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The Cost-to-Serve Index 2026 · benchmark survey

How well does your company actually see its profit?

Eight minutes, fully anonymous. Get an instant read on where your business sits on the cost-and-profitability maturity curve, and be among the first to receive the 2026 Index. Every answer helps build a benchmark that does not exist anywhere else.

AAbout your company

A little context so we can cut the Index by sector and size.
Your sector *
Annual revenue *
Your role *
Company country *
Start typing to filter your country.

BWhat you can see today

The heart of the Index: the gap between what you believe and what you can prove.
Could you produce, today, the net profit of your single largest customer, including the cost to serve them? *
Not gross margin, not contribution margin: the true bottom line after every cost of serving them.
Which margin levels do you actually measure today? *
Select all you can produce reliably, per customer or product.
What share of your customers do you believe are unprofitable once all costs to serve are included? *
A best guess is fine. This is the perception half of the story.
% of customers
Have you ever measured it properly, with activity- or time-driven costing rather than averages? *
At what level can you actually see profitability? *
Select all that apply.

CHow you cost and act

Method and cadence, and whether the numbers actually change decisions.
How do you allocate indirect and serving costs today? *
How often is your cost model refreshed? *
Do cost-to-serve insights actually change decisions (pricing, minimum orders, offboarding)? *

DWhat you do with it

The levers a business can pull once it can see true cost-to-serve.
Which of these have you actually put in place, using cost-to-serve data? *
Select any. This is where the Index gets most useful.
When you pull these levers, what are they based on? *

ETools and AI

Where the market is heading, and the barrier that holds it back.
What runs your cost model today? *
Select all that apply.
Are you using AI anywhere in costing or profitability analysis? *
Biggest barriers to trusting a profitability number? *
Select all that apply.
If you could see true customer and product profitability tomorrow, what would you do first? *
Pick any that apply, and add a line of your own.

Before you send it

Who holds this data. Cost and Profitability Consulting is the data controller. Responses are used only to build an aggregated, anonymised benchmark (the Cost-to-Serve Index) and are stored on our own servers, never shared with any third party. We do not store your IP address, only a one-way salted hash used to prevent duplicate and abusive submissions. Lawful basis: your consent. We keep individual responses for 24 months, to allow year-on-year comparison, then permanently delete the raw response and retain only the aggregate.

Your rights. On submitting you receive a private reference code. You can ask us to permanently delete your response at any time using that code, or by writing to copenhaga@gmail.com. See our privacy policy for the full detail.

Cost-to-Serve Index · your reading
Aware

When the 2026 Index publishes

The 2026 Index is being built from answers like yours. When it publishes it goes on the site free, and into your inbox if you left an email. It will carry the spread of all five readings across every respondent, the same picture cut by sector, revenue band and role once enough replies land in each, and the levers people said they would pull first. Until the sample can carry those cuts we are not publishing them, so what you see above is your own reading, not a ranking against your peers.

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Miguel Guimarães

Reviewed by

Miguel Guimarães

Founding Partner, Cost and Profitability Consulting

More than 150 Time-Driven ABC engagements across 11 sectors since 2010, working within the Kaplan and Anderson framework.

About the author →
M
Ask us anything
usually replies in minutes
Hi. I can answer the quick questions about cost, method and timing right here. For anything specific to your business, I'll connect you with a CostCtrl specialist on WhatsApp.
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