This study analyses the relationships between service capabilities and financial statements indicators of 76 U.K. service providers belonging to the Standard Industry Classification (SIC) 49410 (‘Freight transport by road’). These firms were clustered in four different groups according to their service capabilities by employing content analysis on open secondary data. Then, statistical tests were employed to analyse whether groups with different service capabilities differ in key financial statements indicators. As the results show, economic-financial indicators (e.g., turnover) do not vary significantly between the groups, whereas differences arise in the number of employees and other asset-related indicators. It follows from these results that within the same SIC code, the various assortments of service capabilities do not have repercussions on the firms’ profitability; on the other hand, these assortments are correlated with firms’ size and infrastructure (e.g., magnitude of the Stock & W.I.P.). This research develops a heuristic approach using open secondary data to identify and classify service capabilities, and to investigate their relationship with financial statements indicators. This approach can be replicated in other business sectors thus supporting managers in identifying their firm’s capabilities and those of their competitors.

本研究分析了属于标准行业分类 (SIC) 49410（“公路货运”）的 76 家英国服务提供商的服务能力与财务报表指标之间的关系。通过对开放的二手数据进行内容分析，这些公司根据其服务能力被分为四个不同的组。然后，通过统计检验分析不同服务能力的群体在关键财务报表指标上是否存在差异。结果表明，经济财务指标（例如营业额）在各组之间没有显着差异，而员工人数和其他资产相关指标存在差异。从这些结果可以看出，在相同的SIC代码中，各种服务能力对企业的盈利能力没有影响；另一方面，这些分类与公司的规模和基础设施相关（例如，库存和在制品）。本研究开发了一种启发式方法，使用开放的二手数据来识别和分类服务能力，并调查它们与财务报表指标的关系。这种方法可以复制到其他业务部门，从而支持管理人员识别他们公司和竞争对手的能力。