The importance of Metrics and Activity Based Costing

imageAvantage Metrics Plug-in




The importance of Metrics and Activity Based Costing

If you document business processes with a flat diagramming tool, it's impossible to get an appreciation of which activities consume the most resources. All activities do not have the same level of importance.

 

For instance, you may have 3 activities in a process:

metrics_1

Task A may take 10 hours to complete one item whereas Task B is a simple one and can be completed in 5 minutes. Therefore in any business transformation project we should be concentrating on Task A in order to achieve cost savings and a good return on investment. Even though this may seem an obvious point, it is surprising to see the corporate resources that are consumed in reality to enhance non-significant activities.

ActiveModeler Avantage allows you to easily add metrics to the base BPMN process model to give additional process visibility and to report on these metrics.
You can capture task time, wait time, fixed and variable costs etc.for a task. Role costs are automatically applied in the calculation.

 

Let's see how Avantage represents this...

metrics_2

Just click on an item in the process model and add the costing information.

For example, these activities are performed by a clerk in the Sales Department at a cost of $8 per hour. The volume of the activities flows through the model automatically so you don't need to worry about this and the role costings are defined only once in the organization database. Splitting of volume flow is also taken care of automatically and of course you can adjust the default splitting percentages:

metrics_3

and sub-task costings are rolled up automatically:

metrics_4

 

Final reporting is in Microsoft Excel, with each sub-process having its own sheet. Here we can see the total costing of a process including all sub-processes. Clicking on the rolled up items in blue reveals the sub-process detailed costing information.


click zoom image

This Metrics plugin can make a big difference to your organization.
You can start to get more competitive right away.

A Highly efficient and cost effective solution with a fast ROI
- In fact this tool could pay for itself in a matter of days

Provides precise yet easy to understand cost analysis for change (or the reason not to change)

Adds extra value to a corporate process module

Accurately measure the cost of an As-is, To-be or Can-be scenario
- With accurate reporting, it is much easier to convince stakeholders to adopt change


Avantage Metrics Plug-in key features:

Organization Structure Costs

Working regime (hours per day, week, month), Rate per costing unit.

Task costs

Time based unit costs, Wait time unit costs, Variable costs, Fixed Costs.

Time

Unit time, Wait time per activity unit or for the complete activity batch, Total time. 

Volume

Internal and external volume per time period.

Excel costing report with drill down

A report output in Excel showing all costs for a process map including sub-process below the analysis point. Sub-process totals are rolled up with a drill down facility in the Excel sheet.

What-if analysis

Initial flow volumes can be varied for "what-if" costing analysis.

Sidebar