The Ledger

Resolving Common Manufacturing Challenges with Process Optimization

To continually grow as they has in the past, discrete manufacturers must deal with some unique challenges. Without a robust and integrated modeling platform, they often struggle with lack of business visibility, little to no access to actionable insight, excess inventory, and declining profits. The lack of innovation in the business process and technology aspects of manufacturing has many businesses heading into a downward spiral. Consequently, competitors that continue to meet customer needs are the ones that will succeed, both now and in the long term. Short-term vision and planning can mean long-term failure or stagnating growth. Customer demand on organizations to demonstrate flexibility and continue to meet their requirements – but with more product variations – is now the reality of today’s discrete manufacturing industry.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >

How a CFO’s Cost Management Style Can Have a Major Impact on Growth

CFOs distinguish themselves by the cost management practices they implement in their organization – from choosing to eliminate negative cost management practices that drag down earnings, to employing positive ones that increase revenue and profits. Cost optimization is not a new topic for finance leaders, but the practice has taken on new dimensions with the help of sophisticated tools and technologies. CFOs are now operating in a challenging environment where costs have outpaced revenue. Gartner research showed the average shareholder return among companies that employed a balanced approach was 7% higher than their peers. But what role does the CFO play in effectively managing the cost piece of the balanced approach?

Read More at Smarter with Gartner >

Profitability Analytics: A New Perspective on FP&A

FP&A  professionals are all generally focused on two things: (1) examining current performance and the immediate past for lessons learned and changes to replicate positive performance or change negative performance and (2) making projections and planning for the future with forward-looking scenarios, analyzing risks and opportunities, and mapping possible responses.

Advances in digital technologies increase the potential for businesses to use powerful tools to improve and expand their FP&A function. Modern organizations need a robust definition of their FP&A practices that will support the entire organization, looking well beyond finance and accounting’s traditional scope and embracing all the value creation and performance goals throughout an organization. Profitability analytics enables FP&A leaders to understand the past while focusing on developing areas of nonfinancial and financial data analytics and modeling that causally support building robust forward-looking scenarios and analyses.

Read More at Strategic Finance Magazine >

Modern Manufacturers Are Standardizing Their Processes for a Single Version of the Truth in Real Time

Even in today’s business climate of digital transformation and advanced analytics, it is very possible that spreadsheets remain the number one manufacturing execution systems in the world. Unfortunately, manufacturers who are still relaying on spreadsheets for business insights will soon be beat out by those who are going after tools that provide a single version of the truth while enabling predictive and strategic decision making.

Continental, a large automotive components manufacturer, is a serving as a test case for digital transformation in their air-spring business unit. Before they began the transformation, they relied heavily on manual processes and spreadsheets with no real-time global visibility into their manufacturing. By standardizing their manufacturing processes, Continental now works from a single version of the truth that provides the insight to visualize their business in real-time.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >