Improving Profit: Using Contribution Metrics to Boost the Bottom Line

Business of all sizes have a problem: How do you know―in real time―whether you are earning the profit you need to grow or even just stay in business? And which products or services are doing the “heavy lifting” in contributing to profit? Financial statements tell only part of the story. They are backward looking, for one thing, and they generally show results only in the aggregate. Worse, they never seem to reflect the hard work you’re doing on a daily basis. As one manager said, “If I’m adding 25% profit to every job, why am I getting barely 5% net profit at the end of the year?”

Improving Profit: Using Contribution Metrics to Boost the Bottom Line solves this dilemma. As this book shows, Contribution-Based Activity (CBA) measures focus on two key levers that are fundamental to the operation of any business: financial contribution and units of activity. Knowing how to use these levers gets your company off the treadmill and on your way to stellar profitability. And as the 21 case studies show, CBA is surprisingly easy to apply to businesses of all types and all sizes.

What is “financial contribution”? Simply the amount above and beyond the cost of goods or materials sold that contributes to covering overhead and creating profit. As entrepreneur, business consultant, and professor Keith Cleland shows, few managers actually know the financial contribution their products and services make, nor how to amplify that contribution by  incremental adjustments to one or both levers. As you’ll learn, the financial tool Cleland created, TARI (Target Average Rate Index), provides insight into each product’s value. You’ll not only learn which products are contributing the most to the bottom line, but how to unlock the profit potential in run-of-the-mill products or services. Improving Profit will help you:

• Restore and boost profit levels for your entire operation
• Relate your dailyefforts to a transaction's actual profitability
• Focus on the two key performance indicators that can help you identify and solve problems affecting finance and productivity
• Help everyone in the company―from CEO to janitor―understand how their activities help or hinder the company’s fortunes
• Make effective financial decisions

If you’ve ever wondered why your results don’t match your hard work, hopes, and dreams, read this book. As the case studies make clear, identifying and applying TARI results in a significant―and often dramatic―boost to the bottom-line.  

The author of two books and a dozen articles, Keith N. Cleland is currently professor and head of the Financial Management Department, IBR School of Executive Management, at Steinbeis University in Berlin. Dr. Cleland's background includes seagoing as a cadet and navigating officer, consulting with an international consulting group, full professor and head of departments of accounting and business studies at three universities, chairman of private and public companies, member of the United Nations Small Business Committee on South East Asia, and co-founder of the International Christian Chambers of Commerce. For the past twenty-five years, he has actively consulted with the accounting profession and their business clients, helping identify and provide solutions for underlying business problems, which led to the crystallization of the concept underlying contribution-based activity, adopted in varying degree by numerous businesses, small and large, with turnovers ranging from $250,000 to $12,000,000,000+.