For many businesses, Cost Reduction has been a priority for some time. As the Recession deepens and the Credit Crunch bites, however, the urgency has intensified. In a crisis, companies may need to cut many costs to restore their corporate health. Unfortunately, cost cutting is sometimes undertaken carelessly, and may cut a corporate artery; or is performed so persistently that it can lead to a corporate 'death by a thousand cuts'. At other times, cost cutting occurs randomly, meaning that the savings made are only temporary and that the costs re-appear. Cost reduction is often omitted from management books, or is dealt with in a fragmented, incomplete way. Written by a chartered accountant and an engineer, this new book takes a holistic approach to the subject, and is an original practitioners' guide on how to reduce costs in a way which does not ultimately destroy the business. This involves integrating the experience of leading practitioners with the available strategic models and theories.Strategic Cost Reduction is aimed at any person who is in a position to influence the strategy of the business, irrespective of its size, including directors, business unit managers and owner-managers, together with their advisors, such as chartered accountants. While it is written from an Irish perspective, many of the examples given are from multinationals operating in a global context, and so the book has wider relevance. While some success may result from focussing on the more obvious and immediate cost reduction targets, radical cost reduction is unlikely to be achieved by a draconian policy of 'slash and burn.' The ground-breaking strategic perspective described in this book will be far more productive. By careful planning and skilful implementation, it should be possible for companies to avoid the pitfalls and achieve lasting success. Outline of the Book Strategic Cost Reduction is in four parts. Part 1 deals with budgeting and other traditional approaches to cost reduction, including the various functional departments, to assess the effectiveness of existing cost reduction systems.It continues with the measurement of the problem, the setting of cost reduction targets and how to approach an emergency. Part 2 places cost reduction in a wider framework of strategy and values, considering different types of strategies and the critical functional safeguards, which should not be overlooked. It then looks at the wider strategic drivers of cost and approaches the issue by using the value chain, rather than traditional accounting information, which may not identify the root causes of the problem. Finally it delves into the issue of economies and diseconomies of scale. Part 3 outlines the modern operational tools used to analyse and manage costs by world class companies, such as Toyota and Motorola. It discusses 'world class' and 'lean' manufacturing, six sigma and business process reengineering. This is followed by the challenges of benchmarking and outsourcing. It provides a number of case studies and offers practical tips for implementation, as well as outlining the options available. Part 4 deals with issues of implementation and monitoring. It reviews issues around the structuring and rewarding the labour force.It goes on to establish the critical links with the budgeting and costing system, the role and costs of the head office and how quality and values can be monitored through a balanced scorecard. It finishes with a summary of how to plan the journey and get started. Each concise chapter gives numerous examples and illustrations, and each one ends with a checklist of thoughts for the practising manager. The contents of the text are set out below:

Over the last two decades, cost management has been an area of dynamic change and development. This is evident in the extensive inventory of new, high-profile techniques that have emerged. With cost management now firmly established as a distinct sub-discipline within management accounting, The Routledge Companion to Cost Management is a timely reference volume covering both practical developments and research in this area. Topics covered include: Cost control issues Cost analysis and decision making Cost management systems Environmental cost management With chapters from an international team of contributors, this prestigious companion will prove an indispensible addition to any library with aspirations of keeping up-to-date with the world of accounting.

A practical approach to business transformation Fit for Growth* is a unique approach to business transformation that explicitly connects growth strategy with cost management and organization restructuring. Drawing on 70-plus years of strategy consulting experience and in-depth research, the experts at PwC’s Strategy& lay out a winning framework that helps CEOs and senior executives transform their organizations for sustainable, profitable growth. This approach gives structure to strategy while promoting lasting change. Examples from Strategy&’s hundreds of clients illustrate successful transformation on the ground, and illuminate how senior and middle managers are able to take ownership and even thrive during difficult periods of transition. Throughout the Fit for Growth process, the focus is on maintaining consistent high-value performance while enabling fundamental change. Strategy& has helped major clients around the globe achieve significant and sustained results with its research-backed approach to restructuring and cost reduction. This book provides practical guidance for leveraging that expertise to make the choices that allow companies to: Achieve growth while reducing costs Manage transformation and transition productively Create lasting competitive advantage Deliver reliable, high-value performance Sustainable success is founded on efficiency and high performance. Companies are always looking to do more with less, but their efforts often work against them in the long run. Total business transformation requires total buy-in, and it entails a series of decisions that must not be made lightly. The Fit for Growth approach provides a clear strategy and practical framework for growth-oriented change, with expert guidance on getting it right. *Fit for Growth is a registered service mark of PwC Strategy& Inc. in the United States

