If some entrepreneurs, before doing business, calculated its profitability, perhaps they would choose the second path, or, moreover, another industry.

Profitability is the main component of the business model

The cash ratios section of any money management book begins with the profit margin. Obvious and elementary, you tell me. Unfortunately, in order to have opinions held by many entrepreneurs, and quite often they do not calculate the profitability ratio at all, not to mention its classifications and subspecies. The result is that capital was invested in the wrong business, the expected income was not received.

What if, in addition, it is taken, the boss, who has not calculated profitability, deprives himself of a fairly significant managerial tool.

In fact, and no one can dispute this, profitability is one of the basic components of any business model. It is on this basis that it is forbidden to build and translate into the destiny of a company's development strategy without taking into account profitability indicators and understanding the mechanisms for managing them.

So, profitability is the coefficient of long-term viability of the company. There are three main types of profitability ratios: return on sales, profitability and return on equity assets. Then about each in detail.

Return on sales

In simple terms, the return on sales indicator tells how many sales the company received per financial unit. Calculate given coefficient in two ways: by dividing either net profit by net sales, or - gross profit by net sales:

return on sales = net profit = either net sales

gross profit. pure implementation

Net profit is profit after deducting all costs, gross profit is profit after deducting only the cost of goods sold.

The figure taken by dividing the gross profit can be called more indicative for several reasons. Firstly, the net profit indicator does not always reflect the real picture of the processes occurring at the enterprise. As has already been reported, it is formed by deducting all costs, and the latter are often inflated in order to optimize taxation.

Secondly, the figure obtained by dividing the gross profit reflects the real percentage of the enterprise's average markup.

In addition, a comparison of two indicators - net and gross profit - is also informative. If the gross profit rate is higher than the net profit rate, it means that the majority of the enterprise’s profit is generated through non-main activities.

Comparing the profitability rates of two firms operating in the same market can indicate which of them focuses on the size of the markup, and which on the speed of turnover.

There are no clear and necessary standards for this indicator. It can be stated that for manufacturing firms the usual return on sales is no less than 0.15-0.2; for distributors 0.03-0.05 is enough; for retailers - 0.10-0.15. But these numbers are very dependent on the kit external factors, based on this, you should not strictly focus on them.

Return on assets

This indicator indicates the profit per financial unit invested in assets, i.e. on the effectiveness of the use of funds allocated to assets. It is considered to be the division of net income by the average amount of assets:

return on assets = net income =. average assets

From time to time, for greater clarity, the denominator is not just the price of all assets, but the net price, in other words, after deducting all current liabilities. This indicator shows how effectively the company uses the assets it is working on. The profitability of an enterprise's assets tends to decrease when the enterprise attracts credit funds.

At a time when the company, having taken out a loan, has not yet had time to increase sales, the return on assets will decrease.

Return on equity

The most serious indicator indicating how correctly and effectively the owner has invested. It is considered a way to compare net income and average equity: return on equity = net income =. average personal capital This is the only indicator that has a clear standard - the profitability of such businesses or the simplest analogue - the average bank interest on deposits.

In order for the return on equity indicator to actually allow the owner to realize how correctly he invested, it is necessary to compare businesses with the same level of risk.

clients.

Supplier Profitability

By analyzing supplier reports and “monitoring” their profitability indicators, companies in most cases try to find the answer to the question: is it too much? a large number of the supplier receives money from them, in other words, is he not cheating? From this point of view, profitability indicators are especially interesting. operating profit and fixed capital.

The client directly influences the return on capital of its own suppliers. The agreed selling price is reflected in the level of profitability of the operation, and the requirements for credit terms and warehousing conditions are reflected in the methods by which the supplier uses its own assets.

Therefore, to get an answer to the above question, it is worth asking the supplier’s return on equity figure, the reasons and dynamics of its improvement, and calculate the impact of your own order on the upcoming profitability trend. This is a normal work process, in the end, you are partners and no one is deceiving anyone, right?

