The Ledger

Better Decisions with Transparent Costing and Profitability Insights

“With companies under pressure to improve profitability, many seek higher levels of transparency into financial performance to uncover insights that can enhance decision-making and create value.”

Business leaders need actionable analytics to recommend actions that improve the bottom line; such as adjusting pricing, reducing product costs, and rationalizing unprofitable products or services. However, many companies rely on two-dimensional reports featuring a significant amount of words and numbers to facilitate a discussion or communicate a point. But in many cases, the information lends itself to more questions, requiring iterative versions to provide the answers.

Read More at The Wall Street Journal >

Leading Consumer Goods Companies Are Mastering Cost Complexity

In today’s fast-moving consumer goods environment, consumers demand an increasing degree of differentiation. Serving this need comes at a cost. Today’s consumers have completely changed the consumer goods environment because their demand is increasing, and businesses have to find a way to keep up if they want to remain competitive and profitable. Many goods come in several variations (size, flavor, ingredients, etc.). Meanwhile, shipping protocols for different countries vary, so the way individual bottles and cans are packaged together will be different depending on where the manufacturer is sending the products. These many variations of SKUs add significantly to production costs for companies that produce fast-moving consumer goods. Businesses have an opportunity to provide significant value by fulfilling customers’ desire for this customization while minimizing the costs.

Read More at The Journal of Accountancy >

Forward-Thinking Businesses Are Strategically Adopting Dynamic Technologies

“Exponential price/performance improvements in technology are driving disruption because they enable new ways of adding value for customers and new business models.”

To survive and thrive in this fast-changing business environment, companies must be customer-focused, agile, and continue to innovate. How can organizations achieve this? Their infrastructure must enable agility and flexibility to allow the organization to rapidly innovate and pivot.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >

How Growing Companies Benefit from Intelligent Capabilities

To stay competitive in today’s volatile marketplace, growing companies depend heavily on having a coherent, end-to-end view of operations. Without data, it’s difficult to optimize the entire customer experience, pivot to new business models, take advantage of new productivity opportunities, or increase and maintain workforce engagement. Midsize businesses grow in many ways, such as securing partnership investment, allowing owners and employees to take a vested interest, and securing personal loans to strengthen operations. The success of these companies comes down to the company’s valuation, which is measured by the ability to generate revenue, keep customers happy and loyal, and spark and maintain the interest of talented employees and leaders. Underlying these key factors is an even more critical asset – a strong foundation for collecting, leveraging, and operationalizing data.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >