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Workspaces can answer almost any business question, like “why did margin drop last month,” “which customers are at risk,” or “how’s stock aging by branch.” Try some options below to get a taste of Phocas Workspaces.
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Reasoning
What I can do
I can act as your business analytics assistant in Phocas. I can:
- Explore your business data — Find relevant databases and measures to answer questions across sales, finance and operations, based on the data you can access.
- Understand business performance — Analyse revenue, gross profit, margins, costs and other measures across customers, products, salespeople and regions.
- Spot risks and opportunities — Identify declining customers, margin pressure, underperforming products and the biggest contributors to business performance.
- Compare performance over time — Analyse trends and compare results against prior periods, budgets or forecasts where available.
- Explore the detail — Move from an overall business question into specific product classes, customers, products or salespeople to investigate what's driving the result.
- Create useful visualizations and reports — Present findings in Phocas grids, charts, KPI cards and dashboards, including combining different views into a dashboard you can choose to save.
- Build on your existing work — Use saved favourites as a starting point for further analysis while preserving their original settings.
What I understand about your working context
You're a Sales Manager using Phocas for commercial analysis. You prefer direct, data-driven explanations that identify the biggest risks and opportunities and lead to practical actions.
You typically focus on rolling 12-month performance, profitability, customer trends and opportunities to improve commercial results.
What I know about your business data
I'm already working within Phocas and can investigate the databases and business measures you have permission to access. I understand your working context, but I don't assume I know the actual figures or database structures until I examine them.
When you ask a business question, I evaluate the available databases, identify the relevant data and measures, and bring the information together to deliver insights you can explore further.
STEELFINNE FABRICATIONS LT – USA (300195)
Visit Prep · Rolling 12 Months Performance Review
Summary
Steelfinne Fabrications has delivered $710k in revenue over the rolling 12 months across 491 orders and 1,412 lines, with an overall margin of 23.8% and profit of $169k. Average order value sits at $1,447.
Highs
- Lumination is on fire – the group's biggest product class at $417k, up a massive +$116k (+38.7%) vs the prior year. Clearly the customer is leaning into this category.
- Volume is strong – 491 orders over 12 months is a consistent, high-frequency trading relationship with healthy line depth per order.
- Power also grew positively, up +$6.3k (+16.7%), showing breadth of growth beyond just the core lighting category.
- Revenue is up 18.6% overall compared with the previous year; the monthly chart shows a mix of increases and declines.
Lows
- Lights & Lamps – the second-largest group at $244k – slipped −$6.2k (−2.5%) year on year. Worth probing whether product mix or substitution to Lumination is driving this.
- Controls and Outside Lights both contracted sharply – down −42.7% and −58.9% respectively. These are smaller categories but the declines are significant and may signal lost opportunity or de-ranging.
- One product (Capsule Lantern 200Hr G9 60W) sits at a negative margin of −16.9% – the only loss-maker in the top 10. This needs to be addressed before the visit.
- Margin at 23.8% is moderate – there is headroom to improve profitability, particularly on lower-margin lines in the 16–22% range.
3 Actionable Items for Your Visit
1Top 10 Products by Revenue – Identify Low-Margin Risk
Leading revenue lines are solid – Bezel Trim with Clear Glass tops the list at $12.2k with a healthy 33.7% margin. However, flag two critical conversations:
- Capsule Lantern 200Hr G9 60W at $8.1k revenue but −16.9% margin – this is losing money and needs repricing or to be replaced.
- Several products in the 16–22% margin band (Glass DL, Head White Satin, Pressed Square Lantern) are candidates for a pricing review to lift overall profitability.
| Name | Value | Profit | Margin % | Lines |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bezel Trim c/w Clear Glass MW IP65Twist/off | 12,216.00 | 4,112.72 | 33.67% | 2.00 |
| Adjustable MR11 DL Brass / White Designer | 10,630.00 | 2,443.62 | 22.99% | 8.00 |
| GZ/GU10 Spotlight White Triple Bar | 9,149.40 | 2,301.19 | 25.15% | 22.00 |
| LED Lantern - White MR16 35mm | 8,420.00 | 1,698.90 | 20.18% | 6.00 |
| Capsule Lantern 200Hr G9 60W | 8,138.95 | −1,371.99 | −16.86% | 3.00 |
| Pressed Square Lantern Polished Brass c/w Accessories | 8,083.20 | 1,333.67 | 16.50% | 6.00 |
| DISCONTINUED-CODE. | 7,416.00 | 1,798.85 | 24.26% | 3.00 |
| Glass DL G6.35 Frosted White Glass c/w IP44 | 7,338.00 | 1,308.22 | 17.83% | 7.00 |
| Head White Satin Glass Wire System | 7,338.00 | 1,384.56 | 18.87% | 4.00 |
| 70W 30Amp Lanterns MR11 | 7,072.80 | 1,436.57 | 20.31% | 5.00 |
2Average Order Value – Are We Growing Basket Size?
