Toronto
◆
Ottawa
◆
Montréal
◆
Boston
How a $75M industrial distributor rebuilt its price book on landed cost, recovered two points of gross margin, and closed its month end in six working days instead of fifteen. Through fractional leadership, with no change to the sales team.
Revenue had been flat for two years while gross margin slid to 24 percent, below the floor for industrial distribution. Pricing authority sat with whoever answered the phone, and freight was rarely recovered on anything under a full pallet.
The month-end close took fifteen working days, so a bad quarter became visible only once it was finished. Nobody was doing anything wrong. Nobody could see what it added up to either. The drift had never been given a number. It was $1.5M a year, leaving one quote at a time.
A fractional executive rebuilt the price book on landed cost with freight included, and set a single exception process for anything sold below it. Orders priced below standard fell from about a third to under five percent, not because sales was overruled but because the exception now carried a name.
Reporting moved to a weekly margin view by customer and product line. The two largest accounts were repriced at renewal. One of them was allowed to leave, and margin improved in the quarter it did.
Client names are withheld under confidentiality.
Twelve months of quotes were rebuilt against true landed cost. That is where the $1.5M came from, and it had never been calculated before. Three weeks of it went on branch data that did not reconcile.
Two branches kept quoting their own way for six weeks after the new book went live. It stopped once the exception report was published weekly across all branches instead of staying inside the one that raised it.
The close was rebuilt as separate work. Cutoff moved to a hard date, inventory reconciliation moved onto a weekly cycle instead of month end, and three accounts that had never been reconciled were cleared. Fifteen working days became six.
The controller took the price book and the exception review. The branch managers took the weekly margin view. The engagement ended at six months, on the scope and the price agreed at the start.
Two quarters after the engagement closed, the exception rate had not drifted back and the controller was still chairing the review.
