The Ledger
Curated content foranalytical business leaders
Do You Have a Data Quality Problem?
November 13, 2017
Decision makers, leaders, data scientists, and managers often must make quick assessments about whether they can trust a set of data whether they can include it in an analysis, or whether they need it to take a new direction. This all boils down to the need to investigate the quality of your data. There are four steps you can take to assess your data quality and identify where you should target your efforts to improve it.
Read More at The Harvard Business Review >
A Successful Strategy Is a Balancing Act
November 9, 2017
It is very common for a company to be so immersed in executing its strategy that it lost sight of its purpose. To ensure that your company is focusing on the purpose, you must put your strategy on the back-burner until you are sure it will help fulfill your purpose. Strategies are time-bound and target specific results. Your purpose, in contrast, is what makes you durably relevant to the world. Strategy is but one of several important means to put your purpose in motion. Intrinsic human connection to your purpose is even more important.
Read More at The Harvard Business Review >
The Steel Industry Needs Real-Time Cost Visibility to Thrive
November 8, 2017
Steel companies everywhere are facing a slow growing business environment as a result of continued volatility and dynamics in the world economies, driven in part by the end of China’s rapid economic growth cycle as well as changes in commodity prices and increasing regulations. In today’s increasingly competitive markets it is also critical that steel companies have a firm grasp on their real cost-to-serve customers. Often companies lack a systematic management process around their annual budgetary calculation of production costs; therefore, the insights gained from variance analyses using standard costs are not consistent across business units and only allow limited insights into past business performance. A structured approach to product costing can help steel businesses better navigate the challenges facing them.
CFOs- Strategists and Storytellers
November 7, 2017
Financial analysts strive to build accurate models that simplify yet reflect the complex adaptive systems in scope. With dynamic, real-time planning and consolidation systems now available, finance can incorporate feedback into models based on new information and rerun the updated forecast at any time during the month. CFOs are driving analytics into the finance organization to not only improve the accuracy of the financial plan, but also to provide real-time visibility into the ever-changing forecast.
Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >
