256 Posts found for Source: Business Finance Magazine

A brilliant strategy will not produce its intended results if it is not translated into operational terms that define new ways of working. It is one thing to declare important strategic objectives. But to achieve these objectives, managers must link strategy to operations; that is, they must identify the specific work processes and actions needed to reach the strategic objectives the company has defined. Only … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Randall H. Russell | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Management, Operations, Strategy

To get the best results from this powerful performance improvement tool, you need a clear understanding of what it can do for you and a well-structured process for your initiatives.

Content: Article | Author: Brad Wood | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Best Practices, Competitive Intelligence

Business executives involved in mergers or acquisitions face a full plate of prickly issues, from early due diligence to negotiating deal terms to organizational integration, including who ends up in the C-suite. However, one thing they typically don’t pay enough attention to is pricing strategy.

Content: Article | Authors: Jessica Fleming Kosmowski, Patricio Simpson | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Mergers & Acquisitions, Pricing

Chuck Wise, senior principal, finance and performance management, Accenture speaks with Business Finance about the importance of benchmarking and how it can improve the performance of key corporate functions.

Content: Multimedia Content | Author: Chuck Wise | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subject: Best Practices

Most companies offer some type of variable compensation to their sales team for the purpose of driving corporate revenue. However, many still use spreadsheets and disorganized processes to manage this key motivator of the sales force. There is a better way.

Content: Article | Author: Mark Smith | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Finance, Human Resources, Management, Marketing / Sales

The creators of the Balanced Scorecard recently defined a holistic model for corporate management, from developing an appropriate strategy to ensuring that activities within operational functions are adequately supporting that strategy. Here are the basics of their model.

Content: Article | Author: Andrew Pateman | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Business performance management software can deliver great benefits, but many BPM software implementations fail as a result of the company’s inattention to some key characteristics of a successful initiative.

Content: Article | Authors: Mike Davidson, Richard Holt | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Finance, IT / Technology / E-Business, Management, Project Management

Joe Atkinson discusses how companies can better integrate risk management into their business strategies. Atkinson explains how objectives in business performance can be aligned with a company’s risk management objectives.

Content: Multimedia Content | Author: Joe Atkinson | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subject: Risk Management

While a company’s budget is one of its major forward-looking documents, it’s only one of many plans that coexist across business units. Within any department, then, there may be dozens of plans and forecasts, and they’re usually kept on desktop spreadsheets that don’t match up with one another. Our research finds that the connections between these various forward-looking activities are limited. Although companies are not … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Robert Kugel | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Finance, Management

Susan Dettmar Cypra, principal, Archstone Consulting explains what steps companies need to take to better realize the revenue and profit gains a merger or acquisition promises to deliver

Content: Multimedia Content | Author: Susan Dettmar Cypra | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subject: Mergers & Acquisitions

Lean Six Sigma brings rigor and discipline to project management, but its approach to project selection is lacking. A new approach incorporates a structured, enterprise-level view of metrics to jump-start corporate innovation.

Content: Article | Author: Forrest W. Breyfogle III | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Innovation, Management, Operations, Project Management

Every now and then a new story of corporate embarrassment, or worse, caused by spreadsheet errors hits the business headlines. Chilling though the stories may be, finance leaders tend to shrug them off, believing “it could never happen here.” But a slew of academic studies over the last 10 years showing that upwards of 86 percent of spreadsheets contain errors suggests that confidence may be … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: John Cummings | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subject: Finance

Steve Player speaks to legendary costing professor Dr. Charles Horngren of Stanford University, whose market-leading textbook, Cost Accounting: A Managerial Emphasis (first issued in 1962 and now in its 13th edition from Prentice Hall), has been used to train more CFOs and other finance executives than any other. In this rapidly changing world, Dr. Horngren provides sage advice on what remains timeless and important in … [ Read more ]

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Charles Horngren, Steve Player | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Accounting, Finance

Even companies that embrace the Balanced Scorecard often take a backward approach to monitoring performance. Many organizations choose metrics based on how much effort data collection requires.

Content: Article | Authors: Bob Paladino, Nancy Williams | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Finance, Management

Despite the growing volume of studies purporting to show that most M&A deals fail to create shareholder value, companies seem unable to resist the urge to merge. It’s all too easy to succumb to the allure of an apparently game-changing deal. A new study from A.T. Kearney offers insights that might make the most gung-ho growth strategist flinch, but also suggests ways that companies bent … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: John Cummings | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subject: Mergers & Acquisitions

Many companies that look into changing their costing systems find that they are making mistakes, both large and small, that stem from the systemic failure of their cost-accounting systems to deliver actionable economic intelligence that they can use to optimize production, planning, and sales incentive systems (to name three of the most important areas for improvement). If your company makes anything, and particularly if you … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Robert Kugel | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Accounting, Finance

As in architecture, a variety of tensions help organizations to take shape and determine the speed at which a company’s leadership vision is realized. Whether these are tensions over leadership, future vision and strategy, or resource allocation, each tugs upon alignments that determine how a company completes its work.

By leveraging such tensions and learning to manage the informal relationships that organizations thrive upon, finance leaders … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Saj-nicole Joni | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Finance, Management, Organizational Behavior

Companies still struggle with earnings and sales projections, but determined action can yield big improvements in the forecasting process.

Content: Article | Author: John Cummings | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subject: Finance

Most organizations are good at collecting internally focused data, but few systematically provide insight about a company’s external environment. For example, only 21 percent regularly track how their competitors are performing. Business is not an us-vs.-us exercise, yet management reports rarely touch on the world outside.

Content: Quotation | Author: Robert Kugel | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Competition, Competitive Intelligence, Management, Measurement

Here’s a simple diagnostic tool that can be used to facilitate your firm’s discussions of the characteristics it seeks in a leader. The questions that follow include a series of “paired” qualities that a good leader might possess. In each pair, either quality may be desirable. However, the point of pairing these qualities is to ask, If there had to be a choice between the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: David Maister | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Leadership