The profitability of the supplier's non-current assets (profit/the amount of fixed assets), or more correctly, its transformation, indicates the following: a drop in the indicator indicates that the enterprise is using assets ineffectively and is not using resources to their full capacity. An increase in the indicator, on the contrary, indicates that assets are being used correctly. But in the near future the company may face the problem of lack of capacity.

Where can I get these?

Client profitability

We need an analysis of the profitability of a client or partner to determine whether he has opportunities, whether his income is increasing or decreasing.

The first thing that should interest us in a client’s financial results report is the profitability in that part of his business to which domestic supplies are directed, and how it compares with other segments of the company’s activities. It is completely clear that capital and main forces are in most cases concentrated in those areas whose profitability is the highest. Accordingly, a comparative analysis of indicators gives us data about which division of the company will be closed or sold in the near future, and which, on the contrary, will develop and grow at an active pace.

Having looked at the figures for the amounts of income, profit before payment of current current assets and client liabilities, we can calculate profitability indicators for individual areas of the company’s activities, as well as in the context of its work with regions.

In simple words, we will notice where the client’s money comes from. When breaking down the client's return on equity into its internal components, it is worth paying attention to how stable the operating profit figure is. One should not hope for stability of profits from the sale of non-current assets or subsidiaries - these are one-time successes. If a client is trying to improve profitability, and we offer him a popular product, he will, of course, receive price discounts.

The second case is that in order to increase its own profitability, the client tries to use assets more efficiently. It is worth offering him, for example, equipment or machinery that will help longer.

Rival profitability

Of all the profitability indicators of competitors, the most informative figures are return on equity and operating profit. In most cases, the profitability ratios of firms operating in your same market do not differ very much. If your opponent is noticeably in the lead in these indicators, it means that he has either found new market sales, or applies new development production or distribution of its own products, or falsifies these own reports.

The competitor’s return on capital, again broken down into its components, shows where the company makes profits and suffers losses: from operational activities, from interest income, from the sale of fixed assets or branches, from second sources.

In general, an analysis of the profitability of competitors allows the company to specify weak sides and its own advantages, and the advantages and strengths of rival firms. Based on this information, it is possible to build a competitive strategy for your own behavior and struggle in the market.

Of course, the question arises: where to get these numbers in order to conduct a similar analysis. If the firms we were interested in were stock exchange players, the information would be open, and all we would have to do is take it and apply it. But when the company is not required to disclose data, finding the source of the data becomes much more difficult.

In the West, for example, there is a standard: when concluding contracts with clients, the agent is obliged to provide data from his own financial statements for recent periods. Foreigners adhere to the same principle when working in the Ukrainian market. Perhaps there is a point to work like strangers?

Since we are moving towards a civilized market, albeit at a slow pace.

The break-even point is equal to fixed costs divided by the marginal profit rate (MRR). Accordingly, the higher the NPP, the less goods need to be sold in order to achieve self-sufficiency. Conversely, the more money spent on fixed costs, the higher the revenue should be. The influence of the NPP indicator on the break-even point increases with increasing its value. Thus, with an NPP of 80%, an increase in sales volumes, as well as a drop in them, will affect the break-even point more strongly and faster than with a 30% NPP.

It is important to know that taxes are not deducted from revenue when calculating the break-even point. This is due to the complexity and differences in tax systems for different businesses. To manage profits, it is useful to calculate the profitability of a specific line, product, service, or even a specific order from a specific customer. Profitability is the share of revenue received in excess of what is needed to achieve self-sufficiency.

Calculation of the profitability of an individual product or service

In many enterprises, the calculation of profit (or loss) before tax on individual goods or services are conducted with assumptions. The reason for this is that in multi-industry companies the same employees are involved in the creation of several types of goods and services at once. Accountants themselves have to distribute the cost of paying for the work of such people for several products. In this case, it is almost never possible to achieve absolute accuracy. Therefore, the financial service usually does this approximately, guided by its experience and assumptions. Of course, the calculation can be made to the nearest penny if the company has an automated time tracking system, where each employee notes how many hours he spent on a particular project. But there are not so many enterprises that have the opportunity to introduce such a high-tech product.