At $1,447 per order, Steelfinne is comfortably in the mid-range. The gauge below benchmarks this against a $0–$3,000 scale – there is a clear opportunity to grow basket size toward the $2,000+ green zone through bundling, cross-sell into Controls and Outside Lights, or volume incentives.
3Revenue by Product Group – Where to Grow and Where to Defend
Use this column chart to walk the customer through the story by category:
- Push Lumination – it's their fastest growing group; explore whether there are gaps in their range that you can fill.
- Defend Lights & Lamps – it's large and slipping; understand why and what it would take to reverse the trend.
- Rebuild Controls and Outside Lights – two categories down significantly; bring specific product recommendations to the visit.
| Product group | Oct 2025–Sep 2026 | Oct 2024–Sep 2025 | % Variance |
|---|---|---|---|
| TOTAL | 710,463.10 | 598,920.34 | 18.62% |
| Lumination | 417165.45 | 300733.39 | +38.72% |
| Lights & Lamps | 244285.95 | 250436.02 | −2.46% |
| Power | 44047.4 | 37750.89 | +16.68% |
| Controls | 3029.3 | 5290.5 | −42.74% |
| Outside Lights | 1935.0 | 4709.54 | −58.91% |
| ### | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00% |
High confidence Based on your data
All figures drawn directly from Phocas Sales database for customer 300195, rolling 12 months period. All variance and margin calculations are confirmed from query results. Invest behind Lumination—but make margin protection the condition of growth. It is the only large product class combining material scale with strong growth: revenue rose 22.4% to $41.75m and gross profit increased to $9.50m, but margin fell 2.1 percentage points to 22.8%. This is the biggest value opportunity and the largest profit-at-risk if pricing or cost discipline slips.
Three strategic insights
- Lumination is the clear investment engine, with a working-capital trade-off. It carries $8.41m of inventory and turns that inventory about 5.0 times, while generating the largest gross profit. The priority is to keep funding demand, but improve price, mix or purchasing discipline to recover the 2.1-point margin decline.
- Lights & Lamps is the most dependable scale business, but growth has stalled. It contributes approximately $25.8m of revenue and $6.0m of gross profit, with a healthy 23.2% margin and 4.8x stock turnover. Revenue growth is only 2.1%, so incremental investment should target profitable share gain rather than broad inventory expansion.
- The smaller classes are destroying growth momentum and tying up less productive capital. Controls revenue declined 32.8%, Outside Lights declined 34.7%, and Power declined 12.6%. All three also lost margin, with Outside Lights falling to 16.6%, the weakest current margin.
| Product class | Recommendation | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Lumination | Invest | Fund availability and customer growth, while enforcing margin recovery through repricing, mix management and supplier-cost review. |
| Lights & Lamps | Improve | Protect the strong margin base and invest selectively in the highest-turning customer and SKU opportunities. |
| Power | Improve | Halt broad expansion; focus on recovering lost revenue and margin before increasing inventory. |
| Outside Lights | Reconsider | Reduce slow-moving range and inventory exposure; retain only differentiated, profitable demand. |
| Controls | Reconsider | Run a focused SKU/customer review and exit or reprice segments that cannot restore profitable volume. |
Assumptions and limitation: stock turnover is calculated as rolling-12-month revenue divided by current stock-on-hand value. The available data does not expose a separate formal turnover measure or average-inventory balance, so this is a directional working-capital proxy. The analysis was informed by Phocas Sales, Purchasing and Stock only; no additional database was required.
Product class portfolio: growth versus profitability
The chart shows how product classes compare on revenue growth and gross margin, with bubble size representing sales. It reveals where strong growth and healthy margins align — and where the biggest categories may warrant a closer look.
| Product class | Total | Nov 2025–Oct 2026 revenue | Nov 2024–Oct 2025 revenue | Current stock on hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unidentified (###) | 5,249.74 | 2,120.20 | 1,891.88 | 1,237.66 |
| Lumination | 84,257,466.89 | 41,749,705.80 | 34,097,626.25 | 8,410,134.84 |
| Power | 12,378,048.57 | 5,192,457.55 | 5,942,610.81 | 1,242,980.21 |
| Controls | 2,521,385.76 | 926,903.42 | 1,379,882.07 | 214,600.27 |
| Lights & Lamps | 56,432,427.07 | 25,775,046.21 | 25,251,467.56 | 5,405,913.30 |
| Outside Lights | 969,142.11 | 348,448.89 | 533,686.23 | 87,006.99 |
Customer concentration in the highest-impact class: The top five Lumination customers contribute approximately $4.99m, or 12.0% of the class’s current rolling-12-month revenue. Concentration is meaningful but not excessive; the larger strategic risk is margin compression across the broader class rather than dependence on one account.
