Day 1: Cost Architecture and Cost Behavior

Understanding the Cost Base

• Separate indirect fixed and variable costs
• Identify committed and discretionary spending
• Connect cost categories with management decisions
• Build cost map for one operation

Cost Behavior and Drivers

• Estimate cost response to activity levels
• Identify drivers creating complexity and consumption
• Distinguish correlation from usable cost driver
• Test cost relationship using operational data

Contribution and Decision Economics

• Calculate contribution by product/service/channel
• Use relevant cost in short-horizon decisions
• Exclude unavoidable costs from decision logic
• Analyze a pricing or make-buy case

Day 2: Activity Costing and Visibility

Activity-Based Costing Logic

• Map resources into activities/cost objects
• Select drivers reflecting resource consumption
• Allocate shared cost without false precision
• Build activity-cost view for a service

Customer, Product, and Process Cost

• Expose cost-to-serve differences across segments
• Identify products consuming disproportionate support
• Trace rework and exceptions into cost
• Develop profitability view beyond gross revenue

Cost Transparency for Managers

• Translate accounting categories into operating language
• Show cost drivers managers can influence
• Separate controllable and structural costs
• Design a concise cost dashboard

Day 3: Variance Diagnosis and Performance Drivers

Cost Variance Analysis

• Separate price, quantity, mix, efficiency effects
• Connect financial variance with operational events
• Avoid treating favorable variance as performance
• Explain one material variance with evidence

Productivity and Unit Economics

• Calculate cost per output/service unit
• Adjust interpretation for volume/capacity changes
• Identify underutilized capacity and its cost
• Compare unit economics across operating periods

Root Causes of Cost Pressure

• Trace overspend to process/policy drivers
• Identify complexity creating hidden cost
• Test whether causes explain observed data
• Build causal map for cost problem

Day 4: Cost Improvement Without Value Destruction

Improvement Opportunity Design

• Target waste/low-value activity, not percentages
• Estimate savings and implementation cost
• Check quality, risk, customer-experience effects
• Create improvement case for cost driver

Measuring Sustainable Savings

• Distinguish recurring savings from one-off deferral
• Prevent cost shifting across units/periods
• Define baseline and measurement rules
• Build a verified-savings calculation

Governance of Cost Actions

• Assign accountable owners to initiatives
• Set approval for service-capacity actions
• Review progress using financial/operating measures
• Escalate benefits that fail validation

Day 5: Financial Performance Improvement Laboratory

Strategic Improvement Portfolio

• Prioritize initiatives by value/feasibility/risk
• Sequence actions according to dependencies
• Balance short-term savings with structural improvement
• Assemble a cost-improvement portfolio

Tracking Practical Benefits

• Define baseline timing and evidence source
• Reconcile operational changes with financial results
• Separate external effects from initiative contribution
• Prepare a benefits realization view

Management Challenge Session

• Present the improvement portfolio to reviewers
• Defend assumptions behind expected savings
• Modify actions when service risk escalates
• Approve measures and review responsibilities

• Cost-behavior and activity-costing exercises using operating data
• Contribution and variance cases tied to management choices
• Improvement designs balancing savings with service and risk
• A benefits review panel validating a portfolio of cost actions