When reviewing your customers and products revenue is generally the default, however it’s important to take a look from multiple angles.

If you want to understand the full picture of sales performance, you can’t just look at the revenue number in isolation:

On our leaderboards in Numerik we have a number of different metrics which help to paint a picture of how your Sales reps, customers, products or regions are performing:

Let's take a look at some of the metrics that we have available, click on any of the names to be taken to an example:

REVENUE

GROSS PROFIT

TARGET

FORECAST

PRICING

The total sales for each customer/product on the leaderboard for the current time period. This is the default for most users. Use the sort Highest button to rank your leaderboard from highest to lowest.

We recommend keeping your customers sorted in order of highest revenue so when looking through other metrics (such as gross profit) you can see the customers who matter the most first!

The total sales for each customer/product on the leaderboard for the exact same period last year. It's important to note that Numerik will look at the same number of days last year as you are through the current period. Ie: if you are 10 days into the current month, the Revenue LY figure will show the same 10 days for last year. This enables you to see the customers/products that were your biggest contributors to your sales result last year.

This is a combination of the two previous metrics, Revenue and Revenue LY. This will show the growth/decline for each item on the leaderboard based on a comparison to the same period last year. This will be displayed as a positive figure (growth) or a negative figure (decline) and enables you to see the customers who have grown the most, and the customers who may need attention!

HINT: Use the sort Highest and Lowest on the leaderboard to re-sort your customers/products in terms of MOST growth or decline. This is a great way to highlight customers or products which might require action to understand what has led to the growth or decline year on year.

The same concept as Revenue Swing $ but presented in a % growth or decline. Can be particularly helpful when looking at your small to medium customers where the actual dollar amount might be small but the percentage can be big.

Can be slightly challenging to use if you have a lot of new customers as the % growth from a low base can present huge % growth figures.

Would recommend if you want to see the % growth for your customers that you sort first by Revenue (to rank your biggest customers first) or sort by Revenue Swing $ to show your biggest gainers and losers.

Depending on whether you are in a monthly, quarterly or annual scorecard this may display differently. This metric will show you the total revenue for each customer/product for the TOTAL previous period. Where the other revenue metrics give a comparison for the same number of days, this gives the total for the previous full month, quarter or year.

You could use this sort your biggest customers last period and then change your metric back to Revenue to see what they've spent so far this period to see whether any are outperforming or underperforming others on the leaderboard.

The gross profit / margin % achieved so far this period. For every dollar of revenue, this is the profit margin that you have achieved.

Keeping your customers sorted in order of revenue and then changing to GP% is a great way to compare our profitable your largest customers are. The same applies for products, particularly similar products in the same product group. Seeing which are more profitable is a great way to show how you could grow margin by offering customers a different product.

This shows the margin % achieved for the same period last year. This makes a comparison to the same period of time last year. Could be beneficial in highlighting the margin of your customers or products last year - however the next metric might be an easier way to display this.

GP % Swing shows the change in margin this year compared to the same period last year. This will either display:

This is really important to highlight customers where there has been a significant change in margin, particularly if they are a large customer. It could be beneficial to investigate further any customers which have had a large change in % what products are causing this.

Similarly with products which have had a significant change, it would be beneficial to see what customers are paying for this product and whether price changes might be required in order to grow your margin dollars.

The actual margin dollars that have been achieved based on your sales for the current period. This is a calculation of REVENUE $ multiplied by GP %.

This number will grow as your sales grow throughout the month/year, but as always it's important to understand how this number compares between customers/products and whether this has grown/declined compared to last year.

If REVENUE has grown but GP $ hasn't, it suggests your customers are not paying enough for your products! (It's not always this easy we know!)

GP $ LY shows the margin dollars achieved for the same period of time last year. You could sort your customers into order of highest margin, and then change your metric to GP $ to highlight how your biggest margin customers last year have performed this year. Another way to do this as you'll see below is GP $ SWING.

This is the growth or decline in profit margin (in dollars) for your customers and products when comparing the current time period to the same period of time last year. Where a customer/product is highlighted in green and a positive figure, this has generated additional margin, vs. a customer/product in red and in the negatives where there has been a decline in margin.

HINT: Sort your GP $ Swing by Highest to see the customers/products which are performing the best and are helping to grow your margin contribution to the business, and sort by lowest to do the opposite and highlight the customers/products which are not generating margin like they were last year.

The paceline delta is seen on the scorecards page when looking overall at your performance by month or year, but you can also look at it for each customer as well. Paceline delta is a calculation of how your current revenue stacks up against your target as of today's date. Numerik breaks your monthly/annual target down and creates a paceline which your revenue number needs to follow if it's going to hit the target set for the period. If you are ahead of the pace then you're on track to beat your target, if you are behind the pace then there's some work needed to hit the target. The paceline delta will show you in dollar terms how far ahead or behind this invisible paceline you are!

