Excel Consulting Services in Charlottesville, VA

Most often it is measuring customer concentration three ways — share of revenue, of gross margin and of capacity — and calculating margin by customer with cost allocated honestly.

After that it is costing the cash cycle that the dominant customer's terms impose, and modeling what losing that account would actually mean.

Because the three figures rarely agree and the gaps are the informative part. Revenue share is the obvious number and the least useful on its own.

Margin share is often lower, which means the account is being subsidized. Capacity share is usually highest, and it is invisible in any financial statement.

By having negotiated well. Volume brings a discount, the discount comes out of margin, and a customer at forty percent of revenue can easily be twenty percent of margin.

That can still be the right relationship to hold — the reference value is real and the volume covers fixed cost — but it should be a knowing position rather than a discovery.

It is calculable: the average receivable balance for that account, days outstanding, and the working capital tied up as a result, priced against the facility funding it.

Businesses are often surprised by the figure, and it belongs in every pricing conversation with that customer rather than sitting unattributed in interest cost.

Yes, and preferably long before there is any sign of it. The exercise tells you what you would cut, in what order, how quickly, and what the remaining book covers.

People who have run it describe a different feeling about the relationship afterward. A known position is also a stronger position in a negotiation.

It has an opportunity cost that appears as no line item anywhere, because staff, equipment or space kept available cannot be sold twice.

Reported beside revenue by customer, the trade becomes explicit, and it occasionally shows a second customer could have been served with the same resources.

Scope decides it, which is why the records are examined before any figure is named and why that examination is free. Concentration measures with customer margin is fixed-price.

In every case the deliverable and the price are agreed in writing before any building begins.

The work is delivered remotely by design rather than by limitation. Going through a sales ledger together on a shared screen is identical at any distance.

It also means a negotiation approaching next month gets looked at today, and no part of the invoice is travel.

Usually. The workbook gets read back to first principles, the allocation logic reconstructed, and each fragile part repaired or replaced depending on what is honestly warranted.

What the work needs is time with whoever handles that account now, because the conventions they apply matter as much as the file.

Three concentration measures with customer margin is often a few days. Adding the cash cycle cost, a loss scenario and capacity reporting usually runs one to two weeks.

Whatever the size, that estimate is committed in writing before building starts rather than emerging as the work proceeds.

The workbooks, any macro source code, a written statement of how cost was allocated to customers and why, and training for whoever will maintain it.

Nothing is locked to us and no subscription is needed to keep it running. Support afterward is available and entirely optional.

No. They describe where most of the work has come from rather than what is accepted, and what decides scope is the nature of the problem rather than the sector.

A dominant institution, a dominant retailer and a dominant payer create the same exposure and are measured the same way.