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Books : Business & Investing : By Publisher : Harvard Business School Press : Accounting
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Companies expect managers to use financial data to allocate resources and run their departments. But many managers can't read a balance sheet, wouldn't recognize a liquidity ratio, and don't know how to calculate return on investment. Worse, they don't have any idea where the numbers come from or how reliable they really are. In Financial Intelligence, Karen Berman and Joe Knight teach the basics of finance--but with a twist. Financial reporting, they argue, is as much art as science. Because nobody can quantify everything, accountants always rely on estimates, assumptions, and judgment calls. Savvy managers need to know how those sources of possible bias can affect the financials and that sometimes the numbers can be challenged. While providing the foundation for a deep understanding of the financial side of business, the book also arms managers with practical strategies for improving their companies' performance--strategies, such as "managing the balance sheet," that are well understood by financial professionals but rarely shared with their nonfinancial colleagues. Accessible, jargon-free, and filled with entertaining stories of real companies, Financial Intelligence gives nonfinancial managers the financial knowledge and confidence for their everyday work. Karen Berman and Joe Knight are the owners of the Los Angeles-based Business Literacy Institute and have trained tens of tho
In the classroom, ABC looks like a great way to manage a company’s resources. But many executives who have tried to implement ABC on a large scale in their organizations have found the approach limiting and frustrating. Why? The employee surveys that companies used to estimate resources required for business activities proved too time-consuming, expensive, and irritating to employees.
This book shows you how to implement time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC), an easier and more powerful way to implement ABC. You can now estimate directly the resource demands imposed by each business transaction, product, or customer. The payoff? You spend less time and money obtaining and maintaining TDABC dataand more time addressing problems that TDABC reveals, such as inefficient processes, unprofitable products and customers, and excess capacity. The authors also show how to use TDABC to link strategic planning to operational budgeting, to enhance the due diligence process for mergers and acquisitions, and to support continuous improvement activities such as lean management and benchmarking.
In presenting their model, the authors define the two questions required to build TDABC:
1) How much does it cost per time unit to supply resource capacity for each business process?
2) How much resource capacity (time) is required to perform work for a company’s many transactions, products, and customers?
The book demonstrates how to develop simple, valid answers to these two questions.
Kaplan and Anderson illustrate the TDABC approach with a wealth of case studies, in diverse settings, based on actual implementations.
About 75 percent of active investors consistently deliver returns below those of passive index funds. Why? In part, it's because proven methods for valuing assets are too complex to apply-causing investors to rely on commonly used benchmarks such as current earnings and price-earnings multiples that simply don't reflect how the market prices stocks. Now, leading valuation experts Alfred Rappaport and Michael J. Mauboussin argue that the secret to beating the market stands in plain sight. Embedded in the stock price-the most accessible piece of information in the investment arena-lies all investors need to know about how the market expects a company to perform. By correctly decoding that information, say the authors, investors are on the way to anticipating changes in a company's competitive position that the current stock price doesn't reflect-and making informed buy, hold, or sell decisions before the rest of the crowd. This proven approach, expectations investing, holds the potential to change the rules and improve the odds of the stock selection game forever. The beauty of expectations investing is that it harnesses the power of the market's own tried-and-true pricing model-discounted cash flow-without requiring difficult and often dubious long-term forecasting. Highly practical, the book provides a strategic framework and corresponding tools for using price-implied expectations (PIE
