Segment review list
- Act on: 0 segments, GBP 0 below the floor.
- Accepted for now: 0, with the reason recorded.
Executive Intelligence · Executive Financial Performance
Enterprise Profitability Intelligence
Profitability by entity, product or customer from ledger data, with the allocation rules used shown beside each figure.
Demonstration: Quillfeather Retail Group (fictional) · Retail. Fictional data and a scripted answer.
The situation
- Organisation
- Quillfeather Retail Group (fictional)
- Who is asking
- Chief financial officer
- Industry
- Retail
- What happened
- Group margin looks healthy, but the CFO suspects some store formats and regions subsidise others.
The question asked
Which parts of the business earn less than the margin floor once their true costs are counted?
What it reads, and who can see the result
- Profit by format and region exportRevenue, direct cost and allocated cost per segment.
- Allocation method documentHow shared costs are spread.
- Reads
- Segment results and the allocation method.
- Does not read
- Individual transactions or staff pay.
- Permission
- Finance planning access.
- Who sees it
- The CFO and the regional managing directors.
Try it
Review each flagged record: confirm it or dismiss it. The totals and the answer below follow your decisions.
| Segment | Revenue | Margin | Annual shortfall to the floor (GBP) | Finding | Decision |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| High-street, south | 48.0 million | 9.1% | 0 | Matched | None needed |
| Outlet centres | 22.5 million | 3.2% | 1,305,000 | Margin 3.2% against a 9% floor | |
| Online, domestic | 61.0 million | 10.4% | 0 | Matched | None needed |
| Airport kiosks | 6.4 million | -1.5% | 672,000 | Loss-making after rent | |
| High-street, north | 31.0 million | 6.0% | 930,000 | Margin 6.0%; allocated warehouse cost is high | |
| Online, international | 14.2 million | 9.4% | 0 | Matched | None needed |
- Flagged
- 3 of 6 · GBP 2,907,000
- Act on it
- 0 · GBP 0
- Accept for now
- 0 · GBP 0
- Undecided
- 3 · GBP 2,907,000
The answer
Simulated answer. Written for this fictional case, not produced by a live model. Only the figures in it are computed, from what you decided above.
3 of 6 segments earn less than the floor, a shortfall of GBP 2,907,000 a year.
Each segment's margin is after the shared costs the allocation method assigns to it [S1][S2]. The northern high-street shortfall is partly an allocation effect: the warehouse cost it carries is high because of how the method spreads it, so changing the method would change that line.
You have chosen to act on 0 (GBP 0) and accept 0 for now (GBP 0); 3 are undecided. Knowing which is allocation and which is real is the first conversation, before any closure.
Relies on: S1 · Segment profit, trailing yearS2 · Cost allocation method v3
Review and approval
The chief financial officer decides. Approving sends the chosen segments to the regional directors for a recovery plan. It does not close or change any store.
Not ready to approve. 3 flagged segments are still undecided. Confirm or dismiss each one first.
In the product this is a different person with the right permission. Here you play that role to see the rule.
What it produces
Limits of this example
- Segment margins depend on the allocation method.
- A weak segment may serve a strategic purpose the margin does not capture.
- This is a scripted demonstration on fictional data. No model was called and no real organisation, person or result is shown.
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