Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 8, 2018

Theories and practices of management often spring from the opportunities created by new technologies. Client-server technology begat enterprise resource planning systems, and the consequent system-wide visibility that was required for what we call business process management (BPM). yagi studio/Getty Images.

Management 15

Management Software BPM Technology 15

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 2, 2011

We manage the measurable, rather than the things that create meaning that fuels creativity, that enables innovative thinking and that helps any company to outpace the market. Yet most organizations still operate much as they did in the industrial age. Am I revealing a certain naïveté in even writing this?

Hamel 20

Hamel Customer Loyalty Creativity Cost Center 20

Harvard Business Review

MAY 31, 2012

For one, it’s a cost center. Current outsider CEO Meg Whitman has managed to reduce HP’s market cap by $60 billion. Yes, marketing faces a steep uphill battle its quest for a seat at the table of valued corporate functions. And the ROI for this spend is anything but clear.

Supply Chain 15

Supply Chain Real Estate ROI CFO 15

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

An impatient marketing or finance manager would, on the sly, secure some extra budget money and hire a contractor to build a little database that tracked mailing addresses or top-line financials. Slowly but surely, as the little database grew bigger and bigger, the manager would wedge the cost into her operating budget.

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. It’s about focus and mental cycles: How much time and energy do you put toward managing in-house technology activities?”. He reports directly to the CEO and is a member of the management board. IT management'

CIO 15

CIO Information Technology Forrester Technology 15

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 4, 2014

It also has a huge impact on cost, productivity, and customer service. Why can’t managers — even at a very senior level — have open, honest and candid debates, work through their differences, and then reach agreement? Decision spin can be incredibly frustrating at all levels of the organization.

Construction 12

Construction Cost Center Committee Licensing 12

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 9, 2011

It may seem counterintuitive, but smart companies need to routinely rid themselves of less profitable customers, the same way an asset manager or rebalances an investment portfolio or a Major League Baseball general manager trades a declining player. We call these people Cost Center Consumers, and they come in two flavors.

P&L 15

P&L Supply Chain Retail Price 15

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 22, 2012

But there are also implications for organizational design and talent management for firms of all sizes. The seven full time employees form a nucleus, or core group to handle program management, operations, and communications. And, of course, this affects management's role and how we all manage our careers. Work is freed.

Participative 16

Participative Decentralization Globalization Cost Center 16

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. Most fear that doing so would cause call length to skyrocket, increasing costs. Related Video.

Metrics 14

Metrics Video Cost Cost Center 14

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 12, 2011

It's conceivable that IT's views could have saved the company, had the culture been different and had executive management been willing to listen. 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.

CIO 11

CIO Outsourcing Cost Center Film 11

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? And yet few corporate managers are asking such questions, much less taking advantage. Cost Savings. And of course, few such managers have a background in information technology.

Energy 9

Energy Resources Information Technology Cost Center 9

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 4, 2012

Instead, less-impactful and short-lived "initiatives" that satisfy diversity management come across as well-orchestrated efforts to simply acknowledge the existence of Hispanics, but don't invest in real solutions. Think profit center, not cost center. Diversity must be approached as a best practice; not an initiative.

Policies 16

Policies Short-term Education Diversity 16

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 26, 2013

The original IT department was formed to centralize a unique expertise that could purchase, implement, and manage technology in the enterprise. 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?

Supply Chain 11

Supply Chain Competitive Advantage Information Technology How To 11

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 13, 2013

We found what everyone would expect — that these centers are pushing the boundaries of efficiencies. But we also found that they're helping to deliver superior customer experience, by providing consumer insights and decision support to product managers, and are orienting operations to grow revenue. But that's not by accident.

Offshoring 9

Offshoring Cost Benchmarking Operations 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? And yet few corporate managers are asking such questions, much less taking advantage. Cost Savings. And of course, few such managers have a background in information technology.

Energy 8

Energy Resources Cost Center Budgeting 8

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. Information & technology IT management' Finally, companies should ask, “How do we expect IT to help us compete?” You can’t ignore the fact that technology touches every facet of our lives.

