Blog · Industry
Which contractors in the region are active and which you supply. Which accounts buy timber and nothing else. Which branch has a hundred lapsed trade accounts worth reopening. From the ERP and the trade account ledger, account IDs only.
How a builders' merchant or trade supplier measures what happens after a trade account is opened, from the account master and the ledger: accounts opened per branch, the share with a first purchase within thirty days, the share still buying at six months, the median first-purchase value, and the branches and account openers whose funnel leaks at each step, so that the opening effort produces customers rather than records.
16 Sept 20262 min readHow a builders' merchant measures each trade account's category basket against the norm for its trade rather than against the branch average: the categories a plumber's account typically buys and at what share, the same for an electrician, a general builder, a roofer, the accounts below their trade's norm in a category they should buy, the value at norm, and why the trade field on the account master is the most valuable column the branch never fills in.
16 Sept 20263 min readHow a merchant or building materials manufacturer measures share of each contractor's spend by category from the trade ledger: categories bought against the norm, lapsed trade accounts per branch, an optional project overlay, and the reconciliation to invoiced sales.
16 Sept 20263 min readHow a builders' merchant or trade supplier finds the accounts whose purchasing is constrained by their credit limit rather than by demand: headroom from the credit file and the ledger, orders held or refused for credit, the accounts at the limit whose purchase pattern flattened, and the two decisions that follow, a limit review for the good payers and a collections conversation for the rest.
16 Sept 20262 min readThe ten questions the managing director of a builders' merchant puts to the branch managers, which trade accounts buy below their trade's norm, which accounts were opened and never used, which good payers are stuck at their credit limit, which contractors won projects nearby and have no account, which accounts lapsed against their own cadence, what is category share per branch, which branches have not typed their accounts, which counter customers deserve an account, what is contribution per account after drops and returns, and what changed, each with the table from the ledger, the account master, the credit file and the project data, and the answer to send back.
16 Sept 20263 min readHow a merchant that buys planning or project data turns it into a branch prospect list: matching the contractor named on an application to a trade account, listing active projects in the branch's area with no supplying account, valuing each at the project's size, and keeping the overlay separate from the ledger measures it sits beside.
16 Sept 20262 min readHow builders' merchants should choose analytics software: start from the questions, check the data you hold, ask vendors ten questions, avoid the traps.
24 Sept 20264 min readThe complete category share by trade calculation on five trade accounts at one branch, small enough to check by hand: each account's spend by category from the ledger, its trade from the master, confirmed or inferred, the trade norm per category from the full-supply accounts of that trade, norm penetration, category share against the norm, the gap per category valued at the account's spend, the untyped account excluded and counted, and the assertion that category spend sums to the ledger, so a reader can reproduce every figure and then run it on their own ledger and account master.
17 Sept 20263 min readThe ten sales KPIs a builders' merchant or construction materials supplier should run on, each with its formula, the export it comes from and what it tells you: category share by trade, account activation, dormant trade accounts by prior value, credit limit headroom, project pipeline matched to accounts, quote conversion, branch coverage of key accounts, price realisation against terms, delivered against collected mix, and contribution per account. Also the three measures most merchants miss, the figures to drop, the identities, and who owns what.
17 Sept 20264 min readContractor coverage analytics for building materials suppliers.
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