Activity-based Cost Management: An Executive's Guide

As the growth of the Internet shifts power to consumers, the pressure on companies to keep prices low will continue to mount. Increasingly corporations are relying on "margin management" and supply chain management as a means of keeping prices low while raising profits. Activity-based costing and management (ABC/M) data is key to succeeding in both these critical management strategies. This book explains how executives can effectively use the information furnished by cutting-edge ABC/M systems. The author, an acknowledged expert in the field, clearly defines the ABC/M system and explains how to use the information it provides for best results. He provides a rational framework for understanding the fifteen key defining characteristics of ABC/M and arms readers with an ABC/M Readiness Assessment test along with extremely user-friendly exhibits.

Gary Cokins (Far Bingham Farms, MI) is Director of Industry Relations at ABC Technologies, the world's leading supplier of activity-based information software. He is an internationally recognized expert, speaker, and author.

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

Using ABC to manage your business, 2007-01-24

The author did a good job of coming up with a user friendly book on Activity-Based Costing (ABC). ABC is critical in alerting managers of the major and subsidiary drivers of costs. Many companies, large and small, have benefited from employing ABC techniques.

The author methodically and succinctly discusses and explains activity based-costing, a management planning tool aimed at discovering what your true costs are by essentially assigning overhead costs to products and customers. The idea is that the more you know about your costs, the better able to compete.

The author rarely speaks down to his audience. In fact, Gary Cokins is able to continually build on what is presented previously in the book without endless looping. This makes the book readable by both the expert and novice in accounting. The novice will benefit from the detailed introduction into the concept of ABC. The author then methodically explains how costs can be allocated to products and services.

This is a recommended book that helps the reader to learn and comprehend the important technique of ABC that should enable companies to eliminate hidden costs and be more efficient and competitive.



0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

A great place to start, 2006-04-11
First, the author Gary Cokins has practical experience in ABC/M that spans a significant amount of the evolution of this practice. His book, Activity-Based Cost Management strikes a solid balance between theory and application helping the reader make progress and understand why. The author also connects the topic to many important contemporary issues including the internet, software, lean and six sigma. This is a great starting point for anyone.


12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

Great starting point and continuing reference, 2002-12-20
This book is an excellent resource for learning and understanding ABC accounting. Unlike many web articles and white papers, Gary's book is a practical not academic approach from someone who has been there, done that, and has the t-shirt. It's filled with lots of explanatory diagrams which help to visualize the concepts presented and are useful when presenting on a high-level to executives under time constraints for reading. Chapter 1 clearly presents ABC basic concepts while Chapter 2 is a direct follow-on expanding the depth and breath of those basic concepts. Chapter 3 addresses the question that all senior management wants to know: Are all your trading partners worth it to you? Subsequent chapters focus on typical ABC modeling applications most relevant to organizations. Chapter 6 gives a very good cross-comparison of project/work order costing vs. ABC that is very helpful to project-centric organizations in understanding how ABC differentiates itself. Chapter 7 succinctly places ABC software in the reengineering software spectrum without getting lost in a technological morass. Chapter 9 addresses rapid prototyping for getting initial results from the methodology that can be tweaked iteratively to grow a more sophisticated ABC model. In conclusion, I highly recommend this book and look forward to Gary's "ABC Management - Making it Work" which is next on my ABC must-read list.


3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

Outstanding Executive's Guide to Understanding ABC/M, 2002-11-13
Gary does a wonderful job in explaining not only what is ABC/M but also why it is needed is today's competitive environment. I enjoyed the discussions on defining and measuring capacity as well as the cost of quality. If you're looking for a book that describes ABC/M and it's uses, this is it!


1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Activity-Based Cost Management, 2002-09-05
it is an amazing book on the subject. it provides valuable practical insights to issues faced by any practitioner of ABC/M.
Anyone who is closely related or has been involved with the implementation of ABC or wants a good understanding of ABC should definitely read this book.

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