Diaries

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 […]

We’re going to be analyzing the entire business, including marketing, pricing, discounting, contracting, as well as operating expenses and transportation. Our first step was to establish a profitability model and tie it to their historical financials as well as begin the analysis of their overall performance. The initial analysis seems pretty clear: operating expenses are […]

We meet individually with each member of the validation team to gather feedback. Each team member represents a different business area and provides specific insight into the minutia of his or her operations. We learn of more one-off adjustments that we’ll need to make in order to improve the accuracy of the model.

Preparing for our first update. This includes a review of their financial performance – the overview, which reviews financials they already generally know, and some analyses from the profit model, which is already telling us things the client doesn’t really know, such as at least 50% of their customers are either unprofitable or only marginally […]

One of the most intensely debated areas is the methodology by which overhead costs are allocated down the transaction level. Our assessment-grade models primarily utilized transaction/volume based allocation rules; something that the client was not entirely sold on. This week, we incorporate the work of the Accunomics team focused on OPEX reduction. They provide us […]

Delivered the first update – we’re slowly gaining respect from client management as they can see we’re providing information about their business they haven’t had before. We’re now on to our next step – to demonstrate that greater rigor and transparency in pricing and financials will improve profits.

Another round of validation/revision with the client. As people begin to utilize the model to perform profitability analysis on their own customers/sites/terminals, it brings to light other tweaks that need to be made.

Continuing our research and analyses and preparing for our second update. Also beginning to meet with the President of the Division and executives from parent company. It’s great that this type of engagement allows us to meet with high level executives. This is big stuff that’s worth big money and executives are interested. We continue […]

The profitability model data is “blessed” and ready to feed into the Accunomics MOS tool. The MOS front-end will allow users to run reports, conduct customer-level analysis, and develop and track plans. We’ll continue to run monthly updates to the model, but the MOS will now serve as the main interface to the client.

Preparing for our second update and working with the client teams to keep them informed. We’re supplementing our financial analyses with work process definitions and outside research. I’m keeping the team on track and working with all the leads on a daily basis. Also working with the client project manager to keep her informed as […]