Cost management and competitiveness, Italian companies in search of lost time

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Cost management, or an advanced management of company costs aimed at improving efficiency and competitiveness, is also spreading among Italian companies. However, there is no shortage of critical issues, such as a lag behind the realities of other countries.

This is what emerges from the research conducted by the Cost and Performance Center of the Liuc Business School of Castellanza (Varese), carried out between April and September 2022, which involved more than 500 companies. In almost all cases the companies were private in nature, with some exceptions represented by state-owned or non-profit organizations.

Something moves

«After more than 30 years from the first contributions on the subject – explains Alberto Bubbio, director of the Center on Costs and Performance of the Liuc Business School – something is moving in costing practices also in Italian companies. Time delay is the chronic one. This was also the case in the Planning and control area for the Budget. Unfortunately, it seems to our companies that it is necessary to arrive at some form of obligation for the introduction of new practices. It is not possible to prevent, to intervene first ».

According to the study, around half of the companies analyzed have already introduced a cost management solution into the company. «A result that can be said to be sufficiently positive, especially in its evolutionary reading over time» clarified by the Liuc Business School.

The importance of knowing the costs

There are two main reasons why companies have chosen costing. On the one hand there are the increased management complexity and the importance assumed by the costs associated with the complexity itself, a real new cost driver that goes hand in hand with volumes. On the other hand, the need to know the costs due to customer management and to be able to draw up an income statement completed, after the margins, by the costs of the processes incurred to manage the customer.