Driving Value Using ActivityBased Budgeting,Used

A practical guide to the ABCs of ABBThis unique resource takes an indepth look at creating valuethrough activitybased budgeting (ABB). As most organizations aredissatisfied with some aspects of their performance, ABB has becomean increasingly popular process for which many companies areabandoning traditional methods that no longer meet their demands.Emphasizing the importance of budgeting by activities and featuresrather than by cost elements, Driving Value Using ActivityBasedBudgeting offers a complete overview of feature costing, atechnique used in conjunction with ABB, as well as the underlyingprinciples of ABB, including linking strategy to activities,forecasting revenue, capacity management, and gap analysis. Withnumerous examples and case studies, it shows how to usestateoftheart tools for achieving strategic goals, such ascustomer survey, core competency analysis, benchmarking, house ofactivities, reverse engineering to cascade strategy so everyone canact to create value for the organization.In today's highly pressurized business environment, creating valueis the number one priority for organizations. The key to achievingthis is having a budget and accounting system that supportslongterm goals. More and more organizations are now turning toactivitybased budgeting (ABB), an innovative approach that canhelp organizations become more competitive by linking the budgetingprocess to organization strategy. Explaining the importance ofbudgeting by activities rather than by cost elements, thisgroundbreaking resourcethe first book of its kindis a practicalhowto that covers the essentials of Driving Value UsingActivityBased Budgeting.Beginning with an overview of the fundamentals behind drivingvalue, James Brimson and John Antos examine what exactly value is,how it is created, and why traditional planning and budgeting oftenlead to the destruction of value. Following a clear outline of theproblems posed by the traditional budgeting process, the authors goon to explain that many companies have contemplated abandoning italtogether. In doing so, however, they must set performance targetsand identify actions to achieve the targets: 'Once those actionsare implemented, there is a need to monitor the execution.Therefore, to drive value creation, organizations are implementingactivitybased budgeting (ABB).' This comprehensive guide offersindepth coverage of ABB and feature costing, a technique used inconjunction with ABB. ABB creates value by translating the businessstrategy into the activities necessary to implement that strategy.Feature costing creates value by understanding sources of productand customer variation and relating this variation to expectedworkload. Along with the benefits of using ABB and feature costing,Driving Value Using ActivityBased Budgeting addresses suchessential topics as:* Translating strategy into a process and activityframeworkperforming activities and crossfunctional processesthat support strategy and assessing current performance againststrategic goals* Forecasting revenue, volume, and workloadcustomer demographicsand needs, the competition exploding a bill of activities,determining workload for special projects* Capacity managementcapacity defined, managing capacity,capacity management methodology, handling excess capacity* Getting startedcreating a business process budget, budgetreview panels, rank and select activities, cost budgetedactivitiesFilled with numerous examples and case studies, a completeglossary, and an appendix of targetsetting techniques, this ismust reading for everyone in your organization since allparticipants must continually ask themselves how they create value.