Two of the most innovative thinkers in the field present a work that represents the single best resource for understanding and implementing activity-based cost management. Kaplan and Cooper reveal that most companies don't know how to measure accurately, influence, or understand the fundamental cost drivers in their businesses. They then provide a detailed and comprehensive blueprint that will enable managers to make better decisions and to promote organizational learning and improvement. "Cost and Effect" takes the management, finance, and accounting fields to an entirely new level, as the authors demonstrate how the principles of activity-based costing and other advanced cost management techniques, such as target and kaizen costing, can drive business performance. Using lively examples from a variety of leading companies worldwide - including Siemens, Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, the Swedish wire manufacturer Kanthal, Kirin Beer, and Procter & Gamble - they show how to create integrated, knowledge-based systems that provide meaningful information on current and past performance.The innovation systems described in "Cost and Effect" will help you: determine where improvements in quality, efficiency, and productivity will have the highest payoffs; assist front-line employees in their learning and improvement activities; make better product mix and capital investment decisions; negotiate more ef
When the economy was booming and dot-coms were flying high, venture capitalists were admired as impresarios of innovation. Then the market tanked, start-ups fizzled, and those same deal-makers were rebuked as predators out for a quick score. So which portrayal is accurate? Where is this much-hyped industry heading? And what will it mean for the future of innovation in the global economy? In this definitive book, industry experts Paul Gompers and Josh Lerner provide the first cool-headed explanation of the venture capital industry and the role it plays in our economy. They underscore that, regardless of the economic conditions, innovation is incredibly difficult to finance, take to market, and translate into value. While venture capital has evolved to address these problems - the industry has fueled innovation, economic growth, and wealth creation for decades - features of the venture industry have left it vulnerable to boom-and-bust cycles.In the near future, say the authors, the industry must transform dramatically, with important implications for industry players and the entrepreneurs and organizations they serve. Drawing from compelling research and industry "war stories," Gompers and Lerner present a series of practical frameworks for understanding the relationships among venture capital, innovation, and entrepreneurial success. They demystify how the venture capital world operates,
Effective business writing rests on a foundation of basic principles. Master them, and you'll know how to handle the many different writing tasks that come your way. This book will help you organize and edit your message for maximum impact.
The growth of derivative markets during the past decade has been nothing short of astounding and so, of late, has been the misunderstanding of their use. This book is the definitive resource on derivatives. It is the first to explain all four major classes of derivative instruments - options, futures, interest rate swaps, and mortgage securities - in terms of their market structure, applications, and pricing, with a focus on the valuation methods used most commonly by professional market participants. Unlike most treatments of derivatives, this book offers detailed explanations of the institutional procedure and market practice for each class of derivative as well as the pricing and hedging of mortgage-backed securities and the central role of prepayment in both activities. It also covers a wide variety of topics such as the structuring of CMOs, PACs, and TACs; smile option pricing; and pricing and hedging of long-dated swaps.
"Relevance Lost" is an overview of the evolution of management accounting in American business, from textile mills in the 1880s and the giant railroad, steel, and retail corporations, to today's environment of global competition and computer-automated manufacturers. The book shows that modern corporations must work toward designing new management accounting systems that will assist managers more fully in their long-term planning. It is the winner of the American Accounting Association's Deloitte Haskins and Sells/Wildman Award Medal. It is also available in hardcover.
By 2010, baby boomers will pass ten trillion dollars to their children. This unprecedented transfer of wealth will boost the need for executors and trustees, many of whom will not know how to manage and invest the assets in their care as required by the New Prudent Investor Rule. "Investing and Managing Trusts Under the New Prudent Investor Rule" explains this demanding new rule in terms of finance and investing so that professionals and nonprofessionals alike can optimize their clients' wealth while protecting themselves from liability. This book is a must-have for all trustees, their advisors, and anyone called to serve as a fiduciary.John Train, the author of several bestselling financial guides, applies his dry wit to decipher the New Prudent Investor Rule with legal expert Thomas Melfe. The only straightforward resource to link investment insights with legal ramifications, this comprehensive book will guide investors and trustees as they seek to advise their clients knowledgeably and responsibly. Complete with sample forms, management guidelines, and checklists, this reference is a must-read for all trustees, both individual and corporate, as well as lawyers, estate planners, and investment advisors.
Enables finance practitioners to compete in and understand the volatile new environment in the world of finance, and helps managers more readily anticipate and discuss the threats and opportunities ahead in modern financial markets.
