Meet another one of MyABCM’s great customers in Latin America! Arca Continental is a company that operates in the production, distribution, and sale of beverages under the brands owned by The Coca-Cola Company, as well as the snacks brand Bokados in Mexico, Inalecsa in Ecuador and Wise and Deep River in the United States.
The corporation has more than 96 years of history and is part of the largest Coca-Cola bottlers in the world. With this, Arca Continental supplies the brand’s products to more than 125 million people in several Latin American countries.
In charge of manufacturing several brands and integrated with several other divisions, Arca Continental deals with a large and complex operation. Thus, the company needed a solution that could keep up with its production pace and aggregate information from multiple sources into a single platform.
The choice for the MyABCM solution was motivated by the system’s ability to handle a large volume of data and provide a detailed view of cost sources and profitability indexes for each brand in the company’s portfolio. Another determining factor was the smooth integration with ERP and other systems already in use at the organization, and the ability to perform multidimensional modeling and visualize how resources are actually consumed in day-to-day operations
Therefore, the investment in the system will support the decision-making process and create the basis for an assertive and profitable management.
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Meet another notable MyABCM customer today!
Corporación Maresa, an exponent in the Latin American automotive industry, relies on MyABCM solutions for its cost and profitability management.
The holding company, owner of a great reputation in Ecuador, currently owns 7 of the largest automotive brands in the country: RAM, Fiat, Jeep, Chery, Mazda, Dodge, and Dongfeng. Moreover, in its more than 42 years of history, the organization has become a reference when it comes to supporting social and environmental causes.
It goes without saying that managing a business of these dimensions is highly complex. That is why Corporación Maresa came to us with great challenges.
The organization, which recently acquired the operations of Cinascar in Ecuador and Colombia – adding those brands to its portfolio, has become one of the largest companies in the automotive market. With this expansion, the need for a solution capable of comprehensively meeting its demands grew.
Managing the distribution of so many major brands and hiring hundreds of employees in its operations, the company felt the urgency for a tool to simplify the creation and implementation of financial modeling, as well as to perform cost and profitability analysis, from the most basic to the most advanced. All this in a system that could be quickly installed and that could create a productive and intelligent workflow with other software already in use.
To improve management flexibility and efficiency, Corporación Maresa chose to implement MyABCM. The solution was also chosen for allowing integration with any corporate system and for relying on Data Transformation Studio, a tool that, in addition to creating the connection with various ERPs, ensures the transformation, grouping, and classification of the source data on a visual platform, as well as its subsequent integration with the implemented model.
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To begin, let’s briefly clarify what cost-to-serve is.
Cost-to-serve, widely referred to as CTS, is the sum of all the costs required to provide a product or service to your customer.
The fact that all costs are fully considered is what makes this analysis a high-performance strategy when looking at a customer’s profitability.
We usually associate a good customer with a customer who buys a lot from us – or with the one where we have a significant volume of services and transactions. But this only shows the one where we have had the most sales, not the one where we have made the most money, i.e. the most profitable! A customer with high turnover certainly requires a series of trade-offs and efforts that are often “expensive” to meet.
A study published in the Harvard Business Review showed that on average 20% to 30% of customers are very good from a profitability point of view – bringing between 150% and 300% of the company’s total profitability; on the other hand, between 50% and 60% are neutral (i.e., we do not make or lose money) and approximately 20% are unprofitable.
The big challenge is to understand which ones they are, and in which layer each one is located. Eliminating the clients that we lose money is not enough, as by doing this immediately other clients that are neutral and even those that make some profit start to become unprofitable – after all, our fixed costs don’t disappear, requiring us to make some adjustments in our installed capacity.
Now when we bring into the equation, in addition to the cost of serving each client, the profitability we have with each one and the time we will be serving to this client, we will certainly find situations in which that extremely profitable client will migrate to the competition in the short term; others that are extremely loss-making will continue to drain the organization’s resources. Bad scenario, isn’t it?
