There are 3 "E's" to strategic cost management: Expense Management - usually the first and easiest lever to pull when quick adjustments need to happen. Efficiency - This requires a deeper understanding on operational process costs beyond the income statement. Lean six sigma and other…
Read more »Most would define a large part of business prosperity as the profitable growth which ultimately creates shareholder value. Shareholder value drives the value of an enterprise in private firms and market capitalization in public firms. We have previously discussed our view of the challenging economic…
Read more »Several years have passed since the beginning of the current recessionary economic cycle. By many estimates, trillions of dollars have been spent worldwide to attempt to jump start the business cycle. In the United States and in many other western countries, this spending has caused…
Read more »Data collection has been a vital part of business process for decades. For the past 50 years, the process of collecting data has evolved to where it is today. With the use of early computers, companies were finally able to collect large amount of data…
Read more »Demanding IT Cost Controls Rising costs within the IT organization is an issue facing most every Chief Financial Officer in the country. Expenses continue to rise and the absence of clarity has many executives stumped in methods to get expenses under control. This competitive market…
Read more »Travelers experience it every day—the forecast is calling for terrible weather in a few days...exactly the same time their trip is going to begin. Travelers are then faced with two big decisions: Number one, change travel plans in advance and divert the weather, or number…
Read more »Customers demand customized services across increasingly complex channels, making it difficult to accurately identify product and customer costs. With personnel expenses representing the largest single component in service institutions, it follows reason that the companies are searching for improved methods of cost assignments to products…
Read more »At the base of any comprehensive Strategic Cost Management Framework is solid governance and infrastructure. This infrastructure aligns stakeholder requirements with the resources and technology that creates a centralized integrated system for managing costs consistently. Once this type of infrastructure and governance is in place, it…
Read more »As companies grow, there comes an increasingly difficult business challenge to provide visibility and insight into the consumption of internal costs. Organizations receive tremendous benefits by organizing to take advantage of certain economies of scale with regard to their back office functions. However, this also…
Read more »Over the last decade, corporate scandals, failures, and the great recession, the CFO function of organizations has evolved beyond the corporate persona as number crunchers and budget cops, and has been invited to the strategy table. Not just as integrity champion or implementer of corporate…
Read more »Given the uncertainty in the marketplace these days, strategic cost management has come back to the forefront of executive objectives for the foreseeable future. Many organizations are sharpening their pencils and reviving the need for more transparent cost information as they fiercely compete for top…
Read more »A very simple and easy to understand definition of cost efficiency is, “The act of saving money by making a product or performing an activity in a better way.” While this definition may seem over simplistic, cost efficiency affects every facet of your business every…
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