Sorting your customers in terms of highest and lowest in paceline delta will show you the customers who are smashing their targets and those that are not!

Target % gives you an indication of how much of the target each customer/product on the leaderboard has achieved so far this period. This can be particularly helpful when reviewing your performance at the end of the month as you'll be able to sort your customers in terms of who exceeded their target the most and who achieved the lowest.

During the month or year, paceline delta gives a more accurate measure of performance - as target % is always going to be low at the beginning of a period.

CALCULATION: REVENUE / TARGET %

Target delta will show you how far off the target you currently are for each item on the leaderboard. If you've got customers who have committed to a certain value, or you've committed to selling X amount of a certain product by the end of the year then this shows you the shortfall between your target and the revenue you've achieved so far.

CALCULATION: TARGET - REVENUE = TARGET DELTA

This is the target that has been set against customers and products. There are a number of ways that targets are calculated, but generally Numerik will profile a company's targets to a customer level based on previous spending patterns. If an annual target for a customer is set, Numerik will work out the breakdown of this to a monthly level and for the product groups they purchase. In this sense the numbers aren't always going to be 100% but they still give you something to work towards - particularly as you know that the way this has been calculated is off previous spend.

If you are entering forecasts against your customers, this is where they'll appear. This page appears quite differently to other metrics in Numerik as you can change the forecast figures against each customer. By default the forecast for each customer will be the revenue number they've achieved so far this period.

It's a great exercise to forecast ahead and see what you think you'll achieve this month! If it's not as high as you had hoped, this might mean you need to look at finding some opportunities in your sales data!

This will tell you the difference between forecast and the revenue so far. If this figure is $0 you know that there has been no forecast amount over and above the current revenue number.

Can be a great tool to work out the anticipated additional sales to come for the current period, however is only as accurate as the data put in by each rep!

CALCULATION: FORECAST - REVENUE

This is a automatically generated projection of revenue for each customer. This is calculated off current sales for the period and provides a insight into what a customer might spend if they continue spending at the same rate for the remainder of the month or year. Might not be particularly accurate for customers with projects that vary, but very handy for regular and consistent customers to work out the likely spend by the end of the year.

This is the average price that a specific customer / all of your customers are paying for this product this period (depending on whether you are drilled down on a specified customer or not).

If you are seeing a product listed in green, that means the price has increased compared to last year, if it's in red the price has gone down.

A great place to use this metric is to select a specific product in your product leaderboard and then drilldown to "Customers" to see the customers who buy this product. When you bring up the average unit price, you have a price list for all of your customers for the current period - and can see the differences in unit price that your customers are paying. As well as this you can see whether this has changed up or down in the past year.

The price swing shows the increase or decrease in a product's price this year compared to last year. This is particularly helpful when used in conjunction with gross profit %, so that you can see whether a price change has been passed onto the customer (and margin has been retained) or whether the price change has been absorbed by you (margin % has reduced).

It can be interesting to see the % increases across your customers, are the price decreases for a customer justified? Or has the % price increase had a marked impact on the number of units a customer is purchasing?

The same as the above average price swing but presented in a real dollar increase or decrease year on year. Naturally the price of products will increase over time, but where you can see a customer is paying less for a product this year than they were last year - it does raise the question whether this is justified! Are you paying less for this product as well?

These pricing metrics can also be shared with your customers using the "Customer view" mode on your mobile leaderboard. This will hide the gross profit information, but enable you to show customers the pricing, revenue and quantity of products they've purchased this year and how it compares to last year!

CALCULATION: Price the customer paid this year vs. the price they paid last year for a product.

This is the number of units that have been purchased. Great for industry products or projects where units of measurement are the quantity (M₂ or metres). Being able to speak with a customer around the quantity purchased rather than the revenue might be more like speaking their language!!

A great exercise to do using the quantity metric is to sort your leaderboard by highest quantity, then change the metric to average unit price. Are the customers who are buying the most of this product getting the best price? How do your top 5 customers who buy this product compare in the price they pay? In many industries word does get around about the price that customers pay, so it's best to make sure you're not doing one of your customers a disservice and overcharging them!

CALCULATION: REVENUE / AVERAGE PRICE = QUANTITY

Quantity swing is the change year on year of the quantity purchased. This looks at a like for like comparison of the number of units that a customer has purchased or the numer of units of a product has sold this period, compared to the same timeframe last year.

One recommendation with this metric is to work through your main product groups, drilling into the product leaderboard for each and then changing your metric to quantity swing. When you sort this by highest and then lowest, you'll see the products which have had the biggest drop off in units sold this period compared to last year.

Whilst some products might be replaced by new lines, but a question you can ask yourself is the quantity swing replaced by the new product line?