The Ernst & Young Guide to Total Cost Management

"The Ernst & Young Guide to Total Cost Management" is a user friendly book that is understandable to all managers, whether or not they have a financial background. Any manager with responsibility for some significant cost area needs to understand the costs of the various activities and processes in their sections, departments or divisions. This will enable them to make informed and effective decisions pertaining to their areas of responsibility. These include whether or not to outsource, pricing decisions, investment and general control and monitoring of their business. The current highly competitive operating environment for most businesses require that organisations cut all unnecessary costs and to simplify the business model. All this requires a clear understanding of the costs and how to achieve efficiencies. This is a well written book in simple and easy to follow manner, making it understandable to a wide readership.

The book is well written, and touches on a topic that is relevant even today - over a decade later than the book's first publishing. It would serve the reader well to get some understanding of how products and services are costed in the traditional way - that can help build understanding which comes in handy when you read how Activity Based Costing is different - which is what the book proposes. It is hard to imagine how much projects / proposals / businesses must have suffered due to archiac accounting methods - the authors have definitely made a good attempt to open the reader's eyes. Certain portions contained in the book were originally thought of by others (Cost of Quality) and I did not see due credit being given for the same. Read, understand, and apply...who knows your company may be on life support, and this may be the solution...

This book serves as an outstanding guide for adding value to an organizatoin through total cost management and should definitely be on the bookshelf of every CFO and Controller. I've referred to this book several times since I purchased it several years ago.