Controller's Report
Controller’s Report one of IOMA’s most respected publications, aimed at corporate controllers in companies of all sizes. Provides benchmarks on virtually every cost area controllers are responsible for (in the Staying Current section), along with articles on FINANCIAL LEADERSHIP, and KEEPING CONTROL, which show by interview or case study how controllers are contributing to the financial stability and growth of their companies. Now available in an exciting 2-color format, 20 pages, with a monthly Profile that details the achievements of a particularly successful financial executive and gives readers insights into duplicating that success.
February 2009 - Table of Contents
Measures of prescription drug costs from pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), as well as their data on cost sharing, offer a useful frame of reference to controllers who are evaluating the cost their employer’s drug benefit.
Measures of prescription drug costs from pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), as well as their data on cost sharing, offer a useful frame of reference to controllers who are evaluating the cost their employer’s drug benefit.
Aggressive cost management is important during a downturn. At the same time, many of the aggressive actions that companies take in a recession do more harm than good.
The associated table shows budgeted HR expenditures per employee—that is, the HR budget divided by the number of employees served by HR—for companies in five workforce ranges. Developed by BNA, the parent of IOMA, and published in HR Department Benchmarks and Analysis 2008, this table shows striking differences in HR per-capita spending.
Benchmarks for Purchasing Department Spending in 20 Industries How Much Do Companies Spend to Make a Sale? New Metrics IT Budgets in 2009: New Priorities Emerge New Benchmarks for Workers’ Compensation Insurance Premiums Road Warrior Spending Norms in 100 Leading Travel Destinations Average Training Budgets Per FTE in 18 Industry Groups…
Overviews of compensation budgets seldom provide insight into the strategies companies actually use to retain employees at an affordable cost. Proof of this phenomenon is some commonplace data that Buck Consultants developed for its new survey, Compensation Planning for 2009. Here, research reflecting planning at roughly 200 respondents shows planned salary-budget increases for 2009 for four employee groups in the 25th percentile, median, and 75th percentile to be:
Many CEOs assume their companies can lower their health care costs by self-funding. Definition: With self-funded plans, an employer assumes direct financial responsibility for the costs of enrollee medical claims, protecting itself from very large claims with insured stop-loss coverage. In contrast, an employer contracts with a health plan, which assumes responsibility for the costs of claims, in a fully funded arrangement.
In most organizations, the task of reconciling bank data to the general ledger falls to the accounting supervisor, who delegates this responsibility to an accounting department staffer. As a result, controllers become involved in this activity only if there are recurring or material errors in the accounting data, which might require a phone call to their bankers.
The 2009 Salary Guide: Accounting and Finance, the current edition of a national salary survey from Robert Half International (RHI), uses a two-step technique to quantify the relationship between the location of a business and controller salaries. Here, step 1 of the RHI system is to establish national ranges for the starting salaries of controllers. According to employer size, these are:
Contain Health Benefit Costs With Simple Plan Modifications
Challenge: Modify health plan to combat cost increases.
Action: We looked for simple changes in our benefits plan that would keep costs from rising more than 8 percent. Our principal move was to couple an increase in deductibles with a contribution increase. This saved the company roughly $150,000. Formerly, we also included dental coverage with the cost of medical. Now, we charge additional amounts for it. Finally, we…
THE CONTROLLERS WORKSHOP: Feb. 3, Austin, Texas; Feb. 5, Sioux Falls, S.D.; Feb. 12, Ventura, Calif.; Feb. 17, Oak Brook, Ill., and San Jose, Calif.; Feb. 19, San Luis Obispo, Calif., and Milwaukee; Feb. 26, Concord, Calif. Contact: www.skillpath.com
AMA’S FINANCIAL MODELING AND FORECASTING WORKSHOP: Feb. 4-6, San Francisco; Feb. 11-13, New York City; March 16-18, Las Vegas; March 25-27, Washington, D.C. Contact: www.amanet.org …
The associated five-part table shows changes in manufacturing costs in the 12-month period ending in May 2007. Developed by the MPI Group and published in its study Manufacturing 2008 North America, these tables can serve as a frame of reference for controllers who wonder how cost trends in their businesses compare with competitors’.
In a new study, Supply Chain Intelligence, the Aberdeen Group analyzed the production and inventory-management practices of 138 manufacturers and then organized them into three classes: best-in-class (BiC—top 22 percent of its sample), average (middle 47 percent), and laggard (bottom 30 percent).
Premium benchmarks for four lines of property and casualty insurance, as well as their associated retained losses, are available to CR readers in the two associated tables. Developed by the Risk Insurance Management Society (RIMS), they show the following for nine sales ranges:
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