Lies, Damned Lies, and Cost Accounting


Book Description

This book introduces capacity management, describes cash flow dynamics, and offers ideas about how to manage both Business leaders rely on accounting data such as profit and calculated costs as a guide to whether they are making money. Should they? Accounting was designed to report financial performance not model cash flow. Accruals can disconnect cash flow from the timing and extent to which it occurs. Statements of cash flow do not provide insight into what was bought and how efficiently it was used. Costs and profits are not absolute, they change based on the model you use to calculate them. To manage cash, you must manage what you buy and how effectively you use it. The largest expenditure for most companies is capacity; space, labor, materials, equipment, and technology. Unless you model and manage capacity effectively, you will not achieve the cash flow results you seek. This book introduces capacity management, describes cash flow dynamics, and offers ideas about how to manage both. After reading it, you be able to see, understand, and manage cash flow as never before.




Operations and Cash Management Series


Book Description

Now you can own all of Reginald's books in one convenient set! Lies, Damned Lies, and Cost Accounting Business leaders rely on accounting data such as profit and calculated costs as a guide to whether they are making money. Should they? Accounting was designed to report financial performance not model cash flow. Accruals can disconnect cash flow from the timing and extent to which it occurs. Statements of cash flow do not provide insight into what was bought and how efficiently it was used. Costs and profits are not absolute, they change based on the model you use to calculate them. To manage cash, you must manage what you buy and how effectively you use it. The largest expenditure for most companies is capacity; space, labor, materials, equipment, and technology. Unless you model and manage capacity effectively, you will not achieve the cash flow results you seek. This book introduces capacity management, describes cash flow dynamics, and offers ideas about how to manage both. After reading it, you be able to see, understand, and manage cash flow as never before. Strategic Cost Transformation Your product costs $2.86 to make. What does the number tell you about your operations, how effectively they were run, demand, or how much money you spent on capacity? Nothing. Shouldn’t you know? Accounting information creates a limited picture of operations and true cash performance. Strategic Cost Transformation offers a new framework, business domain management, which creates a comprehensive picture of your organization for improved cash based decision-making. Project Profitability Consultants and internal project teams often make substantial claims about the savings opportunities resulting from their projects. Most of the time, these claims do not come true. Project Profitability explains why these opportunities are not realized and offers a framework that will guarantee your teams identify projects that align with your strategy, calculate cash savings appropriately, and realize these cash savings upon implementation. Customers of consulting organizations can use this book to keep their consultants honest when savings are promised. Consulting organizations can use this book to help document the value their solutions bring, how much of that value can be realized, and what’s necessary to achieve it. If you are a consultant, you do not want to risk having your customer know the content of this book and challenge the value promise!




Strategic Cost Transformation


Book Description

Strategic Cost Transformation offers a new framework, business domain management, which creates a comprehensive picture of your organization for improved cash based decision-making. Your product costs $2.86 to make. What does the number tell you about your operations, how effectively they were run, demand, or how much money you spent on capacity? Nothing. Shouldn’t you know? Accounting information creates a limited picture of operations and true cash performance. Strategic Cost Transformation offers a new framework, business domain management, which creates a comprehensive picture of your organization for improved cash based decision-making.




Time's Up!


Book Description

Put values—and value—over volume with a professional services subscription model Professional firms are built on relationships. But you wouldn't know it by observing their predominant business model — a model centered on selling transactions and inputs, not outcomes that deepen and strengthen relationships. Time’s Up! offers you a guide to building a more valuable firm, one where relationships and lifetime customer value are at the center of how you create and capture value. You’ll learn how to: Create customer lifetime values that far exceed acquisition and retention costs Move customer relationships to the center of your firm Leverage the collective knowledge of your customers Elevate customers from where they are to their desired future by providing transformations, where the customer is the product. Only uncommon offerings command uncommon prices. Time’s Up! introduces you to a revolutionary new business model that transforms your firm, your teams and your results with the customer right at the center of the process.




