Drive performance with dashboards
Leading companies are using dashboards to drive improvements in sales, customer service and profitability.
Companies that are actively using dashboards are able to gain visibility into the metrics that are driving their business. As a result, these firms are achieving drastically higher performance than their peers.
These are among the key findings of a new report from Aberdeen Group that shows that from the executive management team down to the line-level business managers and front-line employees, employees at all levels and functions are deriving value from the business visibility that dashboard tools provide.
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Companies that are actively using dashboards are able to gain visibility into the metrics that are driving their business. As a result, these firms are achieving drastically higher performance than their peers.
These are among the key findings of a new report from Aberdeen Group that shows that from the executive management team down to the line-level business managers and front-line employees, employees at all levels and functions are deriving value from the business visibility that dashboard tools provide.
read more >>
Pricing on purpose
Business is defined by the value it creates for its customers. Your price speaks volumes about your value proposition, more so than any other component of your marketing. Yet many firms still do not price on value.
Business is defined by the value it creates for its customers. Your price speaks volumes about your value proposition, more so than any other component of your firm’s marketing. The business world pricing revolution began in the 1980s, when many of the Fortune 500 companies began to employ professional pricers, and organizations such as the Professional Pricing Society were founded to assist companies in achieving excellence in pricing for value.
Value is in the eye of the beholder. For any transaction to take place, both the buyer and the seller must profit from the exchange and receive more value—in their subjective perception—than what they are giving up. Yet many services firms are still defined by “hourly rates.” Their profession has taken its collective intelligence, experience, judgment, education, wisdom, knowledge, and intellectual capital and commoditized them into a one-dimensional hourly rate.
Today, thousands of firms price their services according to the external value created—as perceived and determined by the client—rather than internal costs incurred in generating those services. This article illustrates that pricing by the hour is the wrong way to measure the value created for the client.
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Business is defined by the value it creates for its customers. Your price speaks volumes about your value proposition, more so than any other component of your firm’s marketing. The business world pricing revolution began in the 1980s, when many of the Fortune 500 companies began to employ professional pricers, and organizations such as the Professional Pricing Society were founded to assist companies in achieving excellence in pricing for value.
Value is in the eye of the beholder. For any transaction to take place, both the buyer and the seller must profit from the exchange and receive more value—in their subjective perception—than what they are giving up. Yet many services firms are still defined by “hourly rates.” Their profession has taken its collective intelligence, experience, judgment, education, wisdom, knowledge, and intellectual capital and commoditized them into a one-dimensional hourly rate.
Today, thousands of firms price their services according to the external value created—as perceived and determined by the client—rather than internal costs incurred in generating those services. This article illustrates that pricing by the hour is the wrong way to measure the value created for the client.
read more >>
Plan, Budget and Forecast in uncertain times
Fast-changing business conditions call for agile planning, budgeting and forecasting. Learn why best-in-class companies are better at forecasting, collaborating, reducing budget cycle times and analyzing and reporting on planning, budgeting and forecast data.
Planning, budgeting, and forecasting lay the foundation for any effective business plan. Economic uncertainty makes it difficult to set clear goals and objectives and sustain a financial plan which supports them. Organizations must become more agile with their planning, budgeting and forecasting capabilities -- now more critical than ever for success and survival during volatile economic times. The business climate is characterized by change and compounded by global influences spawning unforeseen stresses and squeezed margins.
In a 2008 Financial Planning and Budgeting survey of more than 150 companies, Aberdeen Group found subtle shifts in pressures impacting the planning, budgeting and forecasting process. While speed, agility and accuracy dominated the horizon last year, Aberdeen expects the need to improve agility to adapt to changing conditions to be the number-one pressure facing companies in 2009.
This article presents an executive summary of a January 2009 update entitled “Financial Planning, Budgeting and Forecasting: Managing in Uncertain Times”, explaining what best-in-class companies are doing to plan, budget and forecasting with improved agility and accuracy.
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Planning, budgeting, and forecasting lay the foundation for any effective business plan. Economic uncertainty makes it difficult to set clear goals and objectives and sustain a financial plan which supports them. Organizations must become more agile with their planning, budgeting and forecasting capabilities -- now more critical than ever for success and survival during volatile economic times. The business climate is characterized by change and compounded by global influences spawning unforeseen stresses and squeezed margins.
In a 2008 Financial Planning and Budgeting survey of more than 150 companies, Aberdeen Group found subtle shifts in pressures impacting the planning, budgeting and forecasting process. While speed, agility and accuracy dominated the horizon last year, Aberdeen expects the need to improve agility to adapt to changing conditions to be the number-one pressure facing companies in 2009.
This article presents an executive summary of a January 2009 update entitled “Financial Planning, Budgeting and Forecasting: Managing in Uncertain Times”, explaining what best-in-class companies are doing to plan, budget and forecasting with improved agility and accuracy.
read more >>
Power to the procurement people
To get the most out of the purchasing function, top-performing companies redefine its role and ensure that its goals align with corporate strategy.
McKinsey’s global survey of chief procurement officers (CPOs) suggests that the role of purchasing at many companies hasn’t evolved much beyond the function’s narrow, transactional roots as a buyer of materials, components, and services. But some purchasing and supply-management organizations are attracting the attention of CEOs by taking the function to the next level. By integrating their activities more closely with those of their internal customers, some purchasing units have gained sustainable cost reductions in nontraditional areas (marketing or health benefits, for example) where previous optimization efforts have fizzled. Others go further still, using their insights to challenge and enhance.
At the best purchasing departments, a high percentage of employees are professionals who take a strategic view of the operation, recent research finds. As for results, the best departments have operations costs that are 20 percent lower than typical companies, and they operate with little more than half the staff. And for every $1 million spent on purchasing operations, these top-notch outfits generate $6.3 million in savings; average companies realized savings totaling only $2.7 million.
Top purchasing departments are more involved in such strategic activities as enterprise-level planning, budgeting, new-product development, and the use of cross-functional teams for purchasing activities. Rather than focusing only on purchase price, top departments take a big-picture view and devote time enough to grasp the meaning of their policies for suppliers, customers, and shareholders.
In addition to hiring and retaining highly skilled employees, the best purchasing departments drive value by aligning their goals with those of the company as a whole — financial goals, especially.
read more >>
McKinsey’s global survey of chief procurement officers (CPOs) suggests that the role of purchasing at many companies hasn’t evolved much beyond the function’s narrow, transactional roots as a buyer of materials, components, and services. But some purchasing and supply-management organizations are attracting the attention of CEOs by taking the function to the next level. By integrating their activities more closely with those of their internal customers, some purchasing units have gained sustainable cost reductions in nontraditional areas (marketing or health benefits, for example) where previous optimization efforts have fizzled. Others go further still, using their insights to challenge and enhance.
At the best purchasing departments, a high percentage of employees are professionals who take a strategic view of the operation, recent research finds. As for results, the best departments have operations costs that are 20 percent lower than typical companies, and they operate with little more than half the staff. And for every $1 million spent on purchasing operations, these top-notch outfits generate $6.3 million in savings; average companies realized savings totaling only $2.7 million.
Top purchasing departments are more involved in such strategic activities as enterprise-level planning, budgeting, new-product development, and the use of cross-functional teams for purchasing activities. Rather than focusing only on purchase price, top departments take a big-picture view and devote time enough to grasp the meaning of their policies for suppliers, customers, and shareholders.
In addition to hiring and retaining highly skilled employees, the best purchasing departments drive value by aligning their goals with those of the company as a whole — financial goals, especially.
read more >>
