Activity-based management

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Activity-based management (ABM) is a method of identifying and evaluating activities that a business performs, using activity-based costing to carry out a value chain analysis or a re-engineering initiative to improve strategic and operational decisions in an organization.

Contents

Activity-based costing

Activity-based costing establishes relationships between overhead costs and activities so that costs can be more precisely allocated to products, services, or customer segments.

Activity-based management focuses on managing activities to reduce costs and improve customer value. Kaplan and Cooper [1] divide ABM into operational and strategic:

One of the key benefits for the use of ABM is how it enables managers to understand product and customer profitability, the cost business processes and how to improve them (Alireza 2017).

Risks

A risk with ABM is that some activities have an implicit value, not necessarily reflected in a financial value added to any product. For instance, a particularly pleasant workplace can help attract and retain the best staff, but may not be identified as adding value in operational ABM. A customer who represents a loss based on committed activities, but who opens up leads in a new market, may be identified as a low value customer by a strategic ABM process.

Managers should interpret these values and use ABM as a "common, yet neutral, ground … this provides the basis for negotiation". [2] ABM can give middle managers an understanding of costs to other teams to help them make decisions that benefit the whole organization, not just their activities' bottom line.

Related Research Articles

Customer relationship management (CRM) is an approach to managing a company's interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.

Supply chain management management of the flow of goods and services, involves the movement and storage of raw materials, of work-in-process inventory, and of finished goods from point of origin to point of consumption

In commerce, supply chain management (SCM), the management of the flow of goods and services, involves the movement and storage of raw materials, of work-in-process inventory, and of finished goods from point of origin to point of consumption. Interconnected, interrelated or interlinked networks, channels and node businesses combine in the provision of products and services required by end customers in a supply chain. Supply-chain management has been defined as the "design, planning, execution, control, and monitoring of supply-chain activities with the objective of creating net value, building a competitive infrastructure, leveraging worldwide logistics, synchronizing supply with demand and measuring performance globally." SCM practice draws heavily from the areas of industrial engineering, systems engineering, operations management, logistics, procurement, information technology, and marketing and strives for an integrated approach. Marketing channels play an important role in supply-chain management. Current research in supply-chain management is concerned with topics related to sustainability and risk management, among others. Some suggest that the “people dimension” of SCM, ethical issues, internal integration, transparency/visibility, and human capital/talent management are topics that have, so far, been underrepresented on the research agenda.

Cost accounting financial term

Cost accounting is defined as "a systematic set of procedures for recording and reporting measurements of the cost of manufacturing goods and performing services in the aggregate and in detail. It includes methods for recognizing, classifying, allocating, aggregating and reporting such costs and comparing them with standard costs." (IMA) Often considered a subset of managerial accounting, its end goal is to advise the management on how to optimize business practices and processes based on cost efficiency and capability. Cost accounting provides the detailed cost information that management needs to control current operations and plan for the future.

Management accounting Field of business administration, part of the internal accounting system of a company

In management accounting or managerial accounting, managers use the provisions of accounting information in order to better inform themselves before they decide matters within their organizations, which aids their management and performance of control functions.

In the field of management, 'strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's top managers on behalf of owners, based on consideration of resources and an assessment of the internal and external environments in which the organization operates.

Product management is an organisational function within a company dealing with new product development,business justification, planning, verification, forecasting, pricing, product launch, and marketing of a product or products at all stages of the product lifecycle. Similarly, product lifecycle management (PLM) integrates people, data, processes and business systems. It provides product information for companies and their extended supply chain enterprise.

Marketing management is the organizational discipline which focuses on the practical application of marketing orientation, techniques and methods inside enterprises and organizations and on the management of a firm's marketing resources and activities.

Business performance management is a set of performance management and analytic processes that enables the management of an organization's performance to achieve one or more pre-selected goals. Gartner retired the concept of "CPM" and reclassified it as "financial planning and analysis (FP&A)," and "financial close" to reflect two concepts: increased focus on planning and the emergence of a new category of solutions supporting the management of the financial close.

