Divisional reporting is a prominent enhancement which made its first appearance in the version of the Solomon Coyle Dealer Benchmark Report we released 2 July 2018. Using the new divisional reporting feature, dealers can now make separate apples-to-apples performance comparisons with their peers by product category. This significantly enhances the value of dealer participation in our annual Operational Performance and Financial Benchmark Survey.

“We’re excited by the addition of divisional reporting as a parameter in our Benchmark Report format,” said David Solomon, the director of research and managing principal at Solomon Coyle. “I believe the 20 percent or so of dealers that submitted valid product-category data for the YE2017 survey will benefit by seeing how their performance stacks up against other dealers in the various categories. We anticipate more and more dealers submitting divisional breakdowns as they expand their activity and revenue in those areas in response to greater workplace complexity and rising customer demand for dealer-integrated solutions and streamlined procurement.”

Available Product Categories

Currently, divisional reporting is available for the Furniture, Architectural, Floor and Wall Covering, and Technology/AV categories. Dealers wishing to benchmark in any of these categories must submit category-specific data that meets our validation criteria. The Divisional Reporting field in the parameters section of the Benchmark Report will indicate that valid data has been received by displaying the particular category or categories in the dropdown selector.

To unlock these features in any given year, a dealer must make use of the divisional columns in the Survey (pictured below) to provide:

• Selling Expense,
• Product COGS, and
• Revenue

   …by division.

As in years past, all dealers get access to the [All Divisions] and [Furniture + Architectural] roll-ups of the report for any year for which they provided a valid Financial Benchmark Survey response. But to drill down individually to Furniture, Architectural, Floor and Wall Covering, Technology/AV or Other divisions, dealers must provide data at that desired resolution.

Note: The Furniture division is unlocked when a dealer provides Architecture-specific Selling Expense, Product COGS, and Revenue. Otherwise, it is assumed that the dealer combined Furniture with Architecture. That is, breaking out Architecture unlocks both the Architecture and the Furniture divisions.

If you are interested in unlocking these features by resubmitting current or past years’ data with divisional breakouts, we’d be happy to assist. Email support@solomoncoyle.com and we can help you get started.