Available Management Accounting Guidelines

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Available Management Accounting Guidelines (MAGs)




*Impacting Future Value: How to Manage your Intellectual Capital* Success and future value creation in today’s economy depend on the ownership and appropriate management of intellectual capital. Superior performance is no longer driven by traditional physical assets, but instead primarily by intellectual capital. That term includes knowledge, skills, brands, corporate reputation, relationships, information and data, as well as processes, patents, trust, or an innovative organizational culture. The importance of intellectual capital as an enabler of future performance is now generally accepted among executives throughout the world. Most organizations, however, still lack practical skills, tools, and techniques to identify, measure, and manage this vital performance driver. This management accounting guideline (MAG) offers practical and easy-to-apply tools and techniques to equip managers and accountants with the necessary skills to successfully manage the intellectual capital of their organizations. View Executive Summary >> View Archived Infocast >> Download Full Text (Members Only) *Managing Opportunities and Risks* Risk-taking, the engine driving business, is vital to companies seeking market success. Risks are, however, often thought of only as hazards, despite the fact that they can present significant opportunities and possibilities for organizational innovation and new competitive advantage leading to short- and long-term profitability. In fact, risk and opportunity are a duality—like two sides to the same coin. By focusing on the downside of risk companies can sometimes forego opportunities that might initially appear too risky, but which have never been formally analyzed. View Executive Summary >> View Archived Infocast Download Full Text (Members Only) >> Purchase Downloadable Copy *Managing Customer Value* The focus on customer relationship management has become central to all organizations. Companies have increasingly recognized the significant costs related to the loss of customers and are trying to better understand, measure, manage, and improve customer retention. Further, these organizations are examining how to measure and improve long term customer lifetime value. This Management Accounting Guideline examines new tools and techniques for measuring and managing customer profitability, retention, and lifetime value. View Executive Summary >> View Archived Infocast Download Full Text (Members Only) *Outsourcing the Finance and Accounting Functions* Throughout the world, the use of finance and accounting outsourcing (FAO) by small, medium and large enterprises is rising.The number of large FAO contracts (those that cover five or more processes and/or have a contract value of at least $50 million) increased by 45 percent from 2005 to 2007. Most CFOs and other finance and accounting managers can count on having to weigh the pros and cons of outsourcing; many will play key roles in managing outsourcing relationships with external providers. This management accounting guideline (MAG) provides guidance on managing FAO opportunities, challenges, and risks. This guidance – which targets CFOs, finance and accounting managers, and others responsible for selecting, implementing and managing FAO relationships – centers on what might be done at each stage of the FAO lifecycle to create and manage a successful FAO initiative. View Executive Summary >> View Archived Infocast Download Full Text (Members Only) *Evaluating the Effectiveness of Internet Marketing Initiatives* Though there have been many calls by corporate and academic leaders for the measurement of payoffs of Internet marketing, there has been little developed that provides managers with the guidance they need to evaluate Internet marketing success. It is no longer acceptable to make these expenditures without the rigorous analysis necessary to prove success and to ignore the analysis in formal ROI calculations. It is also unacceptable to continue to approve these expenditures without formal evaluations of past successes and failures. This guideline provides both measures and a management control framework for implementation of Internet marketing initiatives and develops tools and techniques that are appropriate for measuring the financial returns. It also provides tools and techniques for improved planning and control (evaluation) of Internet marketing expenditures. View Executive Summary >> View Archived Infocast Download Full Text (Members Only) >> Purchase Downloadable Copy *Using Strategy Maps to Drive Performance* Strategy mapping has revolutionized the way that strategy has been formulated and executed. A natural evolution that builds on the success of the Balanced Scorecard, Strategy Mapping has been the subject of recent books, articles and discussions. This discourse has greatly raised practitioner awareness and interest in the value of integrated strategic scorecard systems by focusing on what these tools are, why companies adopt them and by providing high level implementation frameworks and examples from practice. However, when it comes to actual implementation detail, practitioners soon find there is currently no detailed document, or set of guidelines, that illustrate how to take advantage of the power of Strategy Mapping in a straightforward, easy-to-understand format. This MAG fills that gap by providing a set of guidelines that describe how to implement Strategy Mapping in a practical, step-by-step format. View Executive Summary >> View Archived Infocast Download Full Text (Members Only) >> Purchase Downloadable Copy *Integrating Social and Political Risk into Business Decision Making* The corporate risk landscape has shifted significantly in recent years with risks that are both larger and more varied than ever previously thought. They are far broader and have been seen in companies and countries that thought they were shielded. With globalization increasing rapidly, a common challenge is how to integrate the social and political risks of government instability, political corruption, business corruption, child labor practices, anti-corporate sentiment, terrorism, environmental pollution, and others into management decisions. To date, an adequate methodology for integrating these issues into a risk management process has been largely absent. View Executive Summary >> Download Full