Blog · Industry
Which accounts buy one category from you and five from a competitor. Which branch has a hundred dormant accounts worth reactivating. Which outside rep is covering forty accounts and calling on twelve. From the ERP export you already have.
ERP dashboard examples connect purchasing, stock movements and finance using the same reporting period. Work through a distributor's reconciled inventory, purchasing and payables views, then see what changes when a receipt arrives early.
Oct 24, 20266 min readIndustrial distribution financial analysis compares stocked-part margins, service costs and inventory investment. Build a branch review from sales, cost and stock exports with worked spreadsheet formulas and reconciliation checks.
Oct 2, 20265 min readWeighted average cost per unit divides inventory cost available by the units available. Compare periodic and moving inventory averages on the same purchase and issue records, then reconcile ending inventory and cost of goods sold.
Sep 12, 20267 min readHow to choose analytics software for Industrial distributors: the questions, the data, ten vendor questions and the traps.
Sep 1, 20264 min readExplain changes in industrial distributor sales by customer, product family and recurring versus project demand. Build a price and quantity bridge from sales exports, then prove it against reported revenue.
Aug 26, 20265 min readThe honest answer to what share of quotes should turn into orders: the 25 to 50 percent figures quoted for distributors and manufacturers depend on how quotes are joined to orders, on whether conversion is by count or by value, and on the customer mix, because some customers quote everything three ways and some only quote what they intend to buy. This page gives the ranges by desk, the three measurable things that set the right figure for one business, and the table to compute before anyone quotes a percentage.
Aug 26, 20263 min readThe ten sales KPIs an industrial or MRO distributor should run on, each with its formula, the export it comes from and what it tells you: category penetration by branch, dormant accounts by prior value, quote conversion by count and value, lost lines from stock-outs, counter sales without an account, account coverage at cadence, price realization against contract, share of spend at key sites, reactivation rate, and contribution per customer. Also the three measures most industrial distributors miss, the figures to drop, the identities, and who owns what.
Aug 22, 20264 min readThe complete lost-line calculation on ten order lines from three accounts at one branch, small enough to check by hand: the order and fulfillment exports joined on order and line, each line's state, shipped in full, short, canceled for stock, or substituted, lost value at the line's price, lost rate per account, the item that recurs, the account whose order frequency fell after the run, and the assertion that every line is in exactly one state, so a reader can reproduce every figure and then run it on their own exports.
Aug 17, 20263 min readHow a distributor's inside sales team builds a weekly reactivation list from invoiced sales: the dormancy rule that combines a global window with each account's own rhythm, the past-value ranking, the reasons that move an account to a watch list instead, and the branch roll-up that shows how much revenue went quiet.
Aug 4, 20263 min readIndustrial demand combines repeat purchases, replacement needs and customer projects. Compare those drivers with supplied forecasts and actual net orders using a reconciled product-level workbook.
Jul 23, 20265 min readHow an industrial distributor measures the order lines it could not fill from the order and fulfillment exports: canceled, substituted and short-shipped lines per branch and per account, the value at the line's price, the items that recur, and the accounts whose order frequency fell after a run of lost lines, so that the stock decision is made on what was lost rather than what was sold.
Jul 10, 20262 min readService parts demand is often intermittent, so weekly forecast errors need to be read alongside stock and service criticality. Work through a parts-usage example, spreadsheet formulas and inventory checks by part and site.
Jul 1, 20265 min readHow an industrial distributor or trade supplier finds the repeat cash and card customers at the counter who have no trade account, from the point-of-sale export: repeat visits matched on card token or phone, spend per month, the items they buy against what account customers of that size buy, the value of converting them, and the branch list that turns a cash customer into a covered account.
Jun 26, 20262 min readHow an industrial, MRO or building products distributor measures category penetration per account and finds dormant accounts per branch from the ERP's invoiced sales: the norm from your own accounts, the valued gap, the dormancy window, and the roll-up that reconciles to invoiced sales.
Jun 23, 20264 min readAccount penetration analytics for industrial distributors.
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