The theoretical research of cost management is relatively backward.
Compared with before the reform, the theoretical research of cost management in China has made great progress, but the system of cost management research is poor.
The traditional cost management methods are all aimed at a single cost management method, lacking the research on the relationship between methods, and unable to form a systematic cost management method system. In practice, the application of cost management methods is not connected, and the introduction of new cost management methods often leads to the abandonment of the original methods to a great extent, thus making cost management lack of coherence and increasing management costs.
The traditional cost research is confined to the enterprise and lacks the thinking of strategic management. Only pay attention to the cost management of the production process, ignoring the cost management of the supply process. Only pay attention to the cost management after production, ignoring the cost management of product design and the reasonable organization of production factors before production. Only pay attention to the level of product cost itself, ignoring the level of cost performance. Only pay attention to enterprise cost management, ignoring macro cost management.
Backward concept of cost management
Backward concept of cost management is widespread in enterprises in China, which is manifested in the deviation of the scope, purpose and means of cost management. Many enterprises still limit the scope of cost management within the enterprise or even only include the production process, while ignoring the management of cost behavior in other related enterprises and related fields. The purpose of cost management is only to reduce costs, and less to see the effectiveness of costs from the perspective of benefits. The means to reduce the cost mainly depends on the method of saving, and the principle of cost-effectiveness cannot be applied, and greater benefits can be realized through the occurrence of costs. These backward ideas can no longer adapt to the increasingly competitive economic environment.
Traditional enterprise management mainly reduces product cost through two ways: one is scale benefit; The second is to strengthen the negotiation ability with suppliers and distributors in order to achieve the purpose of transferring costs. However, the size of the scale is restricted by the size of the demand, not to mention the growing differences in consumer demand in the 2 1 century, and the production scale of similar products tends to shrink. Simply transferring the enterprise cost from the core enterprise to the supplier or distributor can not reduce the final selling price of the product, and even increase the cost and reduce the added value from raw materials to final consumer goods. Especially in today's increasingly open market environment, excessive cost transfer will make enterprises lose good partners.
The cost management method is out of date.
Although some enterprises in China have tried advanced cost management methods and achieved good results, on the whole, the cost management methods are still very old and can no longer meet the requirements of the economic environment.
According to the survey, 57. 1% enterprises adopt the variety method, and 4 1.5% enterprises adopt the step-by-step method, of which 22.9% adopt the parallel carry-over method and 16.8% adopt the step-by-step carry-over method. At present, the development trend of world production is the mode of small batch and multi-variety, because the preferences of buyers are not exactly the same. With the development of production, buyers can ask the factory to design and produce their most satisfactory products according to their own needs, and the factory can also ensure buyers to obtain ideal products efficiently in a short time. In this case, there may be only a few identical products on a production line, or even two identical products. This production mode will be suitable for calculating the cost by batch method. At present, only 5.7% of enterprises in China use the batch method to calculate the cost, which shows that the production organization in China is still relatively extensive and insufficient attention is paid to the consumption personality, thus simplifying the choice of cost accounting methods accordingly.
Standard cost, planned cost and target cost are popular modern cost management methods in modern cost and cost management According to the survey of enterprises, 5 1.4% enterprises adopt target cost method, 38.9% enterprises adopt planned cost method, and 18. 1% enterprises adopt standard cost method. However, advanced activity-based costing and cost planning methods have not been popularized in enterprises.
The misunderstanding of establishing the main body of internal cost management in enterprises
For a long time, there is a deviation: people regard cost management as the patent of financial personnel and a few managers, and think that cost and benefit should be the responsibility of enterprise leaders and financial departments, while workers in various workshops, departments and teams are only regarded as producers, which leads to ignorance of technology and finance, and the majority of employees are unwilling and unable to ask which costs should be controlled and how, and their cost awareness is indifferent. Workers think that doing well is the same as not doing well, and they can't feel the market pressure, and the enthusiasm for controlling costs can't be mobilized, which is a serious waste. Of course, without a huge management group, it is difficult for enterprises to achieve real results.
Bad interest motivation leads to distortion of cost information.
In our country, a considerable number of enterprise managers, driven by bad interests such as tax evasion, whitewashing performance, seeking personal gain or small group interests, arbitrarily adjust and fabricate cost information, which makes the distortion of cost information increasingly serious, leading to the inefficiency of various cost management activities and even causing losses to enterprises. Of course, the distortion of cost information may also be caused by the poor correlation between cost information and cost management, which is also one of the important problems that cost management system needs to pay attention to and solve.
The division of labor is too fine, and human resources are wasted seriously.
