A Few Large Clients: Seeing Dependencies beyond Revenue

A large order may occupy multiple resources

Public cases such as unmanned retail remind that small teams often rely on industry experience and cooperation channels to connect with customers. Based on this, this article proposes an analysis method for customer concentration and does not evaluate the actual risks of the case company. A small number of customers does not automatically indicate whether the business is good or bad, but you need to know where the dependence lies.

Draw separate graphs of income, working hours and payment

The same customer may contribute a lot of revenue, or it may consume a lot of modification, on-site and support time. You can record the agreed amount, actual reimbursement, direct costs and investment time separately, and then observe whether multiple projects rely on the same industry, contact person or technical conditions to avoid superficially diversifying risks based on the number of customers.

Assuming one client dominates work time, it may be difficult to take on new deliveries even if other projects are still available. Research should consider how long a validation period is needed to reduce reliance, rather than finding channels on an ad hoc basis when orders change. This scenario is an example of ChinaOPC and is not a financial judgment on any company.

An executable observation action

Each project review adds three records: customer relationship, support burden, and next cooperation confirmation level. Do not treat expected renewals as recognized revenue. Extended reading: Zhang Shenshen’s Channel Observation.