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Financial Management
book

Financial Management

by Jack Alexander
January 2024
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
720 pages
17h 20m
English
Wiley
Content preview from Financial Management

18Benchmarking Performance

BENCHMARKING TO EVALUATE PERFORMANCE

Two types of benchmarking can be useful in evaluating performance and identifying improvement opportunities:

  1. Process or functional benchmarks.
  2. Overall performance.

Process or Functional Benchmarks

For many years consultants and trade organizations have collected cost and performance data on various business processes or functions. Examples include:

  • Finance costs as a percentage of sales.
  • Cost of processing an invoice.
  • Length of time to close books.
  • Duration of budget or plan cycle.
  • Product development—time to market.
  • Revenue process management.
  • Supply chain management.
  • Information technology.

For example, these studies allow you to compare the cost of finance and key processes in your organization to the costs of companies included in the study. Most surveys emphasize the importance of using consistent definitions since the scope of finance functions may vary from organization to organization. These surveys are very useful in identifying performance gaps and improvement opportunities, especially in transaction ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781394228362Purchase Link