"Transforming the Bottom Line" shows how to achieve organizational transformation by cutting the workload not the work force, developing a horizontal team-based organization, aligning performance measures with strategy, and more. "This book is, in its quiet but authoritative way, revolutionary".
Just-in-time manufacturing and distribution processes, computer-aided design, and flexible manufacturing systems are now commonplace in the modern workplace, but antiquated accounting systems are unable to monitor accurately their operations, making them a liability to today's managers. In twelve essays, leading academics describe how companies are using operation and accounting measures to win the battle for manufacturing excellence. Issues discussed include measuring organizational improvement, facilitating organizational learning, motivating product design improvements, and evaluating production planning.
"When Lean Enterprises Collide" presents a new theory of competition for manufacturers racing to create the most innovative product at the lowest prices. The author shows that the key to success in this environment is the integrative management of cost, quality, and functionality. Robin Cooper describes eight innovative and aggressive cost management techniques, including target costing and value engineering.
Set firmly within the larger context of American business history, "Accounting for Success" traces the evolution of the century-old, distinguished accounting firm of Price Waterhouse (PW). Allen and McDermott divide PW's history into three distinct periods. The first (1890 to the mid-1920s) covers the establishment of the American outpost of a British parent and the Americanization of its practice. The second (the next 40 years) highlights PW's rise to unrivaled professional leadership and the important role played by the audit. The third (the 1970s on) focuses on PW's response to the challenges brought about by the globalization of the economy, heightened competition among firms, and the growth of nonaudit services. The authors also address six central themes that recur throughout PW's history: the importance of the partner; the significant role played by the law in shaping the accounting profession's rights and responsibilities; the changing nature of accounting services; the continuously evolving and complex business environment; the highly visible role played by PW's leadership; and PW's worldwide approach to its business.
Leading financial scholars present essays examining the performance of the basic financial functions underlying global financial systems: payments, lending and investing, pooling funds, allocating risk, providing information, and dealing with incentive issues - with particular emphasis on how their performance is changing and implications for the future.
As organizations become more complex and more decentralized, the demand for relevant management accounting information increases. Accounting and Management explores the problems faced by companies as they attempt to modernize their management accounting systems. The book consists of thirteen essays, by leading scholars, on the actual needs and applications of accounting information in modern businesses. It examines how companies such as Weyerhaeuser, Johnson and Johnson, and Hewlett-Packard have designed new control systems and provided new directions for measuring product costs and managerial performance.
Informally gathered information that's raw and immediate has a profound effect on what managers do. Understanding how managers actually obtain and use the information they need can help organizations improve their accounting and information systems. The authors of this text talked to managers in production, marketing and other functional areas to discover what information they need and how to obtain it. Their findings indicate that managers develop and rely upon their own information systems, which do not involve elaborate technology, such as direct observation, relationships and frequent contacts both within and outside of their firms. Recognizing that the challenge to accounting and management information specialists is to incorporate within their systems more of the data that effective managers actually use, the authors make specific recommendations about how to convey relevant and timely information to managers.
On "Wall Street", the pressure to perform and the ethical dilemmas that accompany it did not fade away with the insider trading scandals of the 1980s. As headlines in recent years attest, criminal proceedings, regulatory complaints, and customer litigation continue to mar the reputation of the banking and securities industries. This book is a forceful call to action for "Wall Street" leaders to strengthen and protect their shareholders' value by instituting and maintaining much higher professional standards. The authors - with their dozens of years as insiders on "Wall Street" - cast a revealing eye on corporate and individual conduct in financial institutions and markets. They identify the major issues of professional conduct confronting the banking and securities industries today - including misrepresentation, market rigging, insider trading, money laundering, whistleblowing, and conflicts of interests - as they recount the lessons of scandals and rogue behavior that have rocked even the most venerable firms on the Street. Smith and Walter argue that it is not enough for firms to rely on surveillance and compliance efforts to prevent their people from stepping over the line of legal and appropriate conduct; reputations in the finance world are too important. Connecting professional conduct to shareholder value, the authors call for immediate action. The industry, they contend, needs t
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