Good businesses aren't dictated to by accountants - all accountants can do is provide information and analysis of the business. They set targets for the business with reference to strategic targets set by the Board or leadership team. Th problem with accountants' input is that it is based in provable fact. If you want profit to grow by $5M then reducing spend on utilities by $5M will achieve that. Conversely saying that improving employee morale by 2 - 3% will lead to reduced employee turnover and savings of the same amount is very hard to hang your hat on.
You know what would make business' performance improve without having to resort to asking the CFO where can we save? Try some of these:
- Marketing plans that have a tangible and measurable improvement on sales in the face of a declining market
- Product development and innovation that persuade the consumers to buy your product at a premium over competitors
- Operational efficiency improvements that truly deliver better margins, quicker customer response times
- Flexible long term planning that allows the business to grow and shrink with little impact on the workforce so that it is more nimble and able to adapt
If that's too hard for the great minds of engineers, marketers, planners and designers then I am afraid they will have to resort to cost control measures.
Go back to the single olive debate on AA - what if instead of asking "where can we cut costs?" someone had said "where can we reliably add value to make our product a better selling proposition" there wouldn't be many accountants saying not to do that.
