[ Blog ]Do You Know Who Your Most Profitable Customer
—or Job—Actually Is?
Cementing Profitability: Smarter Business with Performance Management
A Blog Series by Ramy Sedra
Most ready-mix producers can tell you who their biggest customers are. Fewer can tell you who their most profitable ones are.
In an industry dominated by tight margins, we often equate bigger with better. But without a clear, data-driven understanding of customer and job-level profitability, many producers are chasing revenue while unknowingly eroding margin.
The culprit? Complex, variable cost drivers—and systems that can’t make sense of them.
Not All Revenue Is Created Equal
Two customers may order the same volume, but their impact on your bottom line can be worlds apart:
- Customer A places large, well-scheduled orders near the plant, with fast turnaround on site.
- Customer B places small, frequent loads to a difficult site, with long wait times and late-day dispatches.
Both bring in revenue. But Customer B is a hidden loss—unless you can see it.
Why Traditional Systems Can’t Tell You This
Spreadsheets, dispatch logs, and even modern ERP or ticketing systems weren’t built to capture or analyze:
- Cost-to-serve by customer and job
- The cumulative impact of delivery inefficiencies
- Forecasted margin erosion based on evolving job conditions
They’re built to record, not to predict. Which means you find out if a job was unprofitable only after it's complete—too late to course-correct.
This Is Where AI and Advanced Analytics Come In
With Business Performance Management (BPM) platforms infused with AI, producers can move from retrospective reporting to real-time and forward-looking profitability analysis.Here’s what becomes possible:
- Measure true cost-to-serve in real-time, factoring in dynamic variables like wait times, load sizes, delivery zones, and plant efficiency.
- Score jobs and customers by profitability, updated live as job conditions evolve.
- Forecast the likely margin of a job before it’s completed, using predictive models that detect risk early—while there’s still time to act.
- Simulate pricing scenarios or logistics adjustments to optimize jobs before they go off-track.
This is not a “nice-to-have.” It’s a strategic shift from reacting to results to shaping them.
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What This Unlocks
- Sales can negotiate with data—adjusting pricing or service levels to preserve margin.
- Operations can prioritize efficiency improvements where the impact is greatest.
- Finance can guide resource allocation based on profitability, not just revenue.
AI doesn’t replace judgment—it enhances it with faster, deeper, and more consistent insight than any team of analysts or reports could offer.
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Self-Check: Are You Operating Blind?
- Do you measure margin at the job or customer level—or just at a regional or plant roll-up?
- Can you forecast the profitability of a job before it’s done?
- Do sales, ops, and finance all see the same picture of cost and value?
Further Reading
For producers looking to evolve their profitability model, here are two valuable resources: - “Activity-Based Costing: Making It Work for Small and Mid-Sized Companies” by Douglas T. Hicks
- “Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results” by Thomas H. Davenport, Jeanne Harris, and Robert Morison
At C60, we offer a solution to these challenges and more. The C60 Opportunity Platform provides a holistic understanding of a company's operations, presenting actionable insights for decision-making. With our software, producers can identify opportunities in dollar terms and make data-driven decisions. Contact us today! Email sales@c60.ai or call +1 (760) 219-8718 or 1 (514) 909-9231.
