Designing Strategic Cost Systems

The long-term survival of a company is dependent on how knowledgeable its controllers and senior managers are about its costs. Do the costs accurately reflect the resources consumed by the business processes? Can the cost information generated by its financial systems be trusted to make key management decisions? In Designing Strategic Cost Systems, recognized business planning and cost management expert Lianabel Oliver provides a comprehensive and accessible road map for the design, development, and implementation of an effective and competitive strategic cost system. While traditional financial statements measure aggregate organizational performance, they are totally inadequate to identify opportunities to increase a corporation's competitiveness in the marketplace. A good cost system can provide the business intelligence to make better decisions at all levels in the organization. Written for senior managers who are evaluating a cost system redesign project for their organization and business professionals who are part of the project team, Designing Strategic Cost Systems demonstrates how to design a cost system that will be a more effective decisionmaking tool and a source of competitive advantage for the organization. Based on the premise of tailoring a good cost system to the needs of its users, and which reflects the maturity level of the organization, this hands-on reference examines critical issues to address in the planning stages and details how to structure a cost systems design project from the ground up.