVES

How Cost Base Review produces its result

The mechanics behind this specific template — what it reads, what it calculates, and where a human stays in the loop.

Row-level table processing

Every row of your table is processed on the same basis, however long the table is.

Charted, not just stated

The pattern is visualised from the computed data, so the trend is legible at a glance.

Composed as work product

Findings are written up as a document that reads like professional output rather than raw model text.

Enriched row by row

Each row gains derived columns from the analysis, keeping the source data and the judgement side by side.

Roll-up alongside detail

Detail rows are summarised into the grouped view without losing the underlying lines.

Why this is expensive by hand

In finance & investment work, cost Base Review is one of those tasks that looks straightforward until you are three documents deep and the details stop agreeing with each other. Repeatable client analysis is the typical trigger — run the same structured analysis for every client or business unit so quality no longer depends on who picked up the work. Done properly it is defensible; done at pace it becomes a judgement call nobody can retrace. And "properly" usually means 2–3 weeks of manual work.

How this Skill produces it

As a Skill, the work is already sequenced. You bring the evidence, and the run produces a structured, review-ready deliverable plus a traceable record of what informed each conclusion. The judgement is built in — how items are broken up, what standard they are held to, and where the run stops for a human review. Net effect: 2–3 weeks down to ~40 minutes, no drift between runs, and every conclusion traceable back to the evidence behind it.

Who it's for

  • Independent consultants codifying their own methodology
  • Strategy and transformation teams standardising delivery
  • Internal advisory functions under pressure to produce faster
  • Operators who need defensible output, not a one-off chat answer

Run it in Skillsize — or export it anywhere

Cost Base Review exports as a structured SKILL.md file and is MCP-ready, so the same method runs in ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or your own AI products. Adapt it to your methodology, and the intelligence stays yours — not locked to one vendor.

ChatGPTClaudeCopilotAI Products (MCP)

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