Problems › We Have Too Many Products › Construction & Trades
Proliferation costs are real, mostly invisible, and land on the products that were paying for everything. This page works through it for construction and trade contractors specifically — including an unedited excerpt from a real analysis of a contractor.
Proliferation costs are real, mostly invisible, and land on the products that were paying for everything. The version of this question that applies to construction and trade contractors is not the generic one. Service work earns double the margin of projects and loses every staffing argument to liquidated-damages clauses — so an answer that ignores job gross margin will be confidently wrong. The analysis has to start from backlog cover and change-order capture rather than from revenue.
Product lines accumulate because each addition is individually justifiable and nothing is ever removed. The cost is not in any one of them; it is in the complexity they collectively impose — inventory, changeovers, support knowledge, sales attention, forecasting error.
That cost is borne disproportionately by the profitable core, because that is where the capacity being fragmented lives. Which is why rationalisation often increases total profit even when the removed lines were nominally contributing.
The analysis worth doing ranks lines by contribution against the constraint they consume, then asks which of the tail exists for a reason — a strategic customer, a channel requirement — and which exists because nobody has looked.
These three together are the signature. One on its own usually points somewhere else.
✓ A minority of lines produces the large majority of revenue
✓ Nothing has been discontinued in several years
✓ Operations complexity is rising faster than volume
The move that usually makes it worse. Cutting the tail by revenue rank alone, which removes lines that were cheap to carry and keeps ones that quietly consume the constraint.
It is for you if you run or finance a contractor and a minority of lines produces the large majority of revenue. It is the situation where the numbers are available but nobody has put them in an order that produces a decision.
It is not for you if Percision is the wrong tool if you already know the answer and only need execution capacity, or if the business is pre-revenue — then the constraint is evidence about the market, not analysis of your own figures. Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library. Also wrong if you need facilitation, politics, or someone to sit with a lender or buyer. Those are human jobs.
Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library.
Below is an excerpt from a real run of this analysis on a contractor. It is a sample profile rather than a customer, and it is unedited engine output — this is the format you get, on your own numbers.
The subject is Halloway Mechanical, a sample company profile used for testing rather than a customer — $180M revenue, mechanical contracting.
Excerpt from a real Percision run · Customer Value Architecture · sample company profile
The move. Deploy 12 existing journeymen to lock in 40 new hospital service contracts, converting construction relationships into recurring 32% GM revenue.
The leak it closes. Reduces $4.2M overtime drag by re-allocating 12 journeymen from construction backlog to service fleet.
The assumption it rests on. Hospital procurement will accept 12–18% premium pricing for single-source mechanical partner — the engine put the probability at 0.75.
| Investment required | $2M cash (Phase 1); funded by existing $6.4M cash balance. |
| Expected return | 128% gross-profit ROI on $2M investment in Year 1; payback <12 months. |
| Revenue, year 1 | $8M incremental service revenue |
| Revenue, year 2 | $12M cumulative incremental |
| Revenue, year 3 | $18M cumulative incremental |
| Exit criteria | Terminate move if fewer than 15 hospital SLAs signed by Month 9 OR construction backlog falls below 6 months. |
This is one move out of a full analysis. Read a complete report — every page, no email required.
This question routes to Matrix Strategy, one of 29 engagements the platform runs. For construction and trade contractors it works through job gross margin, backlog cover, change-order capture and service attach rate, then produces the sequence rather than a list of options — which move first, what it funds, and the observation that would say the sequence is wrong.
You watch the analysis get built before paying anything. Read a complete report here if you would rather see the depth first.
Contribution per unit of the binding constraint, then a check on strategic dependencies. Revenue rank alone gets this wrong in both directions.
Some will, and the analysis should price that before the decision rather than after. Usually the revenue at risk is smaller than the complexity cost being removed, but it should be a finding rather than an assumption.
It is rarely tracked, which is why it grows. A workable proxy is the trend in operating cost per unit of volume; when that rises while volume rises, complexity is the usual explanation.
Materially, yes. Service work earns double the margin of projects and loses every staffing argument to liquidated-damages clauses — which changes both the diagnosis and the order of the fixes. The metrics that decide it here are job gross margin, backlog cover, change-order capture, and an answer built on industry-general benchmarks will usually point at the wrong one first.
Less than most people expect. Your last twelve months of revenue and cost split the way you already split it, plus whatever you hold on job gross margin and backlog cover. The analysis is explicit about what it is assuming where your data stops, which is more useful than waiting for numbers you may never have.
Percision is the wrong tool if you already know the answer and only need execution capacity, or if the business is pre-revenue — then the constraint is evidence about the market, not analysis of your own figures. Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library. Also wrong if you need facilitation, politics, or someone to sit with a lender or buyer. Those are human jobs.
Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library.
Describe the situation in your own words and we will tell you which analysis answers it — before you sign up for anything.
Describe my situation →Prefer to skip ahead? Go straight to the free diagnostic.