Industry overview
What is shaping manufacturing
Manufacturers sell to distributors, OEMs and industrial buyers, and compete on quality, delivery and service as much as price. Many are also digitising plants, sales and finance processes.
- Distributor networks remain central to reach
- Buyers expect consistent quality and on-time delivery
- Digitisation of operations and reporting is accelerating
Client background
A packaging manufacturer, working in Haryana. Client identity is withheld to protect confidentiality.
- Organisation
- A packaging manufacturer
- Sector
- Manufacturing
- Team engaged
- Finance & Accounts
- Services
- Virtual CFO services, MIS & financial reporting, Accounting & finance consulting
Client challenge
Revenue was growing, but profits were flat. The owners suspected some products and customers were unprofitable but had no product-level costing.
Research objectives
- Deliver on the brief: finding which products actually made money.
- Design around the real needs of products.
- Establish accurate, reconciled numbers management can rely on.
- Put a reporting and compliance rhythm in place that runs on time.
Target audience
The work focused on 180 products.
- products180
Audiences we typically reach in manufacturing
Procurement and plant headsDistributors and dealersOEM buyersService engineersFinance and operations teams
Geographic coverage
Coverage: Haryana. Market: India.
- India
Research methodology
A structured finance engagement: review the current process, set up controls, run the routine and report.
- 1Brief
- 2Costing review
- 3Monthly MIS
- 4Insight
Our virtual CFO built a costing model allocating materials, machine time and overheads to products, restructured the chart of accounts and introduced a monthly MIS with margin by product and customer.
Virtual CFO servicesMIS & financial reportingAccounting & finance consulting
Sampling strategy
- products
- 180
- Every ledger, entity and transaction stream in scope was covered, with sample-based checks during review.
Data collection
- Source documents, bank statements and ledgers were collected through a secure shared workspace.
Data quality & validation
- Maker-checker review on all entries
- Bank and ledger reconciliations
- Client approval before every filing or report
- Supporting documents kept for every figure
Data analysis
- Variance analysis against budget and prior periods
- Ratio and trend analysis
- Cash-flow view for management
Key findings
- A small group of high-volume products had thin or negative margins because of frequent changeovers.
Revenue growth can hide margin problems; product-level costing revealed them.
Recommendations
- Build on the core insight: revenue growth can hide margin problems; product-level costing revealed them.
- Focus effort where the evidence was strongest: a small group of high-volume products had thin or negative margins because of frequent changeovers.
- Re-measure after the changes to confirm the effect.
Business impact
- The company revised prices and minimum order quantities for those lines.
What changed in the business as a result of the work. Impact is described qualitatively.
Deliverables & next steps
- Insight report and management presentation
- Monthly MIS pack and reconciled books
- Compliance calendar and filings
- Repeat the measure after changes are in place to track progress.
- A natural follow-on question: why do industrial buyers switch suppliers?
Client identity is withheld to protect confidentiality.