Beyond Performance Management

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EXPENSE MANAGEMENT

What is this practice and how effective is it?

Expense management focuses on overhead costs such as marketing, travel, and IT that represent a significant proportion of expenditures. Too many of these costs just increase each year with the annual “last year plus 5 percent” budget round. But some companies are looking at expense management in more innovative ways and making huge reductions. We will examine these ideas.

Alternative names and related topics: cost driver analysis; discretionary cost analysis; spend management; value-added analysis

“According to a recent McKinsey survey, 79 percent of all companies have cut costs in response to the recent economic crisis, but only 53 percent of executives think that doing so ...