Minding the Corporate Checkbook: A Manager's Guide to Executing Successful Business Investments

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With the economy finally reviving around the world, many companies will begin to make capital expenditures in new capacity, new capabilities, added hardware and software, and development of new products. Having spent the last five years spending as little money as possible, many of these companies will not be rigorous enough in checking out their choices. Professor Kursh's book is an essential resource for any company that is not very good at evaluating and managing such investments.The normal process behind making investments involves an advocate who spends a lot of time massaging the numbers so that the investment can be justified . . . and answering an occasional question about why the investment is or is not a good idea. Much more needs to be done. Anyone who reads and applies Professor Kursh's book can expect to avoid bad investments, spend less on good ones, and get the results they want faster.The book describes a process that begins with a preliminary analysis to see if it's even worth spending time on the opportunity, then proceeds through an assessment of the business impact of making the decision to go forward, examines risks and how to handle them, looks carefully into what must be done for successful execution and how to be sure that will follow, and ends with a look at how to manage the implementation and its aftermath. I know of no other business book that looks at this full gamut of important issues. This book will be like gold in the hands of those who propose and run investment projects.Professor Kursh makes many references to popular business books like Good to Great and Execution as reference points for his futher development of the issues raised in those books. He then gives the reader excellent questions to ask and lots of examples of how to do the examination. At the end of each section, there is also a detailed example that is developed throughout the book as a continuity reference. The book ends with an excellent appendix that describes the various financial measures that need to be examined in order to follow this process. Even someone who is not familiar with accounting will be able to use this appendix to do a better microeconomic analysis of investments.Professor Kursh has a lot of experience in the software industry, and the book is worth its price just for his many examples of how to avoid making mistakes in adding new software . . . something that more and more companies are doing and having problems with.Not every investment will require the full analysis described in the book, but for critical applications the full monty will make sense. This book will be most valuable in the small organization where a small group of managers or entrepreneurs need to make "bet the company" investments and do not have a lot of other people to help test their thinking.I was especially pleased to see that Professor Kursh explained the many ways that a project can get off track and how to determine whether to get it back o

As someone who does not have a great deal of experience in making investment decisions, I found this book extremely valuable and easy to follow. The guidelines to implementing strategy are straight-forward and explained in a manner that I can not only grasp, but find relevant to the decisions I am making today. Great choice for someone looking to be more involved in investment decision-making.