Real-Time Profit Management: Making Your Bottom Line a Sure Thing - Rilegato

ERNST & YOUNG LLP?S CENTER FOR BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION advises corporate clients of all sizes on ways to achieve significant performance improvements through rapid business change. BOB DRAGOO is National Director of Chemical Consulting at Ernst & Young Southern Management Consulting in Houston, Texas. ERNST & YOUNG is an international leader in business and financial consulting, providing accounting, tax, and other professional services to thousands of individuals as well as businesses of all sizes.

Real-Time Profit Management Right now, industry is experiencing a definitive change in management of the bottom line. It is the ability to accumulate, analyze, and measure cost vs. profit data in real time. What that means for manufacturers is that, for the first time, managers will be able to measure the profitability of each and every product they make, while it is being made. In turn, that translates into an unprecedented opportunity to take corrective action while there is still time to reverse unprofitable trends. Too often in today?s industry, cost analysis comes after the fact?whether quarterly, semi-annually, or annually. And in a time of reengineering upheaval, more and more companies are acutely aware of the need for a precise means of measuring costs as they are actually incurred ? minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, day-by-day. In a process management breakthrough, Real-Time Profit Management provides just such a revolutionary method. Developed by Ernst & Young LLP, and tested and approved by top executives at such major firms as Temple Inland, Exxon, and Shell, the state-of-the-art real-time system described in this book offers a bold new wave in process reengineering and activity-based costing. It introduces a new concept in business process management: the use of cost and profit measurements as control variables and as strategic business planning parameters. The key difference between this new concept and current systems is time. With costs measured in real time, after-the-fact "variances" between profit projections and actual bottom-line figures can be drastically reduced, if not virtually eliminated. Most importantly, the data you need is at your command in time to respond to it. Ernst & Young?s top consultant provides a step-by-step approach for designing and implementing this cutting-edge cost system in virtually any type of manufacturing operation. In addition, Real-Time Profit Management outlines both the strategic and tactical benefits to your business. You?ll have up-to-the-minute information when deciding on everything from production schedules to pricing strategies, as well as how and where to focus cost reduction programs. In short, you?ll be able to gauge the profitability of every order you produce. With the revolutionary technique presented in Real-Time Profit Management, Ernst & Young creates a new dimension in profit management.