Approximate calculation fixed costs in terms of a specific type of product may be incorrect. As a result, the enterprise may stop the production of any product or close the whole direction. But the costs that the financial service used to distribute to him will not disappear anywhere and will have a bad effect on overall financial performance.

Profitability is the share of revenue received in excess of what is necessary to reach self-sufficiency.

Calculation of profitability of work for individual clients

It is known that according to Pareto's law, only 20% of customers bring 80% of revenue. Of course, the ratio may change, but the essence remains - clients are different. And perhaps some of them should be dealt with more time, using additional employees. When a company has few customers, often one or two of them bring in up to 50% of total sales. As the number of clients increases, this share usually falls and can be, for example, 5%. But it’s still worth considering such customers as key ones. After all, it is enough to find only 20 such clients, and they will make up the same level of sales as a hundred or two small ones, with a share of 1% or less. But you need to take into account that, as a rule, the requests of large clients and their service requirements are higher than those of small ones. In addition, they often knock out Better conditions, prices, discounts. And for business this means expenses.

Economics gurus recommend separately calculating the marginal profit rate for clients whose share in total sales is 5% or more. At the same time, be sure to take into account all the overhead costs associated with such a client, from birthday gifts and lunch meetings (costs not only for food, but also for the manager’s salary) to printing and preparation additional package documents and costs for their delivery. Having correctly determined all the indicators, you can easily find out the break-even point of the enterprise and adjust the development strategy taking into account the resulting calculations.