Information Technology 9

Information Technology Technology Cost Center Long-term 9

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 17, 2015

There are clear signs of a potential shift in energy sourcing and consumption—and managers of IT and services operating in the cloud should start paying attention to how they can contribute. 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.

Energy 8

Energy Globalization Hedge Cost 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 30, 2017

Many of the small and midsize manufacturers that did manage to survive kept going by cutting costs, which has led to stagnant wage growth. manufacturers do source from domestic suppliers, they tend to regard them purely as a cost center. In some instances, the end results were firm closures and lost jobs.

Supply Chain 8

Supply Chain McKinsey Incentives Bottom-up 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 21, 2016

One of the things that surprised me most about security at Facebook is the level of attention and support that we receive from the company’s senior management team. The system was an important development for our team because it gave us a clear, direct metric to demonstrate our value to senior management. Driving Financial Goals.

Team 8

Team P&L Engineering Cost 8

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. Google IT management Technology' There''s only so long enterprises can hold out against that. IT Has to Deliver Great Tools — and Teach People to Use Them.

CIO 8

CIO How To Technology Directory 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 4, 2012

Instead, less-impactful and short-lived "initiatives" that satisfy diversity management come across as well-orchestrated efforts to simply acknowledge the existence of Hispanics, but don't invest in real solutions. Think profit center, not cost center. Diversity must be approached as a best practice; not an initiative.

Policies 9

Policies Short-term Education Diversity 9

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 2, 2016

You’ll often find customer relationship management within marketing, budgeting within finance, supply-chain management within operations, outsourcing within procurement, training within HR, and new product development within R&D. Some of the first business functionaries were railroad telegraph operators who managed schedules.

Development 8

Development Supply Chain Incentives Outsourcing 8

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 8

Company Chief Operating Officer Incentives Project 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 6, 2016

Like marketing, IT is often seen as a cost center rather than revenue generator. But we couldn’t have done it without IT support –data management, hosting, training, troubleshooting and all the other ways they have supported us. Now, it’s a very complementary relationship. Will this approach work for you?

Marketing 8

Marketing Banking Technology System 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 16, 2015

Our understanding of how organizations think and act doesn’t always make this distinction between the interests of the enterprise and its managers. CSO, CFO, CIO, IT, Ops (Practice Leaders): Typically, these decision makers run cost centers as opposed to generating revenue.

P&L 8

P&L Due Diligence CIO Cost 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 8, 2017

Most marketers recognize that marketing is much more than running campaigns and managing brand identity. 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.

CEO 8

CEO Marketing Span of Control Sports 8

Tanveer Naseer

NOVEMBER 10, 2015

Argument 1: Performance reviews can put off for up to a year what needs attention now Performance reviews can be a passive-aggressive haven for managers afraid to lead in the present. One of your most promising managers has just led a two-year late-to-market death march on a brand extension that has launched and failed.

Performance Review 100

Performance Review Review Learning-by-Doing Document 100

HR Digest

JANUARY 5, 2022

Most boards underestimate the concept of change management and the science behind human behavioral change. In addition, it’s important to reward leaders who excel in change management, leadership positivity and role modeling, but that is also often overlooked or misunderstood at the board level.

Human Resources 52

Human Resources Education Resources Innovation 52

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 18, 2012

A GreenBiz report indicated that progress had slowed or even regressed, but MIT and BCG also declared that sustainability had reached a "tipping point" with more companies putting sustainability "on the management agenda.". In reality, both views were right. In his November newsletter , he demonstrated exactly how much of a drag on the U.S.

Supply Chain 14

Supply Chain Constraint P&L Energy 14

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 8, 2017

The vast majority of physician visits in Qatar end up costing a lot because they’re with specialists, and the remedy proposed often involves hospital stays and procedures. All of this requires a better understanding of how health transactions work and how much they cost. They are fix-what’s-broken visits.

Health Care 8

Health Care Tourism Pharmaceuticals Cost 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 14, 2015

Those relationships are successful because they build on five realities in population health management. The overwhelming majority of health care costs involve managing patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, and asthma. Insight Center. Measuring Costs and Outcomes in Healthcare.

System 8

System Health Care Retail Cost 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.” Measuring the people side of the business is tough.

Ulrich 137

Ulrich Metrics Report Storytelling 137