Cost & Effect: Using Integrated Cost Systems to Drive Profitability and Performance

Two of the most innovative thinkers in the field present a work that represents the single best resource for understanding and implementing activity-based cost management. Kaplan and Cooper reveal that most companies don't know how to measure accurately, influence, or understand the fundamental cost drivers in their businesses. They then provide a detailed and comprehensive blueprint that will enable managers to make better decisions and to promote organizational learning and improvement. Cost and Effect takes the management, finance, and accounting fields to an entirely new level, as the authors demonstrate how the principles of activity-based costing and other advanced cost management techniques, such as target and kaizen costing, can drive business performance. Using lively examples from a variety of leading companies worldwide—including Siemens, Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, the Swedish wire manufacturer Kanthal, Kirin Beer, and Procter & Gamble—they show how to create integrated, knowledge-based systems that provide meaningful information on current and past performance.The innovation systems described in Cost and Effect will help you: determine where improvements in quality, efficiency, and productivity will have the highest payoffs; assist front-line employees in their learning and improvement activities; make better product mix and capital investment decisions; negotiate more effectively on price, product features, quality, delivery, and service to promote win-win relationships with your customers; choose low-cost suppliers who are truly low cost, not just low price; design products and services that meet customers' expectations - and that can be produced and delivered at a profit; and, integrate your activity-based cost system into reporting and budgeting processes to reveal the sources of excess capacity. Everyone involved in running a business—from general managers and strategic planners to financial executives, IT professionals, and operations managers—must read this book to learn how innovative cost and performance measurement systems can enhance their organizational profitability and performance.

Robert S. Kaplan is the Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development at the Harvard Business School. He is the co-author of The Balanced Scorecard and Relevance Lost and the editor of Measures for Manufacturing Excellence.