Agile Costing

The pressure on businesses to operate efficiently and effectively has never been greater.  And the current economic condition is only intensifying the pressure.  Business managers are struggling to balance the unstable financial environment and a rapidly changing operating environment, with a lack of tools to get the answers needed in a timely and inexpensive manner.  The solution is rooted in Agile Costing.

Agile Costing is an emerging concept giving business managers the ability to answer critical questions quickly and efficiently.  Questions such as what customer is the least profitable or is it cost effective to outsource information technology support?  The impetus behind Agile Costing is a result of direct interaction with business managers and comes from the understanding of how a business operates.  Businesses have more operational and performance data than ever before, but the ability to turn this data into insight is sporadic.

Pilbara Group is recognized as a founder of Agile Costing.  Pilbara’s experience in business modeling and cost management strengthened the Agile Costing philosophy by identifying key principles.  The fundamental principles are fast, accurate, flexible, relevant, actionable, and inexpensive.

•  Fast – respond quickly to time sensitive questions and issues
• Accurate – the information is correct
• Flexible – can be applied to many different situations
• Simple – not overly complicated nor bogged down by unnecessary details
• Relevant – to the business question at hand
• Actionable – the results lead to action
• Inexpensive – agile implementations cost a fraction of enterprise implementations

Agile Costing is distinguished from other cost approaches by these principles.  In traditional cost management, the engagements are formal, requiring significant time and investment.  These cost management systems can only answer questions the system was originally designed to answer.  Agile Costing is a bridge between all data systems that will allow business managers to make more responsive and informative decisions.