Target Costing: The Next Frontier in Strategic Cost Management

The goal of this book is to understand the importance of process management in planning and achieving the objectives of the corporation.

The goal of this book is to understand the importance of process management in planning and achieving the objectives of the corporation. The authors are process strategists, implementers and practitioners from various manufacturing and service companies, consulting firms, and universities who wish to share their experiences and insights on the advantages of becoming a process-centered company and on the considerations that should be made in migrating from a functional to a process-focused organization. The book is organized into four sections:

Section 1 - Creates the strategic vision for process management; clarifies the hierarchy and the concept of core process development; provides suggestions for introducing process management within the organization and addresses organizational and behavioral issues; and defines the roles and responsibilities of process owners, controllers and performers.

Section 2 - Provides guidance on migrating from a functionally-focused to a process-focused organization using a 4-step program to assess, develop, implement and embed process management within an organization.

Section 3- Introduces the concepts of sustaining process management through analyzing current and future-state processes in relationship to customers and markets; develops activity and process metrics relating value, time, quality, flexibility and functionality to maintain customer focus; and provides guidance for using continuous process improvement in strategic, tactical and operational planning and performance.

Section 4 - Conclusions and summary. The book is intended for business publication readers with emphasis on companies of all sizes that are exploring, planning and implementing process management in their organizations. The Road To Excellence applies both to service and manufacturing firms and target readers should be CEOs, COOs, CFOs, Support Function Leaders, General Managers and Managers throughout a firm.

Implementing CAM-I’s Closed Loop Planning and Budgeting Methodology

Effective Planning and Budgeting continues to be one of the biggest challenges facing today’s organizations. The Consortium for Advanced Management-International (CAM-I) tackled this issue and developed and published the Closed Loop Methodology as a powerful approach to improving the operational planning and budgeting processes in most organizations.

• Who is the book for?
  • All strategic, operational, and financial managers responsible for planning and budgeting

• What is the value to your organization of reading this book?
  • Obtain a clear appreciation of the Closed Loop for effective planning & budgeting in today’s business
  • Understand how balancing resource capacity is used as an integral component in the models developed using this approach
  • Recognize how operational efficiency information can impact costs/profitability and budgets
  • Appreciate the benefits of “scenario playing” for improving business operations, reducing costs, and developing more realistic budgets
  • Learn how the methodology integrates with the organization’s performance management system.
  • Discover how to make planning and budgeting critical value-added processes in your organization

Since the initial publication of the book, many organizations have implemented the Closed Loop Methodology. The main benefits that have been obtained are the development of models providing more relevant resource planning and costing/profitability information to support process improvement and strategic decision making. The primary value achieved is that more effort can be focused on the resource planning process so that cost drivers can be better understood, and budgets can be developed on a more automated and less time-consuming basis.