| Customer | Code | Revenue |
|---|---|---|
| ASAP METALLISING | 3663 | 1,338,893.45 |
| STEELFINNE FABRICATIONS LT | 3661 | 1,199,558.71 |
| MOTOR POWER ENGINE RECONDITION | 3654 | 970,976.50 |
| DALE DANIELS ENGINE RECONDITIO | 3653 | 745,247.21 |
| WALK ON WOOD | 3736 | 734,408.65 |
| TOTAL | 4,989,084.52 | |
| OTHERS | 36,760,621.28 | |
| AVERAGE | 997,816.90 |
Medium confidence Partly inferred
The product-class revenue, gross profit, margin, inventory and customer figures come directly from Phocas Sales, Purchasing and Stock. Confidence is medium because stock turnover is a directional revenue-to-stock proxy rather than a formal average-inventory turnover measure, and the product-class grid includes an unidentified residual row that was excluded from strategic recommendations. Customer quote
This is so cool...once we get it into everyone’s hands it will change how we do business forever.
— Ryan Thym, Business Intelligence Manager at PACE Supply
From business question to actionable insight with conversational AI
How it works
Workspaces is how you use PACE, the Phocas Agentic and Conversational Engine.
Always on, already connected, no set up required.
Step 2: You ask
A quick question or deep analytical query, in plain language. Go deeper with follow ups and suggested prompts that retain context.
Step 3: Trust Layer is applied
Governance, permissions and guardrails are applied for relevant, secure results.
PACEBriefed on your business, grounded in your data
Step 4: Context is applied
Preferences, organizational and business context are layered in.
Step 5: PACE reasons it through
Unpacks your question, explores available data and builds an answer from across your databases.
What you get back
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Direct answer
Calculated and ranked from your data, in plain English, with insights and suggestions.
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Confidence score
Straight from your data, or inferred, estimated or incomplete, and it says so.
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Chart or graphic
Chosen automatically and shaped by your preferences.
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Your next step
Keep going: save or pin it to reuse later, open it in the grid to keep exploring, or share it and add it to a dashboard to make it accessible to the business.
Phocas Trust Layer
Governance, permissions, data access and security apply at every step, for every question.
Analytics data
Security & governance
Platform services
Infrastructure (AWS)
CONNECTED AND GOVERNED
An expert analyst, built in to your BI solution.
Always available and in sync, so the whole business can act on the same trusted insights in multiple ways, all in one platform.
- Connects to your ERP and other sources, ready for analysis
- Reasons across every database at once
- Applies your existing permissions, so you don't have to worry about security and governance
- Relies on the data models, security and governance Phocas maintains, so you can start asking from day one
- Works alongside your reports and dashboards, so answers are consistent across all your experiences
SPEED AND CONFIDENCE
Fast, relevant insights. Confident decisions.
Days of analysis, done in minutes. Answers you can act on with confidence.
- Ask in plain language, or start from a suggested prompt
- Keep going with multi-turn, follow-up questions that retain context
- Remembers your role and preferences, and you can set context yourself, so answers get more relevant over time.
- Confidence score on every answer, high when it’s pulled straight from your data
- Charts and graphs automatically generate where they help
- Opens straight into Analytics to validate, slice and dice down to the transaction
FROM ANSWER TO ACTION
Insight that become actions across the business
A conversation is one way in. A dashboard, a report, a scheduled alert are others. No matter what the business needs, everyone’s working from the same numbers
- Open in analytics to build a report, make a favorite, set alerts or add straight to a dashboard
- Ask Workspaces to build an entire dashboard, then review, edit and save it
- Personalize it with your own instructions, and admins can set shared context for the whole organization
- Part of a larger platform so you get AI without extra tools or complexity
THE FOUNDATION
Powered by PACE. Secured by the Phocas Trust Layer.
Get the full power of generative AI, without giving up control of your data.
- Carries over the permissions already set up in Phocas, and learns your personal preferences as you go
- Gets smarter over time, as PACE learns your role and the underlying models improve
- Backed by the same enterprise grade security and governance behind every Phocas product
Customer quote
"Workspaces is exactly what I was hoping the new iteration of Phocas AI was going to provide.
— Tom Christodoulou, Operations at Inspirations Paint
