Strategic Cost Fundamentals

An accessible, practical survey of cost management methods Essentials of Cost Management provides an unbiased survey and explanation of the cost management approaches and methods currently available for immediate application in day-to-day activities. Rather than advocate a particular method, this book assists readers in choosing the best approach or blend of cost management strategies to address specific business problems. The expert authors also discuss cutting-edge topics such as target costing, capacity management, and activity-based costing/management.

This book is designed to introduce designers, engineers, technologists, estimators, project managers, and financial analysts as well as students in engineering and business to strategic cost tools for project cost evaluations. The three main sections are as follows. (1) Cost Relationships, Financial Statements, and Performance Measures—This section describes the relationships between cash flows and profits; the relationships between financial statements and the Purcell Diagram; and the issues of cost estimating, time-based breakeven analysis and time-based earned schedule. (2) Tools for Economic Evaluations—This section considers the basic mathematical relations used behind the economic equations and factors; discrete and continuous interest; depreciation terms and methods; and the Present Value of Principal Approach for evaluating loans. (3) Methods for Project Evaluation and Risk Analysis—This section considers payback periods, present worth analysis, return on investment, internal rate of return, benefit/cost ratios and positive-negative project balances; risk techniques of sensitivity analysis, optimistic-pessimistic analysis, discrete probability examples, and continuous probability models using the normal and triangular distributions.

Cost and Management Accounting: Fundamentals and its Applications caters to a much needed requirement of a text that is contemporary and at the same time provides a concise approach to cost and management accounting in the Indian context. Every effort is made in this book to expose the students to the relevance of cost concepts in managerial decision-making. Key Features Learning Objectives: These objectives, at the beginning of each chapter, outline the flow of a chapter and serve as points of comprehension and evaluation. Chapter Opening Case: Each chapter opens with an interesting case of a hypothetical company, posing an issue directly related to the concepts covered in the chapter. This should help the student to relate the chapter's theoretical content to an actual business setting. Opening Case Linkages: Each chapter opening case is revisited later in the chapter, after the students have gained an understanding of the concepts and techniques needed to address it. Link to Practice: All chapters incorporate multiple real-world applications of management accounting concepts. These provide an opportunity for the students to bridge the text material to actual accounting practice. Research Insights: Each chapter discusses current research relevant to the theory and practice of cost and management accounting to assist students develop proper reasoning about the topics under discussion. You are the Decision Maker: Each chapter poses short, thought-provoking questions in order to motivate students to apply the knowledge they have gained. Ethical Dilemma (Real World Cases): The cases talk about importance of business ethics in managerial accounting Coverage of Diverse Industries and Sectors: The book has a balanced mix of manufacturing, service, trading, mature and start-up companies, taken as a background to illustrate the universality of application of cost management tools. Illustration Problems: Two solved review problems accompanied by solutions in each chapter. These problems demonstrate the applicability of major concepts and procedures covered in the chapter. Glossary: Comprehensive glossary at the end of the book.

As often reported in Business Week and Fortune, most large companies today concede that their cost systems are desperately obsolete. In this eagerly awaited book, John Shank and Vijay Govindarajan, nationally known experts on the strategic use of cost information, address head-on the fundamental concepts of management accounting that are in desperate need of change. The authors demonstrate how strategic cost management, the first analytic framework to relate meaningful accounting information to a firm's business strategy, is revolutionizing accounting—and overall business practices in leading firms. With numerous extended examples including Ciba-Geigy, Ford, Texas Instruments, and many more, the authors show how the three key tools of strategic cost management—value chain analysis, strategic positioning analysis, and cost driver analysis—provide a sustainable competitive advantage over firms whose cost systems are in disarray. With persuasive evidence, Shank and Govindarajan demonstrate the strategic power of value chain analysis, i.e., linking external value creating activities all the way from basic raw materials, to component suppliers, and through to the ultimate end-use product delivered to the consumers. Next, they examine how cost management and cost control must be differentiated depending on the strategic positioning chosen by the firm, be it cost leadership or product differentiation. Finally, the authors offer penetrating in-sights on cost driver analysis using such examples as Champion International and Motorola to describe the uses and limitations of activity-based costing, quality costing, and technology costing. Traditional cost analysis, the authors show, is limited to assessing the financial impact of managerial decision alternatives, with no consideration for strategic business objectives. In this indispensable guide, Shank and Govindarajan show how Strategic Cost Management (SCM) relates to a broader context, where strategic elements become far more conscious, explicit, and formal, and cost data is used to develop superior strategies en route to gaining sustainable competitive advantage.

(Black & White version) Fundamentals of Business was created for Virginia Tech's MGT 1104 Foundations of Business through a collaboration between the Pamplin College of Business and Virginia Tech Libraries. This book is freely available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10919/70961 It is licensed with a Creative Commons-NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 license.

Offering a multidisciplinary roadmap for the design, development, and implementation of a strategic cost system, this book shows how to design a cost system to become a more effective decision-making tool and a source of competitive advantage for the organisation. It describes how to structure a cost systems design project and discuss the issues that should be addressed upfront from a management, operations, and costing perspective. Includes a URL site containing key terms and helpful Excel templates. Highlights the logistics of putting together and managing the project team. Addresses the technical and political issues that may arise as the project unfolds.

This open access book clarifies confusions of strategy that have existed for nearly 40 years through the core thoughts of three fundamental elements. Unlike the traditional definition of strategy as "a plan to achieve a long-term goal from overall considerations”in a linear view, this book defines strategy from non-linear viewpoint as it is in the real world. The art of a strategy lies not only in the determination of development goals, but also in the identification of development problems and putting forward overall guiding ideology of solving problems. Rich illustrations as well as numerous business and military cases are presented in helping readers to understand the fundamental elements of strategy.The general scope of the book includes introductions to the three fundamental elements of strategy, three-sub decisions of a complete strategic decision, incomplete strategies, relationship between tactic and strategy, three elements of competitive and corporative strategies. There may be biases in company-level, real strategic decision-making which makes a complete strategy not necessarily a perfect one. The book introduces biases and reasons for the biases, helping industrial strategic decision-makers understand the importance of knowing the nature of the company, the industry and its environment. In addition, this book also presents principles and evaluation approaches of strategic decisions, explores the reasons for the excessive definitions of the strategy concept, and discusses directions of future’s research tasks.The book will benefit business managers who are interested in knowing what a complete strategic decision is and how to avoid errors or biases in strategic decision-making. It also benefits students in business schools (especially in MBA/EMBA programs) who are (or will be) on executive positions. Academic researchers may find it is interesting to understand strategy from the view of the three elements. The new view provides a novel insight into strategy and promotes several research directions in the future. The three elements of strategy are also applicable to military strategies and readers who are interested in military and may find its value as well.