You sense some orders lose money. Let's find out which.
Hundreds of SKUs, dozens of customers, and a quiet feeling that a slice of the business is carrying the rest. We build a clear, fixed-fee customer and product P&L so you know exactly where your profit comes from and where it leaks, without changing a single system. No jargon, no software to buy, just the number you have been missing.
Revenue is up but the bank balance does not agree, and no one can say exactly why.
Some customers demand a lot, order little, and you suspect they cost more than they pay.
Prices were set years ago and quietly never revisited as costs crept up.
Start with the free Profit Check
12 to 15 minutes, fourteen questions, no data upload. It tells you whether cost to serve is likely hiding losses in your business, and where to look first. Most owners are surprised by the answer.
A fixed-fee diagnostic
If it is worth going further, we run a focused diagnostic from your existing exports, in two to three weeks, for a price you know up front. You get a ranked view of profitable and loss-making customers and products.
The two or three changes that matter
We do not hand you a 90-page report. We point to the handful of pricing, minimum-order and mix decisions that recover the most margin, and, if you want, build a model your team can keep updating.
EVERY CUSTOMER, BY SIZE AND TRUE MARGIN
Illustrative. The picture nearly every SME recognises once cost to serve is counted: a profitable core, and a cluster of smaller accounts quietly below the line.
You do not need to be big to be losing money in places you cannot see. You need to be varied. Most SMEs already are.
Common questions
- Is this affordable for a small or mid-sized business?
- Yes. The starting point is a fixed-fee diagnostic scoped to your size, so you know the cost before you commit and there are no open-ended bills. Most SMEs begin there, act on the findings, and only then decide whether to build a full model.
- Do I need to change my accounting system or ERP?
- No. We work from the data you already have, in the formats your systems produce, usually monthly exports. There is no software to buy and no migration. The model sits alongside what you run today.
- How long does a diagnostic take for an SME?
- A focused diagnostic typically runs in two to three weeks. You come away with a ranked view of which customers and products make money and which lose it, plus the two or three changes that move the needle most.
- We are too small for this kind of analysis, aren't we?
- If you have a few hundred SKUs and dozens of customers, you are exactly the size where cost to serve starts to hide losses. Complexity, not headcount, is what makes the picture murky, and that complexity arrives well before a business feels large.
Start with five honest minutes.
The free Profit Check shows whether your business is leaking margin, with no data upload and no sales pitch.
- Duration
- 12 to 15 minutes
- You receive
- Score, 7 dimensions, sector benchmark
- Price
- Free, no email needed
Proof
A distributor in New Zealand. €1.335M of cost-to-serve made visible, then halved, and 830 loss-making customers brought down to 295.
Read the case study →Who you would be talking to
Miguel Guimarães, Founding Partner
Cost and profitability practitioner for 25+ years. Lectured alongside Professor Robert S. Kaplan at the CFO conference in Amsterdam (2009).
Call +351 910 313 731