The introduction of a system for calculating client profitability makes it possible to determine/adjust the bank’s interest and tariff policy for clients served in the direction of cutting off unprofitable (unprofitable) clients by increasing interest rates and tariffs.
At the same time, identifying clients from whose services the bank receives the greatest income makes it possible to justify the introduction of benefits depending on certain parameters of such clients (payment and settlement turnover on accounts, account balances, lending volumes, etc.).
Considering that a comprehensive calculation of the client’s profitability requires detailed study and is characterized by great labor intensity (in the absence of automated system calculation), a simplified approach can be proposed, presented in Table. i L 6. Client name/Industry
Indicators Meaning of indicators Previous period Reporting
period Growth (Decrease) Note Payment turnover*: debit credit Average (average chronolotic) value on settlement accounts: settlement ruble current currency deposit (term) bills of the bank : settlement service cash service by foreign exchange transactions interest on a loan to work with securities other Income from placement by the bank of balances on accounts* Income - total Expenses of the bank:
payment for account balances* for collection
non-operating (for the maintenance of bank employees, administrative expenses - TJJEHO-% РЗ?І5
etc.)**
other Profit (losses) Profitability, %
Note:
* - total for all customer accounts;
** - in a simplified form, the bank's non-operating expenses per client can be calculated as the ratio of total general bank expenses wages of all employees and the maintenance of jobs, taking into account all expenses (utilities, operating, communication services, administrative and economic, etc.) to the average number of bank customers served during the analyzed period.
Filling in the columns of the specified table for a specific client for the previous and reporting periods allows you to assess the improvement or deterioration of its performance from the bank's point of view. At the same time, specific values ​​of operating income and expenses can be determined (with a sufficient degree of accuracy) on the basis of the volume of operations, applicable tariffs and interest rates. For the correctness of calculations for the analyzed periods, interest income/expenses should be accounted for using the accrued interest method.
The bank's internal income from the placement of client resources (account balances, etc.) can be determined taking into account the introduction of a reducing coefficient to the average volume of client resources, reflecting the average volume of diversion of funds into non-income bearing assets to ensure non-cash and cash payment turnover of the client and deductions to FOR. Rate of return ( internal price) can be adopted on the basis of the current average bank profitability of active operations.
It is obvious that the dynamics of changes in indicators over the analyzed periods does not always reflect the improvement or deterioration of the client’s business. To a large extent, this may be a consequence of changes in macroeconomic conditions, the influence of seasonality factors on the client’s business, changes in intra-industry market conditions, etc. In addition, a change in the level of activity of the client’s work with the bank may be a consequence of dissatisfaction with the offered prices for services and their quality.
Thus, such an analysis is diagnostic in nature and allows us to identify cause-and-effect relationships between the activity of various categories of clients and the profitability of their services for the bank. Therefore, the quantitative calculated values ​​of the indicators given in table. 1.16 must be supplemented with an analysis of the reasons for their improvement/deterioration. For each indicator in the table, the Note should provide explanations for changes in indicators for the analyzed periods.
Based on the results of customer profitability calculations, a summary table is generated. 1.17. At the same time, clients who do not work with are allocated into a separate group; bank, but having (opened) bank accounts. Non-working clients for each analyzed period can be determined based on an analysis of turnover and account balances.
Table 1.17
Pivot table. An example of calculating the profitability of a client Indicators Previous period Reporting period Change Acceptance of Clients - total (100%) Including: non-working*
working Of them with profitability (100%): high average
low
unprofitable "- there are no turnovers on accounts, the balances are negligible zero)
If there are no turnovers for the analyzed period and negligible (zero) balances on all accounts, the client falls into the group of non-working. Obviously, they can get here like “ dead Souls", as well as clients with extremely low activity (due to the specifics of the business or other reasons), but "alive".
The positive dynamics of the reduction in the share of non-working clients is one of the indicators of the relative increase in the degree of activity of clients in working with the bank. At the same time, the quantitative values ​​of changes in the number of non-working clients are also important.
Profitability is calculated only for working bank clients. The following gradation of profitability levels is proposed: high, medium, low. Clients with a negative calculated profitability indicator are classified as unprofitable. Customer profitability levels for each specific bank may vary significantly. The limits of change (the spread of values ​​from the average calculated level) can be determined by the specific obtained values ​​of profitability of bank clients using the cluster analysis method.
Obtaining an overall picture characterizing the structure of the client base in terms of client profitability for the bank is very important for analyzing the bank’s client base and developing measures to improve the efficiency of the banking business as a whole. So, if, as a result of calculations, the share of clients with high rate profitability is insignificant while the return on banking assets in general is high, this reflects a negative trend and characterizes the bank’s dependence on a small number of large clients. In this case, it is necessary to find out the existence of property and other relations between the largest clients and the bank: whether they are shareholders, borrowers of the bank, etc. The presence of such connections, on the one hand, can be considered as a positive factor characterizing interest in working with the bank, however, on the other hand on the other hand, does not exclude the deterioration of the business of such clients (due to various reasons and factors of an external and internal nature), which will entail a deterioration in the position of the bank as a whole.
It should be noted that in practice, each bank is characterized by a different structure of resources (its own and borrowed), uses (has) various options attracting them (in the interbank lending market, private funds, corporate clients etc.) Therefore, the internal cost of banking resources for each bank may differ significantly.
The cheapest resources are client account balances, the most expensive are deposits individuals, deposits, bills. However, account balances are demand funds, therefore, according to the bank’s liquidity requirements, they can be placed not in long-term assets, but only in short-term ones.
Stability factor. As is known, long-term investments more profitable than short-term ones. Therefore, it is very important to assess the degree of “stability” of client resources. For this purpose, it is proposed to introduce an assessment of client resources in the form of account balances through the stability coefficient. It is calculated as the ratio of the minimum balance (minimum) to the average account balance for the analyzed period.
This indicator reflects the quality of client resources: the closer it is to one, the higher the quality. Information for* assessing the degree of stability of client resources in the form of account balances for each specific client is given in table. 1.17. Depending on the needs for client resources of a particular bank and the available options for placement in active operations, the bank can set different fees for average (average daily for the period) account balances and for minimum balances.
Thus, a comprehensive analysis of a client’s profitability for a bank should include an analysis of the client base according to various parameters (quantitative and qualitative). In addition, to assess the degree of customer satisfaction with the existing range of banking services and the quality of banking services, as well as the need for new (other) services, it is advisable to conduct customer surveys through questionnaires, etc.
In table Figure 1.18 shows a conditional example of calculating a client’s profitability. Various work options are considered, characterizing the degree of activity of clients in relationships with the bank.
Table 1.18
A conditional example of calculating the profitability of a dim bank client Non-operating expenses, thousand rubles. 20 400 Number of clients 1200 Expenses per client, thousand rubles. 17
In a year
The client carries out only cash and settlement operations, does not have a loan. Account balances, thousand rubles. 5Q 170 500 1000 2000 3000 Payment per % YEAR 0 / 0 / 0 / 5 / 5 J 10 / balances on / w / / accounts, / gs rub. / ° / 0 / 0 / 50 /100 /300 Income for cash management services 14 50, thousand rubles. 2 6 120 180 Internal %year / 10 / Yu / 10 / 10 / 10 / 10 / income* / / / / / / thousand rubles. / 3 / 10 / 30 / 60 / 120 / 180 Profitability, % -24 0 5 4 6 1 * the calculation takes into account the amount of funds placed in the amount of 60% of account balances
The client carries out cash settlement operations and uses a loan Credit, thousand, rub. 1 500 2000 3000 4000 5000 9000 Percentage % goal / 5 / 5 / 5 / 5 / 5 / 5 / margin / thousand. / / / / / X / rub. / 75 / 100 /150 / 200 / 250 / 450 Profitability, % 4 5 6 6 7 5
In the first option, the condition is accepted that the client carries out only cash and settlement operations, does not have a loan, and does not (actively) carry out international and other “expensive” operations. The bank receives the main income from such a client by placing funds in active operations in the form of his account balances. It is also assumed in the calculations that the client has only balances on current accounts (ruble and foreign currency). i.e. the bank has attracted resources on demand. The volume of placement of such resources is taken into account, taking into account the reduction factor.
According to the calculation results in Table. 1.14 the border of the level of profitability of clients is quite clearly visible. So, with account balances less than 170 thousand rubles. servicing the client becomes unprofitable for the bank. In addition, when fixed fee For account balances, it can be seen that large clients with balances of more than 3 million rubles. provide the bank with much lower profitability (at the limit) than with balances of 500-2000 thousand rubles. This allows you to justify the reduction in fees for balances on the accounts of large customers.
In order to trace how the client's profitability for the bank changes when the list of services changes, a second calculation was made, provided that the client, in addition to settlement and cash operations, uses a bank loan. The calculation immediately takes into account the cost of the bank's resources (internal) and the actual profitability of loans by establishing an internal margin (in the example, a rate of 5% per annum is adopted). According to the results of calculations, customer service, regardless of the size of their account balances, becomes profitable for the bank. In this case, the calculation of the interest margin can be reduced to determining the minimum return on the bank's investments, the so-called " dead center» profitability.
Thus, the analysis of customer profitability is the basis for substantiating the interest and tariff policy of the bank, depending on the degree of customer activity (specific characteristics: payment and settlement turnover on accounts, account balances, lending volumes, etc.), developing new banking services from the standpoint of the greatest acceptability (demand) for specific groups of clients, development / adjustment of the bank's policy in the direction of attracting and serving clients in order to increase the efficiency of the bank as a whole.

