Accunomics
The Science of Profitability
Preparing for the third update now, bringing in business case elements and demonstrating how much money can be saved. The client is now pushing back a bit as they don’t want to commit to a benefits number. This requires more discussions with client management. Consulting is complex and requires multiple skills ranging from analysis to […]
With the team’s go-forward recommendations approved, we have quickly shifted into execution mode. We now spend the majority of the time working individually with sync points through-out the week. Earlier in the project we spent the majority of the time in meetings where we could develop off of each other’s ideas, but now we have […]
Delivering the final results. Extensive recommendations for moving forward. Have delivered the presentation to the President of the Division. Now, the whole team’s headed to the City for a final dinner and night out.
I’m meeting the Accunomics team at the client site today. About half the team has been through the assessment phase; the rest of us are joining for the delivery portion of the project. I’ll be working on Profitability Modeling along with two other team members.
The workstream manager reviews the findings from the first stage of the project. He’s already built out an assessment-grade profitability model for one piece of the business. It’s built in Access, but can be manipulated for greater visibility using Excel pivot tables. One of the tenants of profitability modeling: creating a fully-loaded P&L for each […]
There are a few major deliverables that we’ll need to hit during the delivery phase. In addition to turning the assessment-grade model into implementation-grade, we’ll also be building a profitability model for another piece of the business. We begin by meeting with a series of subject matter experts on the client side to get a […]
This week, we’ll focus on pulling together a workable transactional data set. With the help of the finance department on the client side, we isolate the relevant data from the general ledger and map it together with other financial reports to add dimensional detail to the numbers. At each step of the process, we reconcile […]
One of the more challenging pieces of profitably modeling involves investigating variances and gaps between the transactional data and the reported P&L figures. Generally, if the variance exceeds 1%, we’ll look into what’s driving the difference. This week, the focus is on revising our model to account for these variances.
After we’ve built out an initial cut of the model, it’s time to focus on client input and validation. This will involve socializing the profitability model with key stakeholders on the client team, collecting feedback and revising the model accordingly.
It’s time for our kick-off meeting with the validation team. After reviewing the profitability modeling process with everyone, we begin to demonstrate the capabilities of the model. The client seems impressed at the detailed visibility that the model provides. They’re able to select specific sites, customers and products and view the associated P&L right down […]