Margin Diagnostics for CPG & Logistics Operators

Every Retail Deduction Has a Root Cause. Most Are Never Traced.

We trace deductions, data-bridge friction and forecasting misses to the cause in fourteen days, and if we miss the number we promised you, we refund every dollar. AI only where it earns its place.

A supplier scorecard slides for eight weeks and nobody can say why. The deduction register fills at roughly $3,400 a week, which annualises to about $177,000, all of it booked to one line and never questioned. “Cost of doing business” means nobody traced it yet. Three fixed-scope assessments trace it: retail compliance deductions, data-bridge friction, and forecasting readiness. Fourteen days, at a flat fee quoted before you sign, and refunded in full if we miss the number we promised. Figures shown are illustrative.

Illustrative figures

Built forVP Ops·COO·Dir. Supply Chain·CFO

Who we work with

CPG brands, consumer goods companies, and the supply chain, logistics, and distribution businesses that support them.

How we get paid

We charge for our work and our time, and we take no commissions or referral fees from any tool or platform we recommend.

Where we work

Remotely, on read-only exports from the tools your team already uses, so there is no new platform to install.

What you own

Every report, every root-cause trace, and every checklist we hand over is yours to keep, no retainer required.

01 · Who This Is For

Built for Operators at $20–100M Consumer Brands

You make or ship consumer products and sell into Walmart, Target, Kroger, or Amazon 1P. Your ERP is NetSuite or Business Central. Retailer scorecards, EDI, and deduction lines are weekly realities, and the person losing sleep over them is one of these three.

VP Ops · COO

Measured on results, not initiatives.

“I don't need another program to babysit. I need the deduction line to stop growing.”

A fourteen-day scan that ends in a checklist your own team can run, with no ongoing engagement and nothing to buy afterwards.

See the OTIF Scan →
Dir. Supply Chain · Logistics

Your OTIF is low and nobody can tell you why.

“Every scorecard review ends the same way: ‘carrier issues.’ Nobody has traced a single code to its cause.”

A root-cause trace with evidence: carrier timing, ASN/EDI lag, or planning, timestamps included.

See what's in scope →
CFO · VP Finance

You book the deductions and nobody traces them.

“Compliance write-offs became a line item everyone stopped questioning two budgets ago.”

A guarantee in writing that refunds every dollar if we find less than $25K, and a verdict page written to be forwarded.

See the guarantee →

Running a 3PL instead? You're not the one buying Facebook ads, but your book of business depends on your CPG and DTC clients staying funded enough to buy them. Recovering their margin is protecting your own account.

The Deliverable

The Report You're Actually Buying

Every scan ends in the same document: your exposure, the root cause with evidence timestamps, what to dispute, what to fix, and the checklist to do it. Read the watermarked sample before you spend a dollar.

Read the Full Sample Report →
OTIF DEDUCTION ROOT–CAUSE REPORT · P.2SAMPLE · ILLUSTRATIVE DATA
01 · The Verdict
$146,800
Estimated annual deduction exposure
Disputable (file now)$38,400 · 26%
Preventable (fix root cause)$108,400 · 74%
Top root causeASN/EDI lag · 58%
02 · The Scans

Three Ways In, All of Them Priced Before You Sign.

Most engagements run at the listed rate. If the scoping call turns up a broader footprint, more retailers or more entities, the flat quote reflects that in writing before you sign, and it never changes afterwards.

Retail Compliance · The Spearhead

OTIF Deduction Scan

Trace your Walmart, Target, Kroger, or Amazon deductions to their actual root cause in fourteen days. If we find less than $25K of annual recoverable margin, we refund the fee.

From $2,500
Systems & Data

Data-Bridge Friction Scan

Map every manual re-entry point between your WMS, EDI, and ERP, and what it costs you every week.

From $2,500See the Scan →
Demand Planning

AI Forecasting Feasibility Scan

Find out if your data can support a demand-planning platform before you commit six figures to one.

From $3,000See the Scan →

If your problem doesn't map to one of these, that's what a conversation is for.

03 · The Guarantee

Three Promises, In Writing, Before You Sign.

Not hidden in fine print — they're written into the one-page agreement, and every scan carries all three.

01

The number

We tell you what we expect to find before we start. Come up short of it and we refund what you've paid.

  • OTIF Deduction Scan$25,000 / yr recoverable
  • Data-Bridge Friction Scan10 hrs / wk re-keyed by hand
  • Forecasting Feasibility ScanA verdict either way
02

The date

Fourteen days from the day your data lands, ending in a walkthrough call. The clock only starts once we have everything we asked for, so keeping to it is our problem and not yours. Run late and the fee comes back the same way.

03

The price

A flat quote in writing within one business day of the scoping call, invoiced half to get us started and half on delivery. Once you've signed it the number holds, whatever we run into once we're inside your data.

04 · How It Works

Call → Scan → Verdict

01

Scoping Call

Thirty minutes of specific questions: retailers, volumes, systems. The specialists who run the scan size the work from that call, and you get a flat quote in writing within one business day.

02

The Scan

Fourteen days, fully remote, working off read-only data exports. We only interrupt your team when it's worth interrupting them.

03

The Verdict

The report, a live walkthrough, and a recorded video you can forward internally.

Most AI projects fail because nobody defined the problem before the work started. Ours begin from a deduction line that is already sitting on your P&L.

06 · Who You'll Work With
Bhaskar Sarma, founder of Pixels and Clicks

Bhaskar Sarma

Founder · Pixels and Clicks

I spent years as an independent consultant to eCommerce and DTC CPG companies. In a game as brutal as eCommerce, every dollar recovered from operations is a dollar you can redeploy into acquiring the next customer, that's the truth this practice is built around. I run every client relationship personally; the tracing is done by an operator bench with Fortune 500 experience, brought to bear at a fraction of the scale.

Meet the founder & the bench →
07 · How We Operate

Three Things We Won't Do.

No vendor kickbacks, ever. Most consultants earn referral revenue from the tools they recommend. We don't. If the best answer is a free tool or something you already own, we'll say so.

No replacement theatre. No AI fully replaces an experienced person. What it can do is take the low-leverage work off your best people's plates, so the team stays and the work they do gets better.

No thirty-account roster. We take a handful of clients at a time, which means you either wait for a seat or you don't take one. When you're in, your business gets our full attention.

Ready?

Thirty Minutes, and Nobody Is Going to Show You a Deck.

Tell us where your team is stuck and we'll give you an honest read, even if the answer is that you don't need us.

You'll hear back the same business day, and it's the founder replying, not an assistant.