Shared Service — Iron Triangle

Overview

Shared Services Alliances pool back-office functions across networks of childcare providers so each site can focus on care, not paperwork. We saw an opportunity to serve this underserved segment with an Enterprise solution centered on the "Iron Triangle" of early childhood finance — full enrollment, full fee collection, and revenue that covers the true per-child cost of care. I owned the product end to end, from segment discovery through enterprise rollout.

The problem

Shared Services networks were stitching together spreadsheets and disconnected reports to monitor the health of dozens of sites at once. Without a shared, trustworthy view of enrollment and revenue, leaders could not act early — and we had no offering that met the reliability and access-control bar these enterprise buyers required.

The solution

Full Enrollment — monthly FTE trends per room to spot capacity gaps early.

We paired Shared Service Providers — who worked directly with educators to coach them on business best practices — with the tools and flexibility they needed to optimize their trainings and focus guidance on the most impactful area for each center. The analytics surfaced the two financial levers that matter most: whether a center is trending toward full enrollment, and how effectively it is collecting the tuition it has already invoiced.

My approach

• Ran discovery with Shared Services leaders to map the metrics that actually drive funding and sustainability decisions across a network.

• Framed the analytics experience around the Iron Triangle so the dashboard told a clear financial-health story rather than just surfacing raw data.

• Partnered with engineering to define an enterprise-ready data model, role-based access, and the reliability standards required to win larger accounts.

• Sequenced delivery to land a defensible MVP quickly, then iterated with design partners ahead of broader rollout.

Tools & methods