Online articles
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Displaying 1-30 of 45 results
Exclusive
Activity Value Management (AVM) in Greater China
- Article
- 01 Oct 2023
- Anne Wu
Activity value management, a cost management system, has helped many companies save money and improve performance. Anne Wu explains how she built up the system through 33 years of integrating academic research, teaching, and practical implementation in the manufacturing and service sectors.
Exclusive
How to improve quality with software
- Article
- 01 Aug 2023
- Michelle Bangert
Software drives many of today's manufacturing trends. The article discusses how software can play a crucial role in improving manufacturing quality, amid challenges like labour shortages. It emphasizes the importance of using software's capabilities to drive continuous improvement in manufacturing processes, highlighting that even a small investment in education and feature adoption can lead to substantial cost savings and enhanced efficiency.
Exclusive
A balanced approach to optimize working capital
- Article
- 01 Jul 2023
- Don Freitas
The article describes a balanced approach to improve available working capital. Don Freitas suggests that the three pillars of working capital optimization should be: release cash, reduce cost, and improve service. He discusses how to improve inventory-related factors that can contribute to poor working capital performance and explains some solutions to improve working capital optimization.
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Cost cutting to make you stronger
- Article
- 01 Jul 2023
- Vinay Couto, Paul Leinwand, Sundar Subramanian
How the most resilient companies position themselves to grow - by seeing costs as investments, and weeding out the poor investments while keeping the good ones. The authors provide five critical steps for succeeding at cost transformation.
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Traditional vs contemporary management accounting practices
- Article
- 01 Jun 2023
- Lu Jiao, Kevin Baird, Abubakar Nuraddeen Nuhu
Results of a survey examining the direct and moderated effects of traditional and contemporary management accounting practices on organizational performance and competitive advantage. The survey investigated the effectiveness of several practices, including: capital budgeting, standard costing, activity-based management, balanced scorecard and strategic cost management.
Exclusive
How AI and automation can streamline procurement
- Article
- 25 Apr 2023
The article explains the role of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation in streamlining procurement, reducing costs and dealing with economic slowdown. Topics discussed are the need to build a single version of procurement data and standardize all information into a unified system as part of automating the procurement process and the potential capability of generative AI, machine learning and the digital ecosystem to make autonomous purchasing decisions.
Exclusive
How AI and automation can streamline procurement
- Article
- 25 Apr 2023
- Cliff Saran
The article explains the role of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation in streamlining procurement, reducing costs and dealing with economic slowdown.
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Design thinking for innovation
- Article
- 01 Feb 2023
- Kristine Brands
How management accountants can apply the 'design thinking' approach to innovation to achieve a competitive edge. According to IDEO's Tim Brown, this human-centred approach can be used to integrate people's needs, technology, and business success factors to achieve innovation.
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The key to a successful business scale-up
- Article
- 01 Jan 2023
- Martin Kupp, Jeffrey F.Rayport, Davide Sola
How to master the “extrapolation” stage, when business start-ups begin to focus on profitability, not just growth. The authors share their advice, based on their experience teaching business school courses on scaling up enterprises and their analysis of dozens of rapidly growing start-ups.
Exclusive
The importance of working capital management
- Article
- 01 Dec 2022
- Logan Arumugam
Tips for practical ways an SME can optimise its working capital without using external finance. Recommendations include making a biweekly, 13-week rolling cash forecast; creating separate cost/profitability models for vital processes; and nurturing customer/supplier relationships, which will positively influence cash management.
Exclusive
RPA: intelligent evolution of a productivity bot
- Article
- 13 Sep 2022
- Marc Ambasna-Jones
The article discusses that robotic process automation (RPA) software is expected to take people's jobs but is focused on tedious but necessary repetitive tasks. RPA helps in increasing productivity, reducing costs, and freeing up valuable employee time, the key business drivers for automated processes.
Exclusive
Armanino LLP advises businesses on planning for recession
- Article
- 08 Sep 2022
- Michael Cohn
Advice from business consulting firm Armanino on how to reduce costs without making desperately needed employees redundant. The firm advises clients to look at internal metrics such as cash flow, revenue per employee, average days to close new business and accounts receivable payments.
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Resilience through value-stream mapping (VSM)
- Article
- 01 Aug 2022
- Javvadi H.Rao
The author explains how management accountants can leverage this tool to identify key value-creating opportunities in the business value chain and gain competitive advantage. VSM offers a beginning-to-end view of transactions in terms of value-based pricing and cost optimization.
Exclusive
Five reasons to repatriate from the cloud
- Article
- 11 Jan 2022
- Stephen Pritchard
The article explores the reasons behind cloud repatriation, a process of reverse-migrating application workloads and data from the public cloud to a private cloud. It mentions the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on the cloud companies. It discusses the reasons for cloud repatriation including cost reduction; poorly planned moves to the cloud, supllier failure, security and regulation .