An important role in the process of forming customer expectations is played by previous shopping experience, advice from friends and colleagues, information received from active market players and competitors, as well as promises. If supplier information leads to high expectations, it is quite possible that the buyer who is seduced by advertising will be disappointed. If a company sets expectations too low, it will not be able to attract enough customers (despite the fact that the actual quality of the product will exceed the expectations of consumers who still decide to make a purchase). Today some of the most successful companies manages to raise the level of customer expectations and at the same time ensure the quality of the goods corresponding to them. Airline JetBlue Airways, launched in New York in 1999, has significantly raised consumer expectations for so-called low cost carriers. Passengers were offered completely new "Airbuses" with comfortable leather seats, satellite television, free wireless internet and the policy of fulfilling customer wishes. After some time, other low-cost airlines began to offer some of these innovations.
However, the desire of a customer-oriented company to achieve high levels of customer satisfaction does not mean that this is the main goal for management. Customer satisfaction increases when a company reduces prices on goods or increases the level of service, which in other cases equal conditions leads to a decrease in profits. A company may be able to increase profitability by other means than increasing customer satisfaction (upgrading the production process, investing more in research and development). In addition, the company deals with a number of stakeholder groups: employees, dealers, suppliers and shareholders. Changing the direction of resource flow in favor of buyers may cause discontent among “deprived” groups. The company's philosophy should include achieving, within the limits of available resources, a high level of customer satisfaction and compliance with the requirements of other stakeholder groups.