The division of labor within enterprises is becoming more and more detailed, which requires enterprises to carry out a high degree of cooperative management, resulting in high cost of cooperative adjustment of enterprise management; In addition, too fine division of labor complicates enterprise management, which is not conducive to the improvement of enterprise management efficiency, thus bringing some inefficient costs to enterprises, causing direct economic losses to be transformed into serious waste of human resources, which is also a reason for the increase of enterprise management expenses. Due to the increase of division of labor and cooperation, the transmission time of information within the enterprise is prolonged, and unnecessary stay links are added, which leads to the loss and distortion of information to a certain extent and the difficulty of information feedback. This may increase the possibility of enterprise decision-making mistakes and lead to an increase in the cost of enterprise management mistakes.
To sum up, the existing cost management of Chinese enterprises can no longer meet the needs of enterprise market competition, so it is necessary to reform and improve the existing cost management system.
Strategies for controlling purchasing cost
Strategy 1: Centralized procurement-maximizing the advantages of procurement scale
In the voice of "a rising tide lifts all boats", considering how to control the procurement cost, it is easy to think of the solution of centralized procurement.
The real estate industry, with steel, cement and concrete as its main raw materials, has been dragged down by the rising prices of raw materials, and has begun to take measures to strengthen centralized procurement and centralized management of incoming goods.
The owner of a real estate company in Beijing told reporters that the steel procurement of domestic construction enterprises is still relatively scattered. The purchasing power of some enterprises is delegated to the project department or even the project manager level, and the purchasing volume of each batch is not large. If the company purchases steel in a unified way and then allocates it according to the needs of each project, it can not only save costs by purchasing in large quantities, but also decide whether to reserve steel by analyzing the market trend, thus avoiding the risks brought by price increases.
The advantages of centralized procurement are also obvious in the home appliance industry.
A manager surnamed Zhang in the purchasing department of Haier Group told the reporter that only the centralized procurement of bulk raw materials such as steel plates, chemical raw materials and electronic components saved the company 20% to 30% of the cost.
In response to this wave of price increases, Haier Group put forward the "four big" centralized procurement strategies, namely "big orders, big customers, big markets and big resources".
But centralized purchasing sounds easier said than done, and sometimes more than one department of the company's purchasing department can do it.
Manager Zhang gave the reporter an example. Cable is a component used in many products of Haier Group. In order to realize centralized procurement, the purchasing department and the product design department work together to redesign the cables used in air conditioners, washing machines, refrigerators and other products, and standardize the use of common components as much as possible. Through these measures, the number of cables purchased by Haier Group has been reduced from a few hundred to a dozen. Only when the types of purchased products are reduced can centralized procurement be realized naturally. According to reports, this improvement alone has saved Haier Group about 20% of the cost in cable procurement.
Strategy 2: Joint procurement-SMEs jointly resist risks.
CIMC is a leader in the field of container manufacturing. When the reporter interviewed Miss Li from the purchasing department, she talked about centralized purchasing. Miss Li bluntly pointed out that centralized procurement is basically a means for large enterprises to maximize their scale advantages in procurement. Without a multi-category product line, the sales volume of products has not reached a certain scale, and it is impossible to achieve concentration. Therefore, CIMC is more competitive in centralized procurement.
This sounds cruel, but many SME managers agree.
Manager Huang of Tianhe Ningbo Electronic Fastener Company told the reporter his opinion, "The scale directly determines the right to speak in the industrial chain. Large enterprises of customers such as Volkswagen and Shenlong desperately oppress us to lower the price, which we can only accept in Nuo Nuo; However, when purchasing from a component company smaller than ours, our waist is quite hard. "
"Big fish eat small fish, small fish eat shrimp." Manager Huang seems to hit the nail on the head.
Wharton Consulting believes that Huang's statement is biased. He pointed out that small enterprises are indeed in an absolute passive position on the issue of purchasing price, but this does not mean that many small and medium-sized enterprises have no choice but to control purchasing costs. For example, cross-enterprise joint procurement is a way to reduce costs. If possible, small and medium-sized enterprises can especially consider organizing or joining purchasing alliances.
Small and medium-sized enterprises can jointly purchase raw materials, which can increase their ability to prevent risks. First, a number of enterprises jointly purchase, collecting small orders into large orders, enhancing collective bargaining power, gaining the advantage of purchasing scale, and striving for the same "Jianghu status" as large enterprises; Secondly, the object of joint procurement is raw material production enterprises, which can get rid of the transfer cost of agents, reduce intermediate links through direct transactions with manufacturers, greatly reduce circulation costs and ensure product quality.
Strategy 3: Third-party procurement-China enterprises have not accepted it.
As the name implies, third-party procurement refers to the outsourcing of products or services to third-party companies. Foreign experience shows that compared with enterprises' own procurement, third-party procurement can often provide more value and procurement experience, which can help enterprises focus more on their core competitiveness.