Text (Members Only) >> View Archived Infocast >> Purchase Downloadable Copy *The Reporting of Organizational Risks for Internal and External Decision Making* The regulatory pressures for improved risk assessment and reporting on internal control have increased around the world. The reason - corporate accounting failures, frauds, internal control breaches, and governance failures have been seen in companies and countries that thought they were immune to these events. In response, the requirements of the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 in the U.S. and similar new regulations in other countries are among the many prominent forces driving improved corporate governance and transparency. Risks that organizations face are larger and more varied, and have more global effect. These risks relate not only to reporting and compliance; they also include strategic and operations risks. View Executive Summary >> Download Full Text (Members Only) >> View Archived Infocast >> Purchase Downloadable Copy *Business Continuity Management* In the 21st century, organizations that fail to develop and implement effective disaster-management plans will be defined by their ineffective responses to disasters.The finance and accounting managers—along with the senior-level executives, functional and operational managers and corporate directors who read this guideline will learn how to define BCM and its essentials and processes; identify the BCM-related roles of corporate managers and directors; and work through a BCM framework for developing and maintaining effective business continuity management processes. View Executive Summary >> Download Full Text (Members Only) >> View Archived Infocast >> Purchase Downloadable Copy *Identifying, Measuring and Managing Organizational Risks* Risk is an inescapable element of competing in a market economy. Organizations must be able to evaluate many types of risk—political, social, environmental, technological, economic/competitive, and financial—and incorporate the results into decisions regarding investments and operations, as well as into the systems used to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the actions taken. View Executive Summary >> Download Full Text (Members Only) >> Purchase Downloadable Copy *Evaluating Performance in Information Technology* Though there has been significant discussion concerning the importance of evaluating the payoffs of IT investment, there has been little guidance on how to design or implement an appropriate performance evaluation system. View Executive Summary >> View archived Infocast Download Full Text (Members Only) >> Purchase Downloadable Copy *Measuring and Improving the Performance of Corporate Boards* Recently we have all read about the spectacular failures of corporate governance. New rules and regulations are being introduced that are intended to rebuild public trust, yet a question remains as to whether all this activity will result in boards that are more effective in delivering results. View Executive Summary >> Download Full Text >> Purchase Downloadable Copy *Applying the Balanced Scorecard* As business becomes more complex and competitive, traditional financial measures of performance fail to give managers all the information they need to make intelligent strategic and day-to-day decisions. A powerful new means of delivering this information is called the balanced scorecard, a mix of financial and nonfinancial indicators about customers, internal processes, organizational learning, shareholder value, quality, community relations, and so on. View Executive Summary >> Download Full Text *Developing Comprehensive Performance Indicators* Performance measurement systems have not kept pace with changing business environments. A good framework for performance indicators should reflect modern attitudes and suggest user-friendly practices. View Executive Summary >> Download Full Text *Strategic Partnering* In order to improve their chances of survival in the marketplace, companies are turning with increasing frequency to strategic alliances with their suppliers, customers and competitors. This innovative approach allows organizations to share skills and resources, develop new products and technologies and gain access to new markets. View Executive Summary >> Download Full Text *Monitoring Customer Value* Organizations must understand when, why and how customers react to products, services and price changes, and use that information to better manage their customers through value managing internal functions and processes. View Executive Summary >> Download Full Text *Customer Profitability Analysis* Companies recognize that though "exceeding customer expectations" is a worthy goal, exceeding those expectations profitably is necessary for long-term corporate viability. Thus, an understanding of corporate profitability necessarily relies on an understanding of what drives shareholder value in organizations. View Executive Summary >> Download Full Text *Implementing Target Costing* To achieve a sufficient margin over its costs, a company must manage those costs relative to the prices the market allows or the price the firm sets to achieve certain market penetration objectives. In the context of these characteristics, the practice of target costing has evolved. View Executive Summary >> Download Full Text *Implementing Activity-Based Costing* Activity-based costing (ABC) is a valuable concept that can be used to correct the shortcomings in the cost systems of the past. It is a means of creating a system that ultimately directs an organization's costs to the products and services that require those costs to be incurred. View Executive Summary >> Download Full Text *Implementing Benchmarking* Customer requirements and the ways to achieve them are constantly changing, thereby creating opportunities and challenges. By studying and emulating world-class performance in meeting these challenges, an organization can improve its odds of survival. View Executive Summary >> Download Full Text *Implementing Business Process Redesign* Efficient and effective business processes are critical to any enterprise that hopes to maintain, or improve, its competitive position. Improvement in quality, time, and costs can result in increased profit. The way an enterprise structures and manages its business processes has a great impact on these outcomes. View Executive Summary >> Download Full Text

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