Satisfaction Rating

Many companies systematically evaluate customer satisfaction and the factors that influence it, because customer satisfaction is the basis of customer retention. A satisfied customer typically stays loyal longer, buys new and higher-level products from the company, speaks well of both the company and its products, pays less attention to competing brands, is less price sensitive, and suggests new product ideas to the company. or services, and is also cheaper to maintain, since operations with it are routine. However, there is no direct relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Let's assume that satisfaction is rated on a scale from 1 to 5. With a very low level of satisfaction (1), customers will most likely refuse the company's services and certainly will not recommend it to their friends. At an intermediate level of satisfaction (2–4), buyers will be very satisfied with the company, but at the same time tend to switch to more attractive competitive offers. At the highest level of satisfaction (5), there are high chances of repeat purchases and good reviews of the company. A high degree of satisfaction or admiration for a company creates not just a rational preference, but also an emotional connection with the company or its brand. According to the company Xerox, “highly satisfied” customers are six times more likely to repurchase over the next 18 months than “highly satisfied” customers.
When customers rate their satisfaction with one element of a company's operations (say, delivery), management must be aware that people's perceptions of good delivery can vary widely. Customer satisfaction may be related to speed of delivery, timeliness, completeness of order documentation, etc. In addition, it is necessary to understand that two different customers may report the same high satisfaction for different reasons. Some are easy to satisfy, and they remain satisfied in most cases; others are difficult to please, but at the time of the assessment this was just possible.

Quality of goods and services

Maximizing lifetime customer returns

Ultimately, marketing is the art of attracting and retaining profitable customers. James Patten from American Express claims that his company includes clients who spend on purchases in retail trade 16 times more, 13 times more for restaurants, 12 times more for air travel, and 5 times more for hotel stays than the average American. And yet, any company has customers whose service results in losses. The well-known Pareto rule states that 20% of customers generate 80% of a company's profits. William Sherden proposed an addition - 20/80/30. He believes that "the top 20% of customers generate 80% of the company's profits, half of which is lost in serving the bottom 30% of customers." Conclusion: a company can increase profits by eliminating its most unprofitable customers. Moreover, the company’s most profitable customers are not always its largest clients, who require maximum discounts and a high level of service. In contrast, ordinary buyers pay for goods at full price and are content with a minimum level of service; however, transacting with them comes with high costs. “Average” customers are served at good level, buy goods at almost full price and are very often the most profitable for the company. That is why many companies are now turning their attention specifically to the “middle class” of buyers. For example, leading express delivery companies postal items conclude that they cannot afford to ignore the needs of small and medium-sized shippers. Programs aimed at small clients include placing mailboxes in convenient locations. This allows postal companies to provide significant discounts on letters and packages that are picked up at the shipper's office. In addition to developing its network, the company UPS, for example, conducts seminars for exporters on the topic of optimizing international transport.