Cost cutting is an issue for every manager and executive at every level in every company, large or small, public or private sector. Junior managers who are proactively tight on cost are learning good habits for the future, ones that will bring them recognition and advance their climb up the organizational chart. The HR department is now staffed with tough cost managers dealing with the most difficult cost category, people. Marketing departments now focus on how to get higher returns from less spend. Cut Costs Not Corners has a coherent and structured approach to cost cutting as a permanent activity, combined with guidance on the practical steps to take and powerful international case studies. It covers strategic and tactical cost cutting options such as analysing space needs, buying technology for less, selling off redundant assets, reducing credit risk, reviewing distribution methods, sourcing new suppliers or consolidating existing ones, advertising for less, changing the route to market, travel and utility savings, minimising finance and tax costs, crisis measures - freezing recruitment, delaying pay rises, sell and lease back assets - keeping budgets rolling and using a daily cash flow model.

A Washington Post Bestseller Three Principles for Managing—and Avoiding—the Problems of Growth Why is profitable growth so hard to achieve and sustain? Most executives manage their companies as if the solution to that problem lies in the external environment: find an attractive market, formulate the right strategy, win new customers. But when Bain & Company’s Chris Zook and James Allen, authors of the bestselling Profit from the Core, researched this question, they found that when companies fail to achieve their growth targets, 90 percent of the time the root causes are internal, not external—increasing distance from the front lines, loss of accountability, proliferating processes and bureaucracy, to name only a few. What’s more, companies experience a set of predictable internal crises, at predictable stages, as they grow. Even for healthy companies, these crises, if not managed properly, stifle the ability to grow further—and can actively lead to decline. The key insight from Zook and Allen’s research is that managing these choke points requires a “founder’s mentality”—behaviors typically embodied by a bold, ambitious founder—to restore speed, focus, and connection to customers: • An insurgent’s clear mission and purpose • An unambiguous owner mindset • A relentless obsession with the front line Based on the authors’ decade-long study of companies in more than forty countries, The Founder’s Mentality demonstrates the strong relationship between these three traits in companies of all kinds—not just start-ups—and their ability to sustain performance. Through rich analysis and inspiring examples, this book shows how any leader—not only a founder—can instill and leverage a founder’s mentality throughout their organization and find lasting, profitable growth.

In Smart Pricing: How Google, Priceline and Leading Businesses Use Pricing Innovation for Profitability, Wharton professors and renowned pricing experts Jagmohan Raju and Z. John Zhang draw on examples from high tech to low tech, from consumer markets to business markets, and from U.S. to abroad, to tell the stories of how innovative pricing strategies can help companies create and capture value as well as customers. They teach the pricing principles behind those innovative ideas and practices. Smart Pricing introduces many innovative approaches to pricing, as well as the research and insights that went into their creation. Filled with illustrative examples from the business world, readers will learn about restaurants where customers set the price, how Google and other high-tech firms have used pricing to remake whole industries, how executives in China successfully start and fight price wars to conquer new markets. Smart Pricing goes well beyond familiar approaches like cost-plus, buyer-based pricing, or competition-based pricing, and puts a wide variety of pricing mechanisms at your disposal. This book helps you understand them, choose them, and use them to win.

Write a business model? Easy. Business Models For Dummies helps you write a solid business model to further define your company's goals and increase attractiveness to customers. Inside, you'll discover how to: make a value proposition; define a market segment; locate your company's position in the value chain; create a revenue generation statement; identify competitors, complementors, and other network effects; develop a competitive strategy; and much more. Shows you how to define the purpose of a business and its profitability to customers Serves as a thorough guide to business modeling techniques Helps to ensure that your business has the very best business model possible If you need to update a business model due to changes in the market or maturation of your company,Business Models For Dummies has you covered.

Introduction to Business covers the scope and sequence of most introductory business courses. The book provides detailed explanations in the context of core themes such as customer satisfaction, ethics, entrepreneurship, global business, and managing change. Introduction to Business includes hundreds of current business examples from a range of industries and geographic locations, which feature a variety of individuals. The outcome is a balanced approach to the theory and application of business concepts, with attention to the knowledge and skills necessary for student success in this course and beyond. This is an adaptation of Introduction to Business by OpenStax. You can access the textbook as pdf for free at openstax.org. Minor editorial changes were made to ensure a better ebook reading experience. Textbook content produced by OpenStax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Cost Reduction and Control Best Practices provides financial manages with no-nonsense, balanced, and practical strategies that are being targeted and used nationwide for controlling costs by thousands of companies in areas such as human resources, compensation, benefits, purchasing, outsourcing, use of consultants, taxes, and exports. These best practices are based on the trenches experience, research, proprietary databases, and consultants from the Institute of Management and Administration (IOMA) and other leading experts in their fields. * Provides best practices and techniques for controlling costs within a company * New chapters focus on outsourcing costs, downsizing, consultants' costs, and business tax costs * Provides the latest strategies companies re using to control costs