Customer Reviews

Designing Strategic Cost Systems: How to Unleash the Power of Cost Information

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This book is outstanding because it describes the reality that many organizations are facing with their cost systems and provides the tools necessary to overcome them. The information is presented in a way that is simple, easy to understand and actionable by the reader. It also provides access to a supporting website where simulations, models, exercises, and key terms can be used by readers to adapt the concepts presented to their particular organizations.

This book is a must for those business professionals that are involved in the planning, design, or re-design of their organization's cost system. It provides a step-by-step approach from the detection of an obsolete cost system to the performance measurement after the system is implemented. It also describes the common errors that should be avoided in order to have a successful system implementation.

As highlighted by the author: "A cost system should not be focused on analyzing the past, but in making the critical link among operational measures, resource utilization and cost in order to impact the future". Without a doubt this book will significantly contribute to the knowledge base and expertise of any organization that uses it as a reference to evaluate the effectiveness of their cost system as a decision-making tool.

"I am an undergraduate accounting professor, and I recommend this book as a complement to your cost accounting text book. It is my experience that most undergraduate students lack working experience that would help them link the "concepts" in the text books with the "real world." I found that it is very difficult for students to visualize the following: how costs flow through a service or manufacturing company; how those costs are captured in a company¹s cost accounting systems; and what are the sources of the data, where do the numbers used in the calculations of the costs of products or services come from? This book helps them to "see" the flow of the data. Chapter 5, How to Calculate Costs, wraps up the concepts of direct material, direct labor and overhead, and enables the students to become aware of how costs are calculated in a simple and systematic way. Even though this book is easy to read and to understand, I recommend it for students beyond their second year of college. It is written in a practical way, and, while I was reading it, I felt that I was there working in the company.

I think that this book is a necessary tool in cost accounting

Rather than recommend a 'one size fits all' costing solution, Designing Strategic Cost Systems provides tools for evaluating the costing needs of the organization and helps the user(s) select and design a system in light of the resources it has available for implementation and maintenance of the system. Additionally, the book provides strategies aimed not only at successful system implementation, but at obtaining the cost data that will enable the organization to make sound decisions to increase profitability and ensure long-term growth.