The question is, “what should we do?” The first thing to do is to be aware of the need to measure things. As we know, it is impossible to manage what you cannot measure – so measuring and then deciding is key!
“Firing clients”, + the end: those clients who are loss-making often help pay the fixed costs, and if there is no change in the structure of the organization, their “firing” may bring a terrible consequence, which is that clients who are neutral today may start to be unprofitable (and the very profitable ones may become not so profitable). There are companies that have already bankrupted just because of failure in this criterion, and they were excellent “producers”, with well-rounded production lines, equally good product costs, but they neglected this very important detail, which is to understand and act correctly with the costs-to-serve.
During the development phase, it is determined what the cost object is, what the cost of meeting this object will be and how it will be mapped, what the drivers for allocating the aggregate cost will be, and what IT systems will be used to calculate and maintain the analysis of its operation after the development of the customer’s profitability.
On one occasion a large national bank did a project and discovered that it had loss-making clients: What did they do? They eliminated these clients from their portfolio. The result: the clients that were neutral became unprofitable. What did they do then? They eliminated these new unprofitable clients, resulting in a huge loss with this operation. The issue of capacity/idleness must ALWAYS be taken into consideration for cost analysis!
It is also important to know that it is not by firing employees that we reduce costs – at least not indiscriminately. In fact, there are studies that show exactly the opposite: according to the US Conference Board, of the companies that tried to reduce costs, 30% actually had higher costs! Another study by Deloitte showed that 75% of the companies that laid off employees to reduce costs had to rehire others for the same positions within 1 year. And finally, McKinsey showed in a survey that only 10% of cost reduction projects are successful within 3 years of its implementation. Reducing costs is not simple, it demands effort and measurement (measure!) to make the best decisions afterwards.
Check out our content that fully explains the Activity-Based Costing system
The first step is to understand how the organization’s efforts are aimed at serving the various customers and channels; this includes information that must necessarily come from the CRM, but also from interviews with the sales and customer service areas.
Through the metrication of the main activities involved in serving these customers and channels it is possible to understand the effort spent to serve them individually and therefore make specific analyses that allow the understanding of cost and result, customer by customer, channel by channel.
For example: a very common activity of the commercial team is “Meet with Customers”. The cost of this activity is the sum of the commercial area’s efforts (salaries plus salespeople’s benefits and the whole area) including the support areas such as HR (that last month hired 2 new salespeople), the IT area (that this month gave 5 supports related to the new HR system) and also the value of the internal support systems (such as CRM itself); that said, now it’s time to allocate these costs of Meeting with clients – which are not necessarily Product and Service related costs but rather Client related costs (as a periodic maintenance and follow-up activity for these clients); this allocation should be done using the criteria “number of meetings with clients” (assuming that these meetings have an average time approximately equal to each other) or ” meeting hours” if this value varies a lot.
Of course, this allocation must be done taking into consideration the materiality of what is being allocated (that is, many times the effort in collecting and applying this information is not worth it, given the small costs of this activity compared to the other activities of the company) but in many cases it is very well worth it!
This done we have the cost of each customer only with the activity “Meet with Customers” – if we do that with all the activities of the Commercial and Customer Service areas, we will have an interesting suggestion of efforts to be analyzed and surely many surprises will appear, with activities that we never imagined would be so expensive and that would influence so much the costs of each Customer and Channel, and even others that we thought would be expensive, but that in the end turned out to be not very significant.
The set of mapped activities, on one hand their interconnections with the chart of accounts, cost centers, and areas, and on the other hand with the various Products, Services, Clients, and Channels, is called a cost model – and this modeling, if well executed with method and process, allows a vision never before seen in organization!
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Management in the education sector aims to identify and plan a set of strategies and actions with the purpose of achieving the objectives of the educational institution by using the resources available in the best possible way.
In general, the management in this sector focuses on educational methodologies and practices, using different tools, techniques, and intellectual capital to lead and guide the teams during the execution of the project. For example, the development of the stages is monitored in order to identify the necessary adjustments, ensuring the quality and fulfillment of the activities.
Based on this context, we’ve prepared this post for you to learn about the best management practices in the education sector and put them into practice. Keep reading the article to know more about this topic!
The first step in any management strategy is to start with structuring the project’s plan. Preferably, create a document, for everyone involved, containing guidance on the actions of the school year in question, such as:
The purpose is for managers to make the decision-making process easier. Keep in mind that this planning should undergo a periodic review so that the necessary adjustments and updates of the institution’s demands are carried out.
Promoting a good management in the education sector is a task that can only be carried out assertively if the institution has very well-defined goals. The determination of objectives serves as a parameter for the pedagogical teams and other employees involved, having all the reasons to improve the teaching.
Set goals related to student performance and monitor them to measure aspects such as the student dropout and retention rates and the qualification of teachers. That way, managers will have all the data needed to develop strategies aimed at achieving better results.
Clear and transparent communication between the personnel that make up the educational institution’s team of collaborators is essential for the management in the education sector.
The faculty and other professionals who are part of the daily lives of students should have full knowledge of the goals and objectives to be achieved. Furthermore, feedback exchange between the team is important, so that everyone knows which points they are getting right and which ones they need to improve on.
The use of technology in the education sector has proven to be a real ally, in and out of the classroom. This is due to the advances made by the digital transformation process.
Given the context, to invest in management technology in the education sector is to bring the benefits of automation to the school. In addition to automating manual and repetitive tasks, the teaching team is able to dedicate more time to teaching methodologies, just as managers are allowed to focus on strategic issues.
In conclusion, it is worth mentioning that, in order to optimize the management in the education sector using technology, it is very important to choose a software provider with credibility and knowledge about the area.
Do you want to know more about the MyABCM solutions for mapping costs using technology in your company? Then contact our team so that we can show you the very best in digital innovation for your business!
BPCE SC – Solutions Crédit, part of Groupe BPCE, has joined us, adding another important name to our client portfolio. The organization operates in the bank credit sector, providing solutions for around 20 financial entities of the BPCE Group.
Visit the website and learn more about the Group.
Founded in 2005, the company is a subsidiary of Groupe BPCE, which currently stands out on the European scene as the second largest banking group in France. BPCE SC, in turn, is a national platform with four offices in the French territory, located in the cities of Laval, Reims, Montpellier and Maisons-Alfort.
The Group has over 100,000 employees and 30 million customers, and is present in 40 countries. In this complex scenario, the BPCE SC institution manages, on behalf of its members, from credit assistance and management services to release of funds, borrower’s insurance and solutions for over-indebtedness. As a result, they routinely handle an extensive volume of information, which must be carefully processed.
The company, which until recently carried out its cost control processes using Excel spreadsheets, needed a platform that offered more agility and precision for the management of resources.
In order to have more control over its management, BPCE SC chose the MyABCM solution. The platform, which is already used by three other entities of the group (BPCE IT, Natixis, Natixis Assurance), offers the flexibility needed to allocate the different cost centers and analyze the profitability of each service provided.
The project will be carried out by A2 Consulting together with MyABCM France, and should provide the basis for an even more successful management.
Present in the most diverse segments of the market, data analysis is a procedure that has revolutionized modern society. In short, it consists of using technology to process large volumes of information in a few seconds and generate relevant insights for strategic decision-making.
As the public sector has also been following the current process of digital transformation, modernizing its channels of communication with the audience, and carrying out operational processes, data analysis cannot be left out of companies linked to government agencies.
Therefore, we’ve prepared this post so that you understand the importance of data analysis for public services. Read the article to learn more about this topic!
If you follow the technological trends for the corporate world, you may have noticed how the integration of company departments – using CRMs and ERPs – has gone from being a mere whim of entrepreneurs with a “modern view” to being a competitive “requirement”.
This is because eliminating communication noise and integrating all information sources in a single digital environment leads to cost reduction and boosted productivity, while also improving the data analysis. And these same principles apply to institutions that provide public services.
Let’s say the Municipal Department of Education wants to organize a cultural tour with public school students. To do so, it must make a formal request to the Municipal Department of Culture and the Municipal Department of Finance.
Without the use of technology capable of integrating communication and data in a single system, this process would be highly bureaucratic, time-consuming, and susceptible to several errors. Now, with innovative technological solutions, both the communication and the data analysis in the public sector are improved.
The first step in choosing a public management system is to make sure that the software provider has enough credibility and experience to offer transparent and effective solutions, both for employees working in the sector and for citizens.
It is very important that this system is equipped with resources that allow, for example, the availability of information about expenses, the integration of departments and, of course, data analysis to improve strategic decision-making.
Another point to be considered is the tool’s ability to use data intelligently through Big Data, as this area of knowledge provides a series of benefits, such as:
As you could see, data analysis is already a reality in organizations of different sizes and market segments, which has led utilities to invest in the modernization of processes as well. We also showed you how to choose a technological tool for the public sector.
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We present a customer from the logistics segment: Andreani Logística Brasil. The organization is part of Grupo Logístico Andreani, whose operations began in 1945 in Argentina. Currently, the business leads the segment of high value-added logistics services, serving the pharmaceutical, cosmetic, hospital equipment, medical and diagnostic technology, as well as animal health products, in addition to other markets.
Learn more about Andreani Logística here.
The company has been operating in Brazil since 2001, concentrating its activities in the south, southeast and central-west regions, where the four branches in the country are located. The business’s priority is to promote the development of a distribution infrastructure that meets the very specific needs of the healthcare sector. In this context, the services provided by Andreani include the integration of the areas of storage, distribution and reverse logistics for its clients.
As it serves multiple companies, in a sector with strict operational and safety requirements and in an extensive territory that is mainly covered by road network, the organization needed a cost and profitability management system that would allow it to efficiently analyze the results of each client separately.
To achieve these goals, the MyABCM Express Solution, suitable for businesses that deal with complex operations, was implemented. Among the gains for Andreani, there will be the possibility of taking into account all the characteristics of each client, without the need for knowledge in code and programming. This advantage, associated with a highly flexible modeling and the application of manual controllers through a user-friendly and simple-to-use interface, will ensure that the company has a precise control of each cost source, as well as the ability to issue accurate reports.
In addition to implementing the system, our team will train Andreani Logística in the distance-learning format, as well as provide consulting services in the first stage of use of the platform.
Meet another one of our customers! Beverages Fruki is a national company that operates in the food industry, with 7 product lines and 5 brands in its portfolio.
Visit the website and learn more about Bebidas Fruki.
The company’s varied mix includes juices, waters, beer, energy drinks and soft drinks. The story of this traditional company in Rio Grande do Sul began in 1924, with a production capacity of 200 bottles a day, and it represents a true family management success story.
Since its inception, the business has undergone a significant growth and currently produces, among its various fronts, an average of 420 million liters per year. As such, it faces challenges that are typical of the management of a large organization.
Diversifying the product line and managing multiple brands that serve audiences with different characteristics requires a highly detailed look at the cost management and the performance of each one of its revenue streams. In addition, the complexity of distribution operations increases at the same pace as the business grows. Currently, the industry has six distribution centers, which requires the adoption of an efficient system for the allocation of the various cost centers.
Given the level of demand involved in the management of activities of this size, and aiming to improve its cost control and increase its profitability, Fruki Bebidas decided to implement the MyABCM Corporate platform.
The system adds dynamism and versatility to cost and profitability analyses, being able to manage a high volume of data with flexible modeling that can be customized to the specific needs of the business.
In addition to implementing the software, platform users in the company will also undergo training to use the MyABCM Corporate resources with maximum productivity. The expected result is a more assertive cost management, capable of basing the decision-making process in the multiple management spheres of the organization and generating an increase in profitability in the medium and long term.
Betting on innovation in retail has become a popular strategy in recent years because of the exponential increase in competitiveness in the sector. This is due to, among other factors, a significant digital transformation process in society and the constant changes in consumer behavior.
To arouse the interest of the audience and stand out from the competition, it is necessary to invest in creative ideas, humanization of service, and all kinds of technological resources that can enhance the company’s results.
We’ve prepared this post for you to check out some of the greatest retail innovation trends for the years to come. Read the article to learn more about this topic!
Visual merchandising, or simply, window dressing, has always been a strategy widely adopted by retail. Composing attractive scenarios and highlighting short texts in display windows, aimed at activating mental triggers that arouse people’s attention, has always worked very well.
This concept is also being revamped with the wave of retail innovation and, to give it a touch of modernity, many companies have invested in the digitalization of display advertisements.
In this regard, the best-known tool is digital signage – a type of interactive screen on which it is possible to program the presentation of texts, images, product information and many other functionalities.
With the growing wave of purchases and transactions carried out in the virtual environment, with the help of chatbots and all kinds of technological resources, much has been said about the importance of humanization of service and the strengthening of ties between the consumer and the companies.
The fact is that, nowadays, a customer is not just looking for a product. They want to have a complete consumption experience, in which every step is convenient for them, whether in a physical or virtual store.
Merchandising actions, event production, sensory marketing and UX design are just a few examples of consumer experience optimization tactics that have been innovating retail.
Current marketing campaigns already count on geolocation strategies, as this resource has proven to be very efficient in targeting the audience to be reached, for example, on social media ads.
The great news is that this tool can now also be applied in physical establishments. Retail companies can catalog their products at a large POS and provide consumers with an app, on which they can use a map to find the item they want to buy.
As you could see, retail innovation is already a reality in the modern market. Investing in the humanization of service, in the use of technology to streamline processes, and in actions aimed at providing a more pleasant consumer experience are just the beginning of a highly promising future ahead.
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Cost analysis in the IT sector basically consists of carrying out a strategic planning whose actions are aimed at meeting specific business demands. To that end, it is essential that all departments have tools and methodologies to apply the cost reduction.
In simpler terms, we are referring to the multidisciplinary and continuous process of IT governance. Its goal is to integrate not only the expenses, but also support-related services and projects.
By employing good cost analysis practices, it is possible to add value to the business and provide unique solutions to the audience. And that is what we’ll talk about in this post, read on to check it out!
Planning the costs of a company is one of the best ways to ensure its survival and growth in the market, even when dealing with the most complex economic scenarios.
This is because the cost analysis aims to consolidate data on financial performance and the execution of corporate activities. Based on this information, managers are able to make more assertive decisions regarding the expenses that can be eliminated and what actions to take to foster the profitability of the business.
Now that you understand the importance of carrying out IT cost analysis, we’ll show you some tips on what you can put into practice in your business. Check it out below!
Determining the costs to be analyzed, that is, mapping them in an organized, functional, and intelligent way, will allow the finance department to account for expenses and investments with the infrastructure needed to carry out the business activities.
We know that much of the work done by the IT sector takes place in the digital environment and, therefore, has a series of intangible costs, such as the acquisition of ERP and CRM software, APIs, plugins, etc. In addition to these, it is necessary to consider aspects such as productive time, customer loyalty and delivery times.
When it comes to a tangible IT structure, it is no different, as it is also necessary to invest in hardware (computers, mobile devices, equipment, etc.) and labor, for example.
Finally, cost analysis can be optimized by using innovative technological tools that can automate repetitive tasks that were previously carried out by employees.
In addition to reducing the workload of IT professionals with minor issues, business management software have a wide range of resources that support the accounting and finance department.
After all, unlike human workers, these systems have algorithms that are not susceptible to failure and order issues, such as forgetfulness, fatigue, or misunderstanding. In other words, they minimize the margin of errors, rework, and productivity losses.
As you can see, cost analysis for the IT sector encompasses a series of practices and the use of technological tools that contribute to the company’s development, making it easier for managers to make strategic decisions.
Do you want to know more about the MyABCM solutions for cost analysis using technology in your company? Then contact our team so that we can show you the very best in digital innovation for your business!
