Laura Singley

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 […]

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.

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.

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 […]