Buyer profitability and competitive advantage

What is a profitable buyer? Profitable buyer - This is an individual, household or company that generates income over a long period of time that sufficiently exceeds the company's costs of attracting and servicing them. Note that we are talking about revenue and costs over the buyer's life cycle, not profit from a specific transaction.
Many companies measure customer profitability, but most are unable to determine the individual profitability of their customers. For example, banks claim that customers use different banking services, which means transactions are recorded in different journals. Those banks that managed to calculate individual profitability were horrified by the number of unprofitable clients. Some banks reported that up to 45% of their retail depositors were losing money. Here the company has only two options: raise tariffs or cut service maintenance.
A useful example of buyer profitability analysis is shown in Fig. 4.2. The columns indicate buyers, the rows indicate products. Each cell contains a symbol indicating the profitability of selling a given product to a given customer. Buyer 1 is very profitable; he makes purchases of three profitable goods ( R 1, R 2 and R 4). Buyer 2's profitability is heterogeneous; he buys one profitable product and one unprofitable product. Buyer 3 is unprofitable because he purchases one profitable and two unprofitable goods.

Rice. 4.2. Profit analysis "Consumer/Product".

What to do with buyers 2 and 3? The company has two options: 1) raise the price of unprofitable products or stop producing them, or 2) try to sell profitable products to these customers. If unprofitable customers abandon the purchase, they are of no interest to the company, which will benefit if they leave for competitors.
For buyer profitability analysis(AMS) the method of accounting costing by type of activity is best suited. The company evaluates all income received from the buyer and deducts costs. The latter include not only the costs of production and distribution of products and services, but also all other company resources spent on servicing a given customer. If you do this for all customers, you can classify them by profit level: platinum customers (most profitable), gold customers (profitable), bronze customers (low profit but desirable), and wood customers (unprofitable and undesirable).
The company’s goal is to transfer “bronze” customers to the “gold” category, and “gold” customers to the “platinum” category. Wooden buyers should either be abandoned or their profitability increased. To do this, as we have already said, it is necessary to increase prices or reduce service costs.
Companies must create high value not only in absolute terms, but also relative to competitors, and at fairly low costs. The ability of a company to operate in one or more areas where competitors are unwilling or unable to match the level of value and costs it creates is called competitive advantage. M. Porter called on companies to create a sustainable competitive advantage. In general, if a company wants to operate long and profitably, it must constantly invent new advantages. Any benefit to the company must at the same time be advantage for buyers and be accepted as such. For example, if a company delivers faster than its competitors, but speed is not of critical importance to customers, this will not be an advantage for them.

Buyer Lifetime Return Estimation

Buying capital of the company

Development of relationships with customers

In addition to cooperation with partners - partnership management– many companies are focused on strengthening connections with their clients, i.e. customer relationship management. This is the process of using detailed information about each individual buyer and managing all “touch points” with customers. The ultimate goal is to maximize customer loyalty. Point of contact refers to any contact a buyer has with a brand or product, be it personal use, contact in funds mass media or simple observation. For example, a hotel’s touchpoints may be room reservation, check-in and check-out, participation in programs regular customers, room service, business services, visit gym, use of laundry services, restaurants and bars. In hotels Four Seasons, for example, they rely on personal contacts: service staff always addresses guests by name, employees are vested with great authority and understand the needs of sophisticated businessmen and hotel guests; Besides, in Four Seasons there is at least one best "convenience" in the region, e.g. best restaurant or pool-spa.
Customer relationship management enables a company to provide high-quality customer service in real time. This is achieved through effective use information about individual clients. Based on data about each profitable customer, companies can customize their offers, services, programs, messages and media used. CRM is important because the aggregated profitability of the clientele is one of the main components of a company's profitability. One of the first CRM methods was used by the company Harrah's Entertainment.
Some of the foundations of customer relationship marketing were laid by D. Peppers and M. Rogers in their One-to-One series of books. The authors call the following four principles of “personal marketing”, also known as the four principles of CRM:

To accurately assess the profitability of services and clients, select a costing unit and determine the composition of direct and indirect costs. Read more in the article.

