Finance · Margin and cost to serve
Find the real margin
The Profit Survey finds which customers and products earn your gross profit and which lose it, on your own numbers. The customer who looks best on the sales report is often the one losing you money once the cost of serving them is counted. It works from an extract of your transaction data, with no new system to wait for.
What it is
The Profit Survey is an evidence-based read on where your gross profit is made, built from your own transaction data. It has three parts. An 80/20 read by customer and by item shows what earns and what does not. Cost to serve is counted for every customer. Structured "what's working" interviews with your team find the fixes that already exist inside the building. You end with a ranked finding.
What you receive
- 01
80/20 by customer and by item
We map revenue and gross profit two ways: by customer, and by product or service line. Once the full cost of serving it is counted, part of the book often earns nothing. We find which customers and items carry the business and which cost you money.
- 02
Cost to serve
The customer who looks best on the sales report is often the one losing you the most once the calls, the rework, the special terms and the short-notice orders are priced in. We count cost to serve customer by customer, so the margin on the page matches the margin you keep.
- 03
What's working interviews
We run structured interviews with your team on what works today, as well as what is broken. The fix a business needs is often already running somewhere inside the building, in a process one location has solved and another has never seen. We find it and write it down.
The findings are yours whether or not you go further. If a Margin Discipline Blueprint or the Finance Engine is warranted, the proposal names only what the evidence supports.
What it needs from you
- A transaction extract covering your customers, your products or services and what each costs to serve
- Read-only access, with no system integration and no connection to your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system
- Time for structured interviews with the people who run the numbers
- A single point of contact who can get us the right data quickly
How it ends
The Profit Survey ends with the finding presented to you directly: which customers and products carry your gross profit, and which do not. You keep it whatever you decide. If a Margin Discipline Blueprint or the Finance Engine is warranted, the proposal names only the lane the evidence points to.
Where it fits
The Profit Survey is the first stage in Finance, and the Survey most engagements start with, because margin evidence is usually the fastest way to see what a company does. It comes before the Margin Discipline Blueprint or the Finance Engine, whichever the findings point to. See the three stages for the full sequence, or the Finance area for the rest of what we look at here.
Where to go from here
One hour of your time, no charge: fifteen minutes on the Growth Check, then a forty-five-minute video call. We read every answer before the call.