According to Mr. Zhou, all industries in the United States have such purchasing alliances. For example, the United States local government procurement alliance is a third-party procurement organization, and more than 7,000 government agencies have joined this procurement organization, reducing the direct procurement cost by more than 15%. Amerinet is the largest procurement agency for hospitals and clinics in the United States, which can reduce the procurement cost for customers by nearly 20% on average.
Mr. Shi, the industry consulting director of Hampton Management Consulting Company, is not optimistic about the prospect of domestic enterprises reducing costs through third-party procurement. "Joint procurement by enterprises through third-party institutions can only constitute an opportunistic alliance, and mutual interests are difficult to maintain for a long time."
It is also difficult to build trust between buyers and contractors. As Richter, the former chief procurement officer of IBM, said, "Production procurement involves a lot of design work in advance, and you don't want to disclose design secrets to third parties, because they may share this information with other companies." He even thinks that "outsourcing will transfer IBM's purchasing interest and experience to other companies, which will damage the competitive advantage of enterprises."
"Now the customers who accept our external procurement are mainly foreign-funded enterprises. It is very difficult for China enterprises to accept the concept of third-party procurement! " Mr. Wu is not without emotion.
Strategy 4: One company in the world-increase enterprise confidence.
Under the threat of rising raw material prices, enterprises that can achieve international procurement obviously show stronger competitiveness.
The price of home appliances in the industry should be raised because the cost has increased. At that time, Matsushita of Japan went against the market and announced the price reduction of its washing machine products. At that time, some experts pointed out that Panasonic had the confidence to reduce the price mainly because of its global procurement network, which made its material cost lower than that of similar domestic enterprises.
Like Tianhe Ningbo Electronic Fastener Company mentioned above, Delphi Company is also a component enterprise supporting the automobile factory. However, the atmosphere observed by reporters at Delphi headquarters in Shanghai is not the same as Trina Solar, and they can't see the tension and pessimism caused by the price increase of raw materials.
Ms. Chen, the logistics department of the company, pointed out in particular that because Delphi has realized real global procurement, it can allocate all kinds of raw material resources from all over the world. This has alleviated the pressure of cost growth to some extent.
When using global materials, it is particularly worth mentioning the tax issue. The reporter learned in a large household appliance group that in addition to this wave of rising prices of raw materials, the group particularly emphasized the application of bonded materials. According to the group's purchasing department, in the past, the tax rebate for bonded materials was not done carefully, and this issue was gradually concerned. All imported raw materials for export products are bonded. In this regard, the Group saved about 65,438+00% in the cost of imported raw materials.
Strategy 5: increase the added value of products-it takes a long time to solve the problem.
"When the price increase of raw materials leads to tight costs, enterprises begin to take the above measures to optimize supply, in fact, it is better late than never. It is difficult to have an immediate effect. " Mr. Shi of Hampton said, "It is better to make a fuss about the product side."
Mr. Shi's view coincides with the reporter's. Because, through interviews with reporters, it is observed that the higher the added value of products, the more peaceful the attitude towards the price increase of raw materials. The higher the proportion of raw material cost, the smaller the added value of products, and the more enterprises care about the price increase of raw materials.
To improve the added value of products, one is to improve the technical added value of products, and the other is to improve the brand added value of products.
Guangwu, the general manager, specifically mentioned the need to improve the technical added value of products. He told a story to the reporter enviously. He said that he saw a new type of intelligent vacuum cleaner in Electrolux not long ago, and the price was as high as 13600 yuan. Later, he and experts estimated that the raw material cost of this smart vacuum cleaner is around 300 yuan, which is less than a fraction of the final price. "With such a high profit margin, I am not afraid of how much the cost will increase." Guangwu said.
The promotion of product brand added value is mainly to achieve "differentiation". Historical consultants believe that the homogeneous management of enterprises is the structural reason for the contradiction between supply and demand, and the oversupply leads to the implementation of low-price strategy for terminal consumer products. "There is no room for further price reduction. So there is basically no tolerance for the price increase of raw materials. " The only way to change this situation is to implement differentiated product strategy.
Zhou stressed that no matter what measures are taken to absorb the impact of rising costs, it does not mean that these measures are only to solve the problem of rising supply costs. On the contrary, for any enterprising enterprise, minimizing cost, maximizing sales and maximizing efficiency are all processes of continuous improvement in daily work.
In fact, there are many similarities between the management of enterprises in weak times and in prosperous times.
The goal of cost control management must first be the control of the whole process, not just the production cost of products, but the whole content of product life cycle cost. Practice has proved that only by effectively controlling the life cycle cost of products can the cost be significantly reduced.