The words this product uses, and what each one means

Every term here appears in the product. They are defined narrowly on purpose, because the difference between two similar sentences is the difference between something we can prove from your order history and something nobody can know.

Ordering baseline

The median number of days between one account's own orders. Every account has its own, and no account is measured against an industry average.

Median rather than mean, because one unusually long gap would drag an average far enough to hide a real one.

Order cluster

Orders placed within three days of each other, counted as one order when the baseline is calculated.

A split shipment or a forgotten line added the next morning is one buying decision, not two. Counting it twice would halve the account's apparent baseline.

Expected order date

The date an account's last order plus its own baseline lands on. It is where that account's history says the next order would fall.

Days past expected

How far beyond the expected order date an account is today. Shown as a count of days, always next to the account's own baseline, so the number has something to mean.

Drift

An account moving away from its own ordering rhythm. Ordering less often, ordering less, or stopping.

Watch

The first named level. The account is past its expected order date by a margin that is noticeable against its own baseline but still ordinary for it.

Slipping

The second named level. The gap is now clearly longer than this account's normal, far enough that it is worth someone's morning.

Gone quiet

The third named level. An account that ordered regularly has stopped, by a margin its own history does not explain.

Gone quiet is not the same as lost. It is the last point at which a phone call is still an easy conversation.

Status

The one word an account carries everywhere: on its row, its page, in Allo and in emails. Five mean work this account: Gone quiet, Slipping, Spending less, Stopped buying a line, and New and stalled. Three mean nothing needs doing: Watch, Steady and Calibrating. A ? beside it explains it in one line with the account's own numbers.

When more than one finding applies, the status is the worst of them, in that order, and the account page shows every finding behind it.

Spending less

Still ordering, but spending 40 percent or more less over the recent months than in the same months a year earlier. A single unusually large order a year ago is set aside before comparing.

Stopped buying a line

The account bought a product line in at least 4 of the prior 12 months and has bought under a quarter of its own usual amount of it in the last 90 days, while still ordering other lines.

New and stalled

A new account, first order inside the new-account window (180 days unless you change it on Detection), that has not placed a second order within the second-order window (60 days unless you change it).

Steady and Calibrating

Steady means ordering on its own rhythm. Calibrating means too few orders to know its rhythm yet.

Why the levels are words

Levels are named rather than scored on purpose. The product computes no number for health, risk or priority, stores none, and shows none, anywhere.

A score invites a conversation about the score. A sentence that says an account orders every 9 days and it has been 23 invites a phone call.

Priority

How a day's list is ordered, from the signals on the account and the revenue the account represents. The order of the list is the priority; no priority tag or number is shown.

Opportunity

One account on one day's list, with its status, the reason it is there and a recommended action.

Episode

The window that opens the day an account is first flagged and closes when it either orders again or stays quiet long enough to count as lost. It is what makes revenue kept auditable.

Revenue kept

The trailing twelve month revenue of accounts whose episodes closed because the account came back.

It credits the account, not the conversation. An account that would have returned on its own is still counted, which means this number is generous to us and we would rather say so than quietly adjust it.

Read-only

The sync reads from your system and writes nothing to it. No order, quote or record is created or changed in your ERP, on a schedule or otherwise.

Replay

Running the detector backwards over order history you already have, to see which accounts drifted, when each one last ordered normally, and what each was worth.

What this never claims

It reads order history. It can say how often an account orders, when it last did, and how large recent orders were. It cannot say what a customer holds on their premises, how fast they use it, when they will run out, or what they buy from anyone else.

The fastest way to understand any of this is to watch it run on order history you already have. The Replay is free and needs no account.