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Bruce Merrifield, President — Merrifield Consulting

•profit analytics •WayPoint Analytics •cost-to-serve math •cost-to-serve in distribution •LIPA •line-item profit analytics in distribution •High Potential Accounts (HPAs) •High Efficiency Accounts (HEAs) •High Leverage Accounts (HLAs) •customer segmentation •costing rules •business analytics •Randy MacLean •distributor sales analytics •distribution analytics •cost to serve analytics •NBC •NBC (Net Before Comp) •Margin vs NBC •customer profitability analysis •Bruce Merrifield •cost cutting •payroll efficiency •Merrifield Consulting •cost analysis •cost reduction •customer profitability •cost reduction analysis •profitability management •account strategy •profit metrics

There is much more to your costs that meets the naked eye. Taking a simple look at things, you can see the items that you make more or less money from overall. You can see which items are profitable according to margin.

However, with a deeper analytics-based look, you can see WHY and HOW products are profitable, around which you can construct a more educated and effective sales strategy. Margins can be deceiving, and you need more than that alone to truly understand what goes on in your business.

The way that people order is sometimes even more significant than WHAT they order. Small, frequent orders are bound to take up time and energy that could be spent elsewhere, but large, bundled orders will save on valuable resources, giving you a greater profit, and the ability to offer better prices.

Most financial systems are not refined enough, and don't provide enough information to tell you the whole story of which products make you the most money. Margins are not related to profitability in any meaningful way, and in order to understand your profitability, you need to find a deeper, more intelligent analytical system to truly understand what to do, and how to do it.

Audio file: merrifield7-04.mp3