Activity-based costing method of measuring economic consumption

Activity-based costing (ABC) is a costing method that identifies activities in an organization and assigns the cost of each activity to all products and services according to the actual consumption by each. This model assigns more indirect costs (overhead) into direct costs compared to conventional costing.

Target costing is an approach to determine a product's life-cycle cost which should be sufficient to develop specified functionality and quality, while ensuring its desired profit. It involves setting a target cost by subtracting a desired profit margin from a competitive market price. A target cost is the maximum amount of cost that can be incurred on a product, however, the firm can still earn the required profit margin from that product at a particular selling price. Target costing decomposes the target cost from product level to component level. Through this decomposition, target costing spreads the competitive pressure faced by the company to product's designers and suppliers. Target costing consists of cost planning in the design phase of production as well as cost control throughout the resulting product life cycle. The cardinal rule of target costing is to never exceed the target cost. However, the focus of target costing is not to minimize costs, but to achieve a desired level of cost reduction determined by the target costing process.

Supplier relationship management (SRM) is the discipline of strategically planning for, and managing, all interactions with third party organizations that supply goods and/or services to an organization in order to maximize the value of those interactions. In practice, SRM entails creating closer, more collaborative relationships with key suppliers in order to uncover and realize new value and reduce risk of failure.

ProFIT-MAP is a business methodology for improving organizational performance and managing execution. Its objective is to help organizations achieve their cost and operational targets. It does this by identifying the relevant parameters that managers can control, linking them to the business objectives, showing which changes will be effective, and creating an execution roadmap that will achieve the objectives.

Shared services center organization for sharing services between a variety of clients

A shared services center – a center for shared services in an organization – is the entity responsible for the execution and the handling of specific operational tasks, such as accounting, human resources, payroll, IT, legal, compliance, purchasing, security. The shared services center is often a spin-off of the corporate services to separate all operational types of tasks from the corporate headquarters, which has to focus on a leadership and corporate governance type of role. As shared services centers are often cost centers, they are quite cost-sensitive also in terms of their headcount, labour costs and location selection criteria.

A value proposition is a promise of value to be delivered, communicated, and acknowledged. It is also a belief from the customer about how value (benefit) will be delivered, experienced and acquired.

Account-based marketing (ABM), also known as key account marketing, is a strategic approach to business marketing based on account awareness in which an organization considers and communicates with individual prospect or customer accounts as markets of one. Account-based marketing is typically employed in enterprise level sales organizations.


E-HRM is the application of information technology for both networking and supporting at least two individual or collective actors in their shared performing of HR activities.

RCA open-source application management accounting application

RCA Open-Source Application (ROSA) is an open-source management accounting application that aims to provide decision support information to managers. Resource consumption accounting (RCA) is a principle-based approach to management accounting that combines German management accounting techniques known as Grenzplankostenrechnung (GPK) with a disciplined form of activity-based costing.

Management accounting in supply chains is part of the supply chain management concept. This necessitates planning, monitoring, management and information about logistics and manufacturing processes throughout the value chain. The goal of management accounting in supply chains is optimizing these processes. This strategy focuses on supporting management.

In commerce, global supply-chain management (GSCM) is defined as the distribution of goods and services throughout a trans-national companies' global network to maximize profit and minimize waste. Essentially, global supply chain-management is the same as supply-chain management, but it focuses on companies and organizations that are trans-national. Global supply-chain management has six main areas of concentration: logistics management, competitor orientation, customer orientation, supply-chain coordination, supply management, and operations management. These six areas of concentration can be divided into four main areas: marketing, logistics, supply management, and operations management. Successful management of a global supply chain also requires complying with various international regulations set by a variety of non-governmental organizations.

Customer Profitability Analysis is a management accounting and a credit underwriting method, allowing businesses and lenders to determine the profitability of each customer or segments of customers, by attributing profits and costs to each customer separately. CPA can be applied at the individual customer level or at the level of customer aggregates / groups.

References

  1. Kaplan, R. S., & Cooper, R. (1998). Cost and effect: Using integrated cost systems to drive profitability and performance. Boston: Harvard Business School Press
  2. Kennedy, T., & Bull, R. (2000). The great debate. Management Accounting, p. 78