Intelligence that runs on top of the system you already have.
Vista is ProfitEdge’s family of intelligence applications. Each one reads the data your business already produces, puts a figure on what it finds, and ranks what to do first — in the language your team already uses. It runs alongside the system you have, so the counter carries on as it is.
Every Vista application answers the same four questions
Whatever part of the business it’s pointed at, the shape of the answer is the same. That consistency matters more than any single application.
What does good look like?
What a healthy number actually is for a business built like yours — a standard, not a target somebody picked in a meeting.
How do we measure it?
The same way every month, with seasonality and trend accounted for, so a slow February and a strong spring are read for what they are.
What’s at risk?
Where the risk is building, before it lands — cash tied up, margin slipping, counts that can’t be trusted yet.
What should happen next?
A ranked list, each item carrying a plain reason and a number attached to it. This is the question almost nothing else in the building answers.
The system you already run answers a fifth question, and answers it well: what happened. It records every transaction accurately and completely, because that’s what it was built to do. It was never built to answer the other four.
The same intelligence, at two levels
The frameworks and the calculations come first. How they reach you depends on which part of the business you’re looking at, and on how you want to work — but the answer is built on the same math either way.
Health snapshots
Reporting built on the same frameworks and the same calculations as the software — scores, grades, exceptions and a ranked set of actions, produced from your own data. Delivered as reporting, with a file you can load into the system you already run. There’s nothing to log into.
Snapshots exist for all four areas, so there’s no part of the business where we have nothing to offer you. A snapshot on its own is a complete piece of work.
Applications
The fullest version: standalone software built on the same math the snapshots already use, with the process built around it — modeling a change before you commit to it, approving what you accept, and keeping a permanent record of what was done.
Same math either way. Pick the one that fits how you want to work.
Four areas of the business, and what falls under each
Vista is organized the way an independent business divides up — what brings money in, what it takes to deliver, the office behind it, and the owner’s view of the whole thing. Every one of them is built the same way and answers the same four questions.
Revenue Intelligence
Profitable growth through a better read on customers, demand and sales execution.
Operations Intelligence
Operating performance, how hard the inventory is working, and the margin the business actually earns.
Administrative Intelligence
Reliable administration, and business information that management, lenders and accountants can trust.
Executive Intelligence
Building a business that is stronger, more transferable, and less dependent on the owner.
Every one of them has a health snapshot. Where a full application exists, it’s the same math with the process built around it — Margin Intelligence and Inventory Intelligence, both under Operations.
Same approach, different part of the business
Profit doesn’t leak in one place. Each Vista application reads the data you already have, measures what’s actually happening, and ranks what it’s costing you — applied to a different part of the operation.
Vista Margin Intelligence
What you charge. Prices drift. Costs move, rules stop being followed, and the gap only shows up at year end. Margin Intelligence closes it continuously — where margin is slipping by department, which prices to review first, and what each change is worth.
- ✓ Margin by department, not one blended number
- ✓ A ranked list of prices to review
- ✓ Estimated added gross profit per year
- ✓ A permanent record of what you approved
Vista Inventory Intelligence
What you’re carrying. A dealer with $800,000 in inventory can be sitting on tens of thousands in dead capital without anyone measuring it. Inventory Intelligence grades what you hold across accuracy, availability, efficiency, control and productivity — and puts a number on what each problem is costing.
- ✓ Obsolete and overstock exposure, quantified
- ✓ Shrink, swell and negative inventory
- ✓ Which counts deserve doing first
- ✓ Where you stand against comparable operations
A note on the names. Pricing & Margin, in the Operations area above, is the broader subject — everything that goes into how prices get set and what the business keeps, which is consulting and training ground as much as software. Margin Intelligence is the application built for the margin part of it. Margins move prices, so the two overlap — but the application doesn’t cover everything that falls under that heading.
Readable by the people who have to act on it.
Vista does careful work — cost basis, item movement, department targets, a permanent record of every approved change. You shouldn’t have to learn any of that vocabulary to know what it found and what to do next.
Say what it found
In dollars and departments, not indices and abbreviations.
Say why it matters
Every recommendation carries a plain reason you can repeat to a manager.
Say what isn’t certain
Estimates are labelled as estimates. Vista doesn’t promise what it can’t know.
What that looks like in practice
Your business is seasonal. A straight month-against-month comparison would tell you spring is a triumph and February is a disaster, every single year. Vista’s calculations account for seasonality and trend, so what you see is whether the business improved — not what time of year it is.
It works with whatever you run today.
Every Vista application works with whatever system you run. It works alongside what you already have, and if the operational data can be exported, Vista can apply its intelligence to it — whatever you run today, and whatever you move to later.
Vista reads exported files. It doesn’t require a live connection to your system, and it doesn’t write back to it automatically — you approve changes and update your system deliberately.
What Margin Intelligence needs to start
Your item list
Item number, description, cost, current price, vendor, department. Helpful if you have it: MSRP, MAP, quantity on hand, UPC.
Twelve months of sales history
Item, month, units sold. Dollar amounts aren’t required — most systems don’t include them, and Vista doesn’t need them.
Why twelve months matters: without sales history Vista can tell you what your margins are, but not which items are worth your attention. Slow movers, dead stock, your biggest profit contributors and the yearly estimate all come from that second file.
No chart of accounts. No general-ledger data. No customer records. No invoice detail.
The software is one of three ways we help
Vista is the intelligence side of ProfitEdge. You don’t have to hire anyone to use the software. Some do want someone alongside them while they act on what it found, or want their own team able to run the cycle without help.
Consulting
Advisory work on profitability, pricing, margin performance, inventory and operating performance — including the parts of the operation no application can see.
Training
Education for the people who run the operation, so reading the findings and acting on them becomes something your team does on its own.