Strategic Cost Analysis, Second Edition


Book Description

Increasing business competition is compelling managers not only to develop realistic and achievable strategies but also to analyze goals in financial terms and to evaluate performance. But where do you, as a manager, learn about the key methods and techniques of strategic cost analysis? This text explains in simple language the methods and techniques of cost analysis that can be applied strategically at any level in an organization—be it manufacturing, service, or the nonprofit sector. Since the interaction of the organization’s activities, the influences of the external world, and your responsibilities as a manager need to be captured in financial terms to help plan, control, and make decisions, this book is what you’ll require in today’s world.




Strategic Managerial Accounting – A Primer for the IT Professional


Book Description

This book, probably the first written from the perspective of software professionals, attempts to introduce them to the mysteries of strategic managerial accounting (SMA). The common view in the industry is that "accounting is for the accountants", despite the fact that IT professionals are regularly confronted by financial situations such as project pricing, performance measurement, risk estimation, costs allocation etc. While it is desirable and even necessary that every proposal be vetted by respective specialists, the speed and reliability of the process could improve if the people who originate the proposal had knowledge of the fundamentals that go into the decision making. Unfortunately most books on management accounting, whether strategic or otherwise, are written from the perspective of the manufacturing industry. The IT and services industry on the other hand has a unique cost structure, quite distinct from manufacturing, which needs to be dealt with from a different perspective. This book focuses on SMA in context of the IT software industry, and seeks to equip the IT professional with some basics of SMA to assist them in making more informed decisions.




How to Take Action for Successful Performance Management


Book Description

This book is intended for practitioners, students, and researchers who are interested in designing, using, assessing, and researching performance management systems. Managerial personnel involved in such activity will hold many beliefs about how their organization functions. This text uses the philosophy of pragmatic constructivism to show how managerial beliefs that underlie action can be made explicit and so facilitate their assessment and improvement. This involves recognizing and integrating the four dimensions (facts, possibilities, values, and communication) that represent how managers relate to the reality in which they operate. When managerial beliefs are based on an accurate representation of reality, they are more likely to be successful. Problems occur where reality is misrepresented in managerial beliefs. This is especially so in performance management, as the book illustrates using real-world examples. Specific topics addressed include planning and decision making, performance management of investment center managers, strategic performance management, and operational performance management.




Operational Risk Management


Book Description

To remain viable, let alone competitive, organizations must manage risks. In this book, we explore the concept of operational risk as well as the mechanisms used to diminish the impact and occurrence of risks: the organizational control system. Since the scope and scale of operational risks are unique to each organization, our objective is to explain the theory behind why and how managers respond to the unique combination of threats that challenge their organization. We emphasize employee management and the complexities surrounding the design of management controls, incentive systems in particular, because risks related to employee actions are faced by virtually every organization. Overall, we provide empirically grounded insights into the process of diagnosing operational risks as well as designing, implementing and maintaining a control system that properly manages those risks.




From Value Pricing to Pricing Value


Book Description

This book will reveal how to understand, implement and master the pricing value methodology. Understanding and applying the concept of "pricing value" is critical for today's accountants-especially for self-employed accountants, CPAs, and small firms who primarily work with small business clients. This book will reveal how to understand, implement and master the pricing value methodology. It will explain the solid academic research behind this approach, discuss how to avoid common pitfalls, and demonstrate step-by-step how to implement the methodology in a practical and persuasive way.




Project Profitability


Book Description

Project Profitability explains why opportunities are not realized and offers a framework that will guarantee your teams identify projects that align with your strategy, calculate cash savings appropriately, and realize these cash savings upon implementation. Consultants and internal project teams often make substantial claims about the savings opportunities resulting from their projects. Most of the time, these claims do not come true. Project Profitability explains why these opportunities are not realized and offers a framework that will guarantee your teams identify projects that align with your strategy, calculate cash savings appropriately, and realize these cash savings upon implementation. Customers of consulting organizations can use this book to keep their consultants honest when savings are promised. Consulting organizations can use this book to help document the value their solutions bring, how much of that value can be realized, and what’s necessary to achieve it. If you are a consultant, you do not want to risk having your customer know the content of this book and challenge the value promise!