If your business provides several types of services, it is important to know which ones are profitable and which ones are not. But calculating the profitability of services is not so easy.

First, the material and salary components are incomprehensible. Secondly, if the service is provided in several stages or several structural divisions, the cost components are not obvious, then you cannot enter the “Semi-finished product” category.

I'll tell you step by step how we acted to determine cost of services and evaluate the profitability of services and clients, and what we got as a result.

Step 1. To determine the profitability of services, select a costing unit

On one of the projects that I led, I encountered next situation. The company provided more than ten types of services, but in the accounting system there was only one calculation object - “Complex service”. Such a calculation unit did not make it possible to calculate the cost of each service and determine its profitability (see Table 1).

Table 1. Accounting data before selecting a costing object (fragment)

Make a comprehensive list of all the services the company provides. For each service in the accounting system, create a separate calculation element (see Table 2).

table 2. Accounting data after implementation of the costing unit (excerpt)

To avoid having to calculate profitability by service and counterparty manually in the future, in the “Income” article, highlight similar second-order items for each service.

For example, in a medical laboratory center, the catalog of services contains hundreds of types of tests. In the accounting system, each type of analysis must be the object of calculation (see also example of product costing ). This will allow you to calculate the cost of each service and its profitability.

Download useful documents:

Methodology for calculating cost and distribution of services

Stage 2. Approve the composition of direct costs

Which items will be included in direct costs depends on the specifics of the service and the company that provides them.

For example, in a laboratory research project, we identified the following costs:

• reagents;
• Consumables;
• wages of laboratory personnel;
• taxes on wages of laboratory personnel;
• rental of laboratory equipment;
• depreciation of laboratory equipment;
• other.

Analyze the balance sheet for account 20, so you will be sure that you have included all the necessary items in direct costs.

Stage 3. Distribute direct costs of services to correctly calculate their profitability

Boiler method. If a company provides one type of service or several that are similar from a technological point of view and in terms of resource costs, this method of distributing costs is suitable. To allocate direct costs using the pot method, divide the sum of all direct costs by the total number of services your company provides.

Exact method. Does the company provide several different types of services? - choose the exact method. It involves a multi-level distribution of costs for services. For example, we distributed direct costs for laboratory services in two stages (see Table 3):

• according to specifications - reagents and consumables;
• all other items are directly proportional to the volume of services.

Table 3. Exact method for allocating direct costs

To distribute direct costs according to the specification, make a catalog of services and write down the norm for each of them Supplies. For example, in a beauty salon, for the “Hair Coloring” service, indicate how much dye and oxide is consumed for a certain length of hair. In the case of laboratory services, it is quite difficult to standardize in the accounting system. Because for this it would be necessary to keep records of reagents in test tubes, and not in packages. Therefore, we divided the reagents in direct proportion to the services in which they were involved.

Distribute direct costs that do not relate to a particular unit of production in direct proportion to the services that are produced in the corresponding division.

Step 4: Select Indirect Costs

Highlight indirect general production costs. For example, the salary of managers of a production complex or the rental of production space.

In laboratory services, indirect costs are as follows:

• rental of production space;
• depreciation of general production equipment;
• salary production management;
• taxes on wages of production management;
• special assessment of working conditions;
• workers liability insurance;
• property insurance.

Analyze the balance sheet for account 25, so you can make sure that you have included all items in indirect costs.

Step 5: Allocate indirect costs to services

Distribute indirect costs in direct proportion to the volume of services provided in the relevant department.

The medical center has several departments, and in order to distribute the rental amount that applies to each of the departments, they chose an alternative distribution base - wages. We acted as follows - we divided the salary of each department by the total salary of production management and multiplied by the total amount rent for production premises.

Step 6. Calculate the profitability of services

Once you have determined the total cost of the service, compare it to the selling price. To accomplish this task, we developed a special management report in the accounting system, which allowed us to assess the profitability of each client medical center(see Table 4).

Table 4. Counterparty profitability report

Prepared from materials