A practical guide to the ABCs of ABB

This unique resource takes an in-depth look at creating valuethrough activity-based budgeting (ABB). As most organizations aredissatisfied with some aspects of their performance, ABB has becomean increasingly popular process for which many companies areabandoning traditional methods that no longer meet their demands.Emphasizing the importance of budgeting by activities and featuresrather than by cost elements, Driving Value Using Activity-BasedBudgeting offers a complete overview of feature costing, atechnique used in conjunction with ABB, as well as the underlyingprinciples of ABB, including linking strategy to activities, forecasting revenue, capacity management, and gap analysis. Withnumerous examples and case studies, it shows how to usestate-of-the-art tools for achieving strategic goals, such ascustomer survey, core competency analysis, benchmarking, house ofactivities, reverse engineering to cascade strategy so everyone canact to create value for the organization.

In today's highly pressurized business environment, creating valueis the number one priority for organizations. The key to achievingthis is having a budget and accounting system that supportslong-term goals. More and more organizations are now turning toactivity-based budgeting (ABB), an innovative approach that canhelp organizations become more competitive by linking the budgetingprocess to organization strategy. Explaining the importance ofbudgeting by activities rather than by cost elements, thisgroundbreaking resource--the first book of its kind--is a practicalhow-to that covers the essentials of Driving Value UsingActivity-Based Budgeting.

Beginning with an overview of the fundamentals behind drivingvalue, James Brimson and John Antos examine what exactly value is, how it is created, and why traditional planning and budgeting oftenlead to the destruction of value. Following a clear outline of theproblems posed by the traditional budgeting process, the authors goon to explain that many companies have contemplated abandoning italtogether. In doing so, however, they must set performance targetsand identify actions to achieve the targets: "Once those actionsare implemented, there is a need to monitor the execution.Therefore, to drive value creation, organizations are implementingactivity-based budgeting (ABB)." This comprehensive guide offersin-depth coverage of ABB and feature costing, a technique used inconjunction with ABB. ABB creates value by translating the businessstrategy into the activities necessary to implement that strategy.Feature costing creates value by understanding sources of productand customer variation and relating this variation to expectedworkload. Along with the benefits of using ABB and feature costing, Driving Value Using Activity-Based Budgeting addresses suchessential topics as:
* Translating strategy into a process and activityframework--performing activities and cross-functional processesthat support strategy and assessing current performance againststrategic goals
* Forecasting revenue, volume, and workload--customer demographicsand needs, the competition exploding a bill of activities, determining workload for special projects
* Capacity management--capacity defined, managing capacity, capacity management methodology, handling excess capacity
* Getting started--creating a business process budget, budgetreview panels, rank and select activities, cost budgetedactivities

Filled with numerous examples and case studies, a completeglossary, and an appendix of target-setting techniques, this ismust reading for everyone in your organization since allparticipants must continually ask themselves how they create value.
About the Author: JAMES A. BRIMSON is President of Activity-BasedManagement-International, Inc., an international confederation ofconsulting, training, and software companies that specialize inactivity-based management. He is the author of Activity Accounting: An Activity-Based Costing Approach (Wiley), coauthor ofActivity-Based Management for Service Industries, GovernmentEntities, and Nonprofit Organizations (Wiley), and coeditor of CostManagement for Today's Advanced Manufacturing: The CAM-I ConceptualDesign.

JOHN ANTOS is President of Value Creation Group, Inc., aninternational organization specializing in activity-basedmanagement and activity-based budgeting. He teaches activity-basedmanagement, activity-based budgeting, economic value added, balanced scorecard, performance measures, and process management.He is the coauthor of Activity-Based Management for ServiceIndustries, Government Entities, and Nonprofit Organizations(Wiley).