Compare · vs Operations Manager
If you are weighing a £30,000 to £45,000 a year Ops hire against installing Prudence, here is the honest version of the comparison. Costs, time to value, what each one covers and the cases where one is genuinely the right answer over the other.
| Prudence | Operations Manager | |
|---|---|---|
| Annual cost (typical) | Prudence £14,340/yr + £995 setup (£1,195/month, one flat fee for both modules). Bespoke POA. No NI, no benefits, no recruitment risk. | £30,000 to £45,000 base salary. Plus employer NI (~13.8%), pension auto-enrolment, benefits, recruitment fee (15 to 25% of salary), onboarding time. Full loaded cost typically £40,000 to £60,000 in year one. |
| Time to value | Two weeks from Discovery to live. Discovery call, Findings Report within 48 hours, two-week Setup, then operational. | Three to nine months. Recruitment cycle, three months' notice, six weeks of onboarding, then learning your business. |
| What they cover | The commercial spine of every job: estimates drafted from your rate card at the pitch side, supplier costs caught and tagged, recharges drafted at the pay side. Always human in the loop on anything that leaves the business. | Strategy, process design, supplier management, HR escalations, team management, judgement on operational decisions, external representation. |
| Multi-tool integration | The integration is the product. Information flows between the tools the team already uses without anyone copying it. | They use the tools the same way the team does. Switching between CRM, calendar, accounts and inbox is still manual work they do. |
| Scaling behaviour | £1,195/month flat, whether the team is 5 or 50 people. Bespoke steps in for higher volume, multi-entity or industry-specific needs. No new hire, no notice period, no awkward conversations. | Cost scales with seniority. The right hire at £35k may not be the right hire at £80k as the business grows. Each new layer is another hire. |
| What it does not do | Prudence does not make judgement calls. It does not manage your team. It does not represent you. It does not think strategically. The judgement calls stay with you. | An Ops Manager does not replace the systems that pass information between tools. They still need the systems to work. |
| Where the human stays | You stay in the loop. Pru drafts and surfaces. You decide, approve and send. Drafts land in the native tools you already use (your accounting package for the recharges, your rate-card system for the estimates), not a new app. | The Ops Manager is the human in the loop. They make all the calls inside their remit. |
