The Ledger
Curated content foranalytical business leaders
The Power of Cost Transparency
“The effectiveness of cost information is driven less by the cost method chosen, and more by the design and implementation of the cost allocation model used to support that method.”
While many businesses effectively analyze their revenue based on products, services, and customers, they often lack meaningful insight into their costs and profits. Companies with a disparate array of financial systems and costing methods find it extremely challenging to understand their financial data and achieve cost transparency. Getting cost data to a more granular level is one of the keys to arming managers with the insights they need to support strategic decision making that goes beyond what is necessary for financial reporting or inventory valuation. To improve overall performance, finance leaders need to make changes to how costs are captured and then harmonize both data and allocation models across the organization.
Better Business Decisions Come From Effective Data Visualization
Data visualization can greatly improve finance’s ability to view how the business is performing by providing access to key metrics, KPIs, forecasts, and other critical information that can aid decision-making and help each function chart effective courses of action. However, those goals depend heavily on quality data. Thanks to an expanding array of analytics tools and emerging cognitive technologies, finance is also able to leverage that data to attain meaningful insights that can influence a range of tactical and strategic decisions.
Read More at CFO Insights by Deloitte >
Nine Essential Steps for Strategic Planning
All corporate functions do strategic planning, but few do it well. Strategic planning is critical for forward-looking organizations, but short-term planning activities often leave little time to pursue long-term strategy. The mission for business leaders is to identify initiatives that will drive enterprise growth ambitions, and unlock the capacity (time, budget, talent and technology) needed to fuel them. Most companies are now pursuing strategies that have a greater risk of failure, and often involve business model change that creates a complex set of coordinated changes across the business. Gartner suggests 9 steps that provide a guide for leaders to effectively prioritizes the successful execution of critical initiatives that are tied to overall business goals.
Read More at Smarter with Gartner >
Meeting Customer Demand with Integrated Manufacturing Visibility
Today’s customers demand high-quality, individualized products and faster delivery. When it comes to the manufacturing function, manual processes and isolated information silos make meeting these demands increasingly difficult. What’s needed are connected manufacturing processes that are integrated across the entire product life-cycle to break down silos and provide visibility across the phases of design, planning, logistics, and operations. This can enable next-generation business processes that leverage intelligent technologies to analyze root causes of inefficiency, predict machine and process failures, and speed execution. An integrated environment for manufacturing can help compress cycle times, speed time to market, minimize costs, and meet manufacturing demand with greater efficiency and agility – despite growing variability.
Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >