Strategy Driven

AUGUST 4, 2013

Among the trends are an increased emphasis on project management soft skills, the Project Management Office (PMO) being viewed as a potential profit center (vs. a cost center), sustainability aggressively planned into projects, and an increased emphasis on corporate social responsibility.

Trends 56

Trends Project Resources Management 56

The Horizons Tracker

OCTOBER 1, 2020

Ensure there is an independent cost center. Involve a sponsor from the parent company’s executive committee in decision making. Consider increasing the time span of reporting cycles. Evaluate your autonomy and integration capabilities before choosing the location.

Incubator 91

Incubator Entrepreneur Venture Funding Incentives 91

Strategy Driven

APRIL 3, 2012

Other organizations are simply cost centers and the budget is a reflection of expenditures only. This oversight is clearly expressed through the effective management of an executive or manager’s assigned budget. In many cases, this budget includes revenue generation as well as expenditures.

Budgeting 50

Budgeting Management Cost Center Newsletter 50

Tanveer Naseer

NOVEMBER 10, 2015

Your competitor is getting nothing but a disingenuous cost center. If an employee has little or nothing to say in response – if the answer you hear lacks substance or authenticity in addressing what might come next – proceed to complete the performance review. It doesn’t matter what you write on the page.

Performance Review 100

Performance Review Review Learning-by-Doing Document 100

The Horizons Tracker

JULY 15, 2019

A recent report from Deloitte highlighted how customer service has transitioned from the cost center of old, and the most sophisticated companies now aim to create experiences that delight customers and turn them into loyal devotees of the brand.

Technology 45

Technology Cost Center Comparison Discount 45

Harvard Business Review

MAY 31, 2012

For one, it’s a cost center. "The CEO wonders how you spend your time, the CFO wonders how you spend the company’s money, the sales folks think you’re too conceptual, too abstract, and not sufficiently focused on the immediate business, and the production and supply chain guys just think you’re full of hot air.".

Supply Chain 15

Supply Chain Real Estate ROI CFO 15

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 5, 2012

Government in its entirety is a cost-center to society, so we desperately need to create not just jobs, but private sector jobs. Just as we moved from machines to electronics after the second world war, now we are moving into a new age where all business is driven by networks, and the remote control to your life is your mobile phone.

Cost Center 16

Cost Center Entrepreneur Fashion Learning-by-Doing 16

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 2, 2011

Talent, purpose, culture and creating meaning is the peopley work mostly viewed by the performance folks as "cost centers," or departments that exist only to manage legal risk. We tag performance as the quantitatively focused work of what we can design, market, measure, track, bill, and monetize.

Hamel 19

Hamel Customer Loyalty Creativity Cost Center 19

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 12, 2011

But surveys show that more than 25% of firms still think of IT as a cost center, 53% of CIOs' time is focused on cost control, and 54% of companies outsource their IT services. It's easy to fall into the Kodak trap, especially in austere times when there's almost overwhelming pressure to cut costs.

CIO 13

CIO Outsourcing Cost Center Film 13

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

CEOs remain reluctant to invite CIOs to the executive table, insisting that IT is a cost center, not the innovation incubator it could be. Case studies on companies that have failed to invest in IT innovations, and the resulting business impacts--usually disastrous--abound.

Supply Chain 16

Supply Chain CIO Budgeting Project 16

Harvard Business Review

JULY 16, 2014

In too many companies, IT leaders, relegated to their cost centers, are subordinate to other C-level executives. To borrow a computer-science term, the denotational semantics are all wrong. The “IT” label is part of the glass ceiling that has limited business technologists for decades.

CIO 15

CIO Information Technology Forrester Technology 15

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 22, 2017

Given that the service department is a cost center in most companies, service leaders have long relied on AHT as a critical lever for keeping staffing levels, and therefore costs, in check. AHT has been around for almost as long as the telephone itself.

Metrics 15

Metrics Video Cost Cost Center 15

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 9, 2011

We call these people Cost Center Consumers, and they come in two flavors. Divas: These are high maintenance consumers who drive costs up after purchase. They tie up your call centers, incur costly returns, and generate other costs that occur below the gross margin line, which is harder to see.

P&L 15

P&L Supply Chain Retail Price 15

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 22, 2012

Typically an in-house cost center, service is usually viewed as a necessary evil and constantly targeted for "efficiency." Over time, notable service firms built outsourcing capacity in India, Malaysia, Singapore and elsewhere to allow any firm to have a global service workforce at low cost. Model #2 is an example of that.

Participative 16

Participative Decentralization Globalization Cost Center 16

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 4, 2014

Similarly, when another company needed to reduce its expenses, the pain was spread like peanut butter across the different cost centers because the senior management team couldn’t reach a decision about where to focus — which meant that areas with growth potential lost as much muscle as those with less opportunity.

Construction 12

Construction Cost Center Committee Licensing 12

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 12, 2014

Who at your company will be put in charge of turning buildings operations from a cost center to a revenue center? But what happens when every single light fixture in all of your company’s facilities becomes a networked mini-computer with an array of sensors? New Sources of Revenue.

Energy 9

Energy Resources Information Technology Cost Center 9

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 12, 2014

Who at your company will be put in charge of turning buildings operations from a cost center to a revenue center? But what happens when every single light fixture in all of your company’s facilities becomes a networked mini-computer with an array of sensors? New Sources of Revenue.

Energy 8

Energy Resources Cost Center Budgeting 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 26, 2013

Rather than serving as an adjunct to the core business, or merely a cost center, IT is becoming intrinsic to the very products and services that every company offers. Why is this? Mainly because, as Marc Andreessen puts it, " software is eating the world."

Supply Chain 10

Supply Chain Competitive Advantage Information Technology How To 10

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 25, 2013

Service at American Express, he argued, should not be treated as just a cost center; rather, it offered an opportunity to invest in building the sort of warm relationships between American Express and its customers that the venerable company’s brand had always been based on. Bush saw a way to change the game.

Call Center 11

Call Center Attrition Learning-by-Doing Cost Center 11

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 13, 2013

Given the scale, mix of operations and quality of the talent pool in the offshore locations, it is now incumbent upon the enterprises and leadership teams in the offshore centers to evolve to be strategic assets as opposed to cost centers.

Offshoring 8

Offshoring Cost Benchmarking Operations 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 30, 2017

manufacturers do source from domestic suppliers, they tend to regard them purely as a cost center. Past work by McKinsey found that inefficiencies in manufacturer-supplier interactions add up to roughly 5% of development, tooling, and product costs in the auto industry. Even when large U.S.

Supply Chain 9

Supply Chain McKinsey Incentives Bottom-up 9

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 8, 2018

“It’s already changing organizations, by moving IT from a cost center to something with a place at the table in a lot of different meetings,” said Chris Jackson, head of cloud platforms at Pearson, a global learning company. If Pearson is looking at, say, a new online learning course, Mr.

Management 16

Management Software BPM Technology 16

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 1, 2013

Today, this topic simply doesn’t come up often enough, leading to a one-size-fits-all approach to managing IT, often as a cost center. Finally, companies should ask, “How do we expect IT to help us compete?” That’s fine for most functions and processes in most companies, where middle-of-the-pack IT is good enough.

Information Technology 9

Information Technology Technology Cost Center Constraint 9

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 4, 2018

The ABU was set up as a centralized profit center with ambitious targets and with direct reporting to the chief operations officer; most often, similar units are organized as cost centers with no specific targets. This setup fosters focus on high-yield projects, actionable analytics, and speed of execution. Support from the top.

Company 9

Company Chief Operating Officer Incentives Project 9

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 13, 2013

One of the things I''d learned working for a number of CIOs was that IT is most commonly viewed as the largest cost center in the enterprise. There''s only so long enterprises can hold out against that. I thought, ''Listen, I can be on the outside and have this done to me, or I can be on the inside.''.

CIO 9

CIO How To Technology Directory 9

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 17, 2015

Here’s why now is the time right to invest in renewable energy sources for the internet: Renewable energy can help reduce a cost center. Most credible projections expect the cost of renewable electricity to drop and many traditional sources of electricity to increase.

Energy 8

Energy Globalization Hedge Cost 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 7, 2018

Usage brands, by contrast, elevate customer service and loyalty from resource-starved cost-centers to key drivers of growth and profitability. Typically at purchase brands, customer service and loyalty take a back seat to marketing campaigns and lead generation.

Brand 9

Brand Succession B2B Advertising 9

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 6, 2016

Like marketing, IT is often seen as a cost center rather than revenue generator. IT gains a much deeper understanding of the business and acts as a communication bridge between the two departments, ultimately helping IT deliver a better product for marketing,” Mobley said. Now, it’s a very complementary relationship.

Marketing 8

Marketing Banking Technology System 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 21, 2016

One of the most popular misconceptions about security is that it’s destined to be a cost center and it survives on executive generosity (or paranoia). Having the necessary protections is one thing, but implementing them in such a way that people want to use your product even more is also important to business leaders.

Team 8

Team P&L Engineering Cost 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 14, 2015

As providers increasingly participate in value-based purchasing arrangements, what used to be profit centers have become cost centers. Retail health care is good for health systems.

System 8

System Health Care Retail Cost 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 8, 2017

Pay physicians for health outcomes rather than the number of procedures or visits; systematically incentivize prevention and primary care; and turn hospitals into cost centers rather than revenue engines. All of this requires a better understanding of how health transactions work and how much they cost.

Health Care 9

Health Care Tourism Pharmaceuticals Cost 9

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 8, 2017

CMOs need to define a broader vision for marketing as the orchestrator of the customer experience and prove that marketing is not a cost center but a revenue generator. But the rest of the organization doesn’t know this yet, including most CEOs.

CEO 9

CEO Marketing Span of Control Sports 9

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 16, 2015

CSO, CFO, CIO, IT, Ops (Practice Leaders): Typically, these decision makers run cost centers as opposed to generating revenue. (Remember it’s not about eliminating the risk of failure, it’s about providing a strong narrative for the Top Dog so that if something goes wrong, their decision can be defended.).

P&L 8

P&L Due Diligence CIO COO 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 2, 2016

On the other hand, they are set up as cost centers and service bureaus, mandated to meet the needs of all their constituents as rapidly as possible under the ceiling of their budget.

Development 8

Development Supply Chain Incentives Outsourcing 8

LDRLB

NOVEMBER 12, 2012

HR is an enigmatic profession, as the authors write, “the sad reality is—even in today’s enlightened age of recognizing the value of people to the business—too many top executives still view HR as a non-strategic cost center instead of a core, profit-contributing function.”

Ulrich 137

Ulrich Metrics Report Storytelling 137

HR Digest

JANUARY 5, 2022

This will help continue to dispel the perception that HR is a cost center or soft skill-based function and demonstrate how data-driven HR can directly impact the bottom line. . It’s important for CHROs to leverage data analytics to illustrate positive and negative shifts in sales and EBIT contribution.

Human Resources 52

Human Resources Education Resources Innovation 52

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 18, 2012

Announcements on waste may not be exciting, but they demonstrate how companies can turn a cost center into a source of profit. The idea that organizations should send zero waste to landfill was once a niche idea, but it's quickly becoming the ante to enter the waste management game.

Supply Chain 14

Supply Chain Constraint P&L Energy 14