1173 Posts Found

Does following best practice in strategy, marketing, operations, and organization generally make it possible for companies to increase their revenues consistently—or does that kind of growth usually require something more?

Content: Article | Authors: Caroline M. Thompson, S. Patrick Viguerie, Sven Smit | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Best Practices, Finance, Management, Strategy

Yes, but not for the reasons you might think.

Content: Article | Authors: André Annema, Marc H. Goedhart, William C. Fallon | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Finance

Doesn’t every business want to maximize its profits? Pricing textbooks certainly all assume they do, or at least that they want to achieve a certain profit level under given constraints. But in truth businesses rarely focus on only profitability; most strive to satisfy various stakeholders and meet the goals of balanced scorecards. And even when a company is focused tightly on financial performance, there are … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Stefan Michel | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Finance, Management, Pricing

No matter the stage of the business, startups need to manage the size of their Employee Stock Option Pool or ESOP. The ESOP contains the shares set aside by the company for hiring and retaining employees. Like a financial budget, ESOP budgets help a startup plan how to finance its growth.

Content: Article | Author: Tomasz Tunguz | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Finance

Investors reward high-performing companies that shift their strategic focus prudently, even if that means lower returns or slower growth.

Content: Article | Authors: Bin Jiang, Tim Koller | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Finance, Management

Let’s keep in mind that for anything worthwhile, how we get it is often more important than the getting itself. In other words, how we make the numbers matters as much as whether or not we make the numbers. The numbers should be only one of the things we hope to make; the plan must count, too, and sacrificing the plan to the numbers is, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Michael E. Raynor | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Finance, Management

An interesting essay by finance luminary Eugene F. Fama, which touches on some of the important events in the evolution of the finance field.

Content: Article | Author: Eugene F. Fama | Source: Capital Ideas | Subjects: Finance, History

The trouble with innovation is that it’s unpredictable. New businesses tend to be small and failure rates are high. They don’t operate with the same rhythm as core businesses, and their size and scope are insignificant relative to core businesses. That’s problematic if you’re running a P&L, and that’s why resource allocation should not be wedded to a particular line of business. It should be … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Rita Gunther McGrath | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Finance, Innovation, Management, Strategy

In 1970, in “Efficient Capital Markets: a Review of Theory and Empirical Work,” Gene Fama defined a market to be “informationally efficient” if prices at each moment incorporate all available information about future values. Informational efficiency is a natural consequence of competition, relatively free entry, and low costs of information. If there is a signal, not incorporated in market prices, that future values will be … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: John H. Cochrane | Source: Capital Ideas | Subjects: Economics, Finance

There is no shortage of money managers who claim they can beat market benchmarks, some with impressive track records. And one stream of research suggests that some people can identify and profit from mispriced securities in the stock market. Chicago Booth Professor Lubos Pastor believes that money managers are not only skilled, but becoming ever more skilled over time. So should you dump your index … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Ronald Fink | Source: Capital Ideas | Subjects: Economics, Finance

There are three questions that a finance executive should always be able to answer when they sit down with a business leader:

1. The first question is, what happened? We’re pretty good at that in finance. We can calculate the actuals and say, “Sales are off 15%.”
2. The second question that always follows right on the heels of the first is: Why did that happen? We’re … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: David Axson | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subject: Finance

Finance and economics are the means by which companies operate. To get senior leaders to tune in, the […] conversation must be focused on financial outcomes. If you start the conversation with methods, tools, and techniques, they’ll tune you out.

Content: Quotation | Author: John Timmerman | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Communication, Economics, Finance, Organizational Behavior

We sometimes refer to the “designated doubters” in corporations, and these are often people in finance. They have a responsibility to make very sure that corporate and stockholders’ money is spent well; the idea is that “before we make any investment we want you to prove to us holistically and analytically that it’s a good investment.” And that makes a lot of sense at one … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jeanne Liedtka | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Finance, Innovation, Management, Organizational Behavior

Decision-making is the ultimate reason why accountants and finance people exist. The way to judge the quality of an accounting or performance management system is to determine whether it is spurring quality decision-making.

Content: Quotation | Author: Charles Horngren | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Accounting, Decision Making, Finance

Most corporate strategies share a high-level mission: Understand what current or potential customers value, and use those insights to sell products and services. Citing examples from five industries, Accenture examines the complex investment decisions that companies must make to achieve a variety of business goals.

Content: Article | Authors: Amrita Kimmi Grewal, Christopher R. Roark, James M. Scully, Michael V. Peterson | Source: Accenture | Subjects: Finance, Management

What can “economic value added,” increasingly considered the public company’s preferred performance metric, do for your company?

Content: Article | Author: Russ Banham | Source: Chief Executive | Subjects: Finance, Management

Companies have set aggressive targets to squeeze cost savings from procurement, but meeting those goals often requires a new approach.

Content: Article | Authors: Alexander Schmitz, Klaus Neuhaus, Tobias Umbeck | Source: Bain & Company | Subjects: Finance, Management, Operations

To ensure the customer-centric vision takes root, you need to establish clear metrics that are linked to the company’s strategic, operational, and financial goals. Those metrics will help with determining priorities and shifting the orientation of the company toward a more customer-centered business model. Ideally, the marketing team will work with the executive team to establish the metrics.

Once the metrics are selected, it is a … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Laura Patterson | Source: MarketingProfs | Subjects: Customer Related, Market/Investment

Companies that improve the performance of their working capital can generate cash and see benefits far beyond the finance department.

Content: Article | Authors: David Merin, Ryan Davies | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Finance

Profitability and cost management (PCM) is at the core of enterprise performance management, as it represents the bottom line for every company. However, there are multiple reasons why PCM is of particular relevance, especially today.

In most organizations, the indirect costs as part of overall costs are growing. And customer self-service business models rule, so that organizations even bear the risk of losing grip on their … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Oracle | Subjects: Finance, Management