Common Cents: How to Succeed with Activity-Based Costing and Activity-Based Management

This is the book that revolutionized ABC/ABM; updated with new systems, strategies, and an expanded focus on service and government organizations. Praise for "Common Cents": '"Common Cents" is a great resource for all high level managers to reflect upon as they try to focus on results and customer satisfaction' - Keith Barnes, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Electroglas, Inc. 'Peter Turney uses his plain-talking style to illustrate why time-tested principles remain at the cutting edge of management initiatives worldwide. Any organization hoping to streamline business processes, cut costs, or improve profits can benefit from a little more Common Cents' - Chris Pieper, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, FormRouter, Inc. 'A remarkable book by a remarkable author. "Common Cents" puts activity based costing in terms anyone can apply to their situation. Had government started operating this way with Peter Turney's first book 15 years ago, it is certain taxes would be lower today!' - Roxanne Rice, Director of Fiscal and Public Assistance, South Dakota Department of Transportation. 'Peter Turney is one of those rare authors who make complex subjects simple and easy to understand. "Common Cents" is a must read for successful executives' - Roger Nagel Wagner, Professor at Lehigh University and Emeritus Director of the Iacocca Institute, Author, "Agile Competitors" and "Virtual Competition". 'Businesses that apply Peter Turney's principles will discover new opportunities for driving growth. They will become adept at manoeuvring their strategic levers to maximize profitability of products, services and customers, thereby building significant shareholder value' - Laura Black, Managing Director, Needham & Company. When designed and executed correctly, cost information programs alert decision makers about problems to overcome and opportunities to take advantage of. The difficulty is, conventional sources of financial information often do just the opposite - they hide or misrepresent problems, fail to identify opportunities, and lead to solutions that are ineffective and potentially perilous. "Common Cents, Second Edition", reveals how Activity-Based Costing (ABC) and Activity-Based Management (ABM) can help you make the right decisions about customer and product mix, marketing channels, and performance improvement. Originally written and now revised and updated by ABC/ABM pioneer Dr. Peter B.B. Turney, this book walks you through each step of the process, giving you the tools to more accurately identify, assign actual costs to, and report on the elements of each customer, product, or service, increasing your organization's process efficiency and profitability. "Common Cents" encompasses manufacturing, service, and government organizations. It describes how Deluxe, the U.S. Army, Tektronix, Hewlett-Packard, General Electric, the South Dakota Department of Transportation, and literally hundreds of other organizations achieved the 'ABC performance breakthrough'. Using real-life examples in sectors from financial to telecom, software to healthcare, and transportation to the military, this results-driven book explores: what ABC is, and why it has proven to be so effective at accurately revealing problems and opportunities; how ABC and ABM have improved bottomline performance in manufacturing, service, and government organizations; how ABC and ABM create value in procurement, supply chain, customer support, call centers, operations, shared services, and other areas; latest developments in ABC, including resource planning, capacity management, activity-based budgeting, performance budgeting, decision simulation, and time-based ABC; proven tools of ABM, including customer profitability analysis, strategic analysis, value analysis, cost analysis, storyboarding, life-cycle costing, and target costing; and, an eight step plan for successfully implementing ABC/ABM as a proof of concept or enterprise-wide solution. Whatever business you're in, ABC and ABM can help transform your organization from average to world-class. "Common Cents" reveals the hidden opportunities to improve profitability or reduce cost, and shows you how to position your resources and direct initiatives to achieve maximum results.