Exclusive
A collaboration between operations and accounting at Dublin Airport resulted in the optimization of life cycle costs of fixed assets
- Article
- 01 May 2021
- Dan Bumblauskas, Paul Bumblauskas, Kayla Hahn, Amy Igou, Ben Vaske
How Dublin Airport gained a complete picture of its fixed assets, including more accurate information about potential maintenance costs. Life cycle costing (LCC) was carried out to consider all costs throughout a fixed asset's entire life cycle.
Exclusive
Beyond cryptocurrency: blockchain as a value creator & connector
- Article
- 01 Sep 2019
- Vikrant Viniak
Article looks at three case studies of blockchain use , showing cost savings and value creation mechanism and demonstrating the possibilities for companies reliant on strategic partnerships or those seeking to increase the transparency of interactions
between consumers or business partners.
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Don't manage risk - manage value
- Article
- 01 Jun 2019
- Marinus de Pooter
Changing risk standards pave the way for organizations to bring their experts together to pursue opportunities and cope with threats. The internal audit department can act as an independent advisor, connecting experts effectively and helping to reduce silo-thinking. The author recommends that internal auditors use a 'value management approach' which focuses on the quality of decision-making within the organization.
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Effective financial projections for a startup
- Article
- 01 Mar 2019
- Tiffany Hovland
Practical considerations to help startups develop a business plan with meaningful financial projections.
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Can RPA improve agility?
- Article
- 01 Mar 2019
- Pradeep Raju, Rod Koch
The article discusses the use of robotic process automation (RPA) in accounting firms in relation to the notion of agile organizations. Topics include the relation of RPA to the automation life-cycle process in finance, the relation of RPA to compliance and labour productivity, and the calculation of cost savings and return on investment (ROI) for RPA.
Exclusive
Patient level costing and profitability: making it work
- Article
- 01 Jan 2019
- Gary Cokins, Raef Lawson, Rob Tholemeier
A look at the patient-level cost management analytics approach for healthcare accounting, written from a US perspective.
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Central intelligence
- Article
- 17 Sep 2018
- Rick Popley
How one business reduced costs and increased revenue during the 2008 recession.
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The chief risk officer: it's not just about managing risk costs anymore
- Article
- 01 May 2018
- Graham Bippart
Paul Ingram, Chief Risk Officer (CFO) at Credit Suisse International, gives his views on the remit of his role.
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Value through Robotic Process Automation
- Article
- 01 Mar 2018
- Timothy Driscoll
Replacing labor- and transaction-intensive processes with Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can reduce costs while improving efficiency and quality. Article ooks at questions that CFOs are asking and 4 basic steps for to follow.
Exclusive
Creating an inventory control center of excellence
- Article
- 01 Dec 2017
- Stephen J. McNally
Stephen McNally was previously a Finance director/controller at Campbell Soup. He explains how his finance team created an Inventory Control Center of Excellence (COE) to improve the company's inventory management and reduce costs.
Exclusive
A CEO action plan for workplace automation
- Article
- 01 Jun 2017
- Michael Chui, Katy George, Mehdi Miremadi
The article discusses the business performance benefits of workplace automation and artificial intelligence (AI), strategic opportunities for companies, and the future of work. It states that beyond the elimination of labour and operating costs savings, automation can transform business processes, deliver improvements in speed, quality, flexibility, and customer service. The authors offer advice to senior executives on developing an action plan for integrating automation into the workplace.
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What does automation mean for the G&A and back office?
- Article
- 01 Apr 2017
- Alexander Edilich | Allison Watson | Rob Whiteman
The article discusses how general and administrative (G&A) functions within a company are impacted by increasing automation. It looks at how incorporating technologies, redeploying employees and reimagining processes, companies can increase performance and reduce costs. Changes to organizational structure and job responsibilities due to automation are also discussed.
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Free up cash
- Article
- 01 Sep 2015
- Renita Wolf
Renita Wolf covers best practices to help your company manage working capital effectively.
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Tail risk hedging: State of the market
- Article
- 01 Sep 2015
- Gladys Chow, Jerry A Miccolis
The authors discuss managing cost-effective "tail risk hedges" that attempt to mitigate the impact of rare but potentially catastrophic equity market downturns.
Exclusive
Financial applications in the cloud are multiplying
- Article
- 21 Jul 2015
- Anne Morris
Reports on the growing interest in cloud-based financial applications in Europe as chief financial officers recognise the benefits the applications can bring in terms of reduced costs and improved efficiency.
Exclusive
Hanging on the phone
- Article
- 01 May 2015
- Richard Crump
The acquisition of EE will add a new pillar to BT’s triple-play strategy. Chief financial officer Tony Chanmugam explains how cost transformation enabled the telecoms giant's current direction.
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