COST & EFFECT: Using Integrated Cost Systems to Drive Profitability and Performance
Authors: Robert S. Kaplan and Robin Cooper
Reviewed by: Doreen Remmen, NYF CORP.
The NYF Leadership Team has read this new and very important book, and we highly recommend it to all of our customers, suppliers and associates. It is aimed at the executive, both within and outside the finance function, who wants to understand the many factors affecting the company's overall profitability. The following review has been provided by the publisher.
Activity-based cost management is revolutionizing how companies accurately measure and understand what really drives costs in their business. In COST & EFFECT (HBS Press, January 15, 1998 $29.95) widely regarded financial management experts Robert S. Kaplan and Robin Cooper present their blueprint for designing new cost systems that will enable managers both to make better decisions and to facilitate learning.
Like Kaplan's previous co-authored book, The Balanced Scorecard, which is a landmark work in disseminating practical and comprehensive information on an important new financial management system, Cost & Effect will also have a profound impact on managers who hope to introduce the principles of ABC into their own companies as a means of improving competitiveness. COST & EFFECT will be the single best resource for understanding and applying activity-based cost management in any industry.
The emphasis is, as the title suggests, on the measurements that a firm needs to undertake in order to make the right decisions. By focusing on what to look at, and how to measure it, almost everyone will start to see his or her own operations from a totally different focus.
The authors point to numerous real-world examples from a variety of companies worldwide - including Caterpillar, the Swedish wire manufacturer Kanthal, Kirin Beer, and Proctor & Gamble - that have implemented knowledge-based systems that provide meaningful information on current and past organizational performance.
The innovation systems described in COST & EFFECT will help managers:
- Determine where improvements in quality, efficiency, and productivity will have the highest payoffs.
- Assist front-line employees in their learning and improvement activities.
- Make better product mix and capital investment decisions.
- Negotiate more effectively on price, product features, quality, delivery, and service to promote win-win relationships with customers.
- Choose low-cost suppliers who are truly low cost, not just low price.
- Design products and services that meet customers' expectations - and that can be produced and delivered at a profit.
- Integrate activity-based cost systems into reporting and budgeting processes to reveal the sources of excess capacity.
Although managers have likely heard about activity-based costing, activity-based management, kaizen costing, and other financial and non-financial performance measures, many need guidance in understanding how these approaches fit together. COST & EFFECT brings clarity to the situation and represents a conceptual leap in the practice of financial management.
About the Authors:
Robert S. Kaplan is the Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development at the Harvard Business School. He is the co-author of The Balanced Scorecard and Relevance Lost and the editor of Measures for Manufacturing Excellence.
Robin Cooper is a professor of management and the director of the Institute for Study of U.S./Japan Relations in the World Economy at the Peter F. Drucker Graduate Management Center at Claremont Graduate School and the Honorary Visiting Professor of Strategic Cost Management at Manchester Business School. He is the author of When Lean Enterprises Collide.
Kaplan and Cooper are the recognized leaders in developing the theory and applications for innovative cost-management systems.
Publication date: January 15, 1998
Price: $29.95/ 357 pages /ISBN: 0-87584-788-9
Reviews
"Kaplan and Cooper provide a comprehensive overview of the principles, possible uses, and benefits of activity-based management that will help managers mine its full potential."
-- Dr. Erwin Schneider
Head of Corporate Finance Accounting and Controlling
F. Hoffman-LaRoche Ltd.
"Kaplan and Cooper present a structured and concise look at the importance of activity-based costing and the position it should take in world-class performance management systems. COST & EFFECT will be required reading for all our performance management consultants."
--Ralph W. Canter
National Partner in Charge of Performance Management
KPMG Peat Marwick LLP
"Activity-based costing is a powerful tool that continues progressing under the leadership of its creators, Bob Kaplan and Robin Cooper. Finally, here is the book that brings together all of their ideas for driving improved performance - invaluable information for executives, operations managers, and accountants."
--Erik F. Riswick
President, Maplehurst Bakeries, Inc.
"The definitive work on activity-based management, COST & EFFECT will serve as a blueprint for the next generation of management accounting."
--Srikant Datar
Arthur Lowes Dickinson Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
Contact: Sarah McConville, Publicity Manager
Phone: 617-495-6947
E-mail:smcconville@hbsp.harvard.edu
See excerpt
Buy Now
|
