Greycon's Revenue Recognition and Execution Excellence

About Greycon

Greycon is a manufacturing-focused software company with 40 years of history. It operates within the Constellation Group. 

The company focuses on “material optimization, the planning, capacity planning, production planning, and the execution systems and the MES systems” for industries including paper, packaging, metals, and non-wovens, according to Greycon Managing Director Richard Brotherton.

"I was brought in to... take a good company and make it a great company," Richard said.

The leadership vision set a three-year goal to double the business size and take it up to 50% EBITA. To drive this, Greycon launched “Greycon 3.0,” organized into five strategic pillars: strong leadership, moving to subscription, aggressive growth, operational excellence, and modernizing technology for the future.

A strong business held back by old operating habits

Even with a strong reputation and market leadership in parts of its portfolio, Greycon was “old fashioned” in technology and processes, and day-to-day practices had not meaningfully changed for years.

Execution risk during major scaling

Greycon’s leadership recognized that growth could fail if initiatives stayed theoretical. The transformation needed to avoid the pattern where plans “sit” and never get executed. The company also needed to ensure managers had time to lead, not just keep doing the day job.

Revenue recognition complexity created operational friction

A key operational pain point was revenue recognition. Professional services relied on a “huge, massive, complex Excel form” that only a small number of people could fully understand. Because “sales… closed one doesn’t actually mean anything for us,” and revenue is recognized only after specific stages, it was difficult for sales to forecast timing and outcomes accurately.

A connected strategy built around five pillars

Greycon aligned every initiative to the five Greycon 3.0 pillars. The operating model emphasized transparency and accountability so that progress could be tracked and managed across the organization, not just reported at the top.

Membrain was chosen as more than a CRM replacement. Greycon explicitly positioned it as “a business tool,” designed to build and run processes with a low-code approach. The company needed a system that could be configured quickly for different workflows and workloads across departments.

Replacing spreadsheet-driven revenue recognition with stage-based workflows

Greycon moved its revenue recognition process into Membrain. The company also changed how it charges, shifting away from man-hours and toward charging “per stages” such as design, implementation, configuration, and QA. As work moves through those stages, revenue recognition can follow the process, making the model operational rather than spreadsheet-dependent.

"So we've put that into Membrain and now Membrain becomes our recognition model," Richard said.

Tying execution to customer intelligence and automation

Greycon integrated Membrain with Gong to strengthen customer problem storytelling. The goal was to capture the problems Greycon solves and the implications those problems create, then use that intelligence to support sales conversations with real customer case stories. Greycon also began using Flows for operational workflows such as travel requisitions and approvals, with approvals tied back to opportunities and budgeting.

Strong performance against growth expectations

Greycon reported early success against its transformation targets, stating it was “about 10% over what we expected” for the current year’s numbers. 

Better visibility, accountability, and alignment

The transformation shifted the culture from centralized reporting to shared visibility. Previously, accountability was described as top-down, with the manager director doing much of the reporting. With Membrain and KPI-driven execution, teams gained clearer responsibility and could see how their work contributed to company goals.

Faster reporting and improved revenue visibility

Membrain reduced reliance on manual processes. Greycon described being able to generate reports on what was needed to invoice customers on a weekly or monthly basis, rather than relying on email chains. It also highlighted a major starting challenge: “£5 million in unrecognised revenue,” and how the new process and dashboards helped bring clarity and control.

Positive implementation experience

"To me, Membrain is more than a sales tool; it's a business tool. You can do more than run sales; it helps run the business," Richard said.

Implementation feedback was largely strong. Membrain’s support was described as “outstanding,” and the onboarding approach was praised for being clear and effective. There was also constructive feedback on pacing, with the emphasis that implementation should come first before expanding to additional capabilities.

Rolling Membrain across all departments

Richard said Greycon’s next phase is broader rollout “into all our departments.” The company plans to extend Membrain’s process execution and visibility beyond the initial use cases, including professional services, customer success, and operational workflows.

Expanding AI-enabled development while keeping legacy stability

Greycon is also modernizing its development approach, including “a whole brand new development team with AI agents,” while retaining legacy capabilities needed for existing systems. The company described a careful approach to AI adoption, including expert guidance on what AI can and cannot do.

Using dashboards and “white space” mapping to drive growth

Greycon is building advanced planning and account strategy capabilities. A white space mapping approach links customer journeys and technology stacks to identify where Greycon can expand.

"We've built a stickiness calculator into Membrain now where we can see the stickiness of every one of our customers," Richard said.

The aim is to make growth opportunities visible and actionable across key accounts.