Wholesale & Distribution Business Health Assessment

What a good one includes

• An inventory turnover analysis that categorizes your stock using ABC analysis to identify high-velocity items and costly dead weight.
• A detailed gross margin breakdown by customer segment and SKU category to pinpoint where discounts or rising COGS are eating your profits.
• An operational efficiency scorecard evaluating warehouse metrics like order picking accuracy, dock-to-stock time, and order cycle times.
• A supplier performance review that highlights lead-time variability and fulfillment accuracy to identify your most reliable partners.
• A cash conversion cycle breakdown detailing how quickly cash spent on inventory returns to your bank account as revenue.
• A prioritized, phased roadmap outlining the immediate, medium-term, and long-term steps required to lower overhead and boost profitability.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Relying on aggregate margins instead of analyzing individual SKU and customer profitability, which often hides highly unprofitable accounts.
• Ignoring carrying costs, like warehouse space and insurance, which mask the true price of holding slow-moving inventory.
• Failing to cross-reference sales forecasts with current supplier lead times, resulting in frequent stockouts of high-demand goods.
• Overlooking small leakages like order picking errors and return processing costs, which quietly compound into massive annual losses.

Frequently asked questions