| Information Technology Company, IT Company for short, has a twenty years development period with high speed business increase. They are now facing a situation that change their operating mode from more innovation-less management to more management focus. Clear market segments and normal profits trend make IT companies to do more improvements on not only innovation but also some basic things in company operation management. Cost management, as a key part in enterprise financial management, has crucial influence to the profitability and core competence to a company, so cost management and control will be one of the biggest problems IT companies need to deal with.IT companies has their specific features in their cost management and control, because their business type and products are much different with more traditional enterprises. Their market change faster, their customer change faster, also their products faced more on customized needs. From the studies on previous theories and practices, I have found that most studies is focus on manufacturing industries, not on the management in IT companies, so it need some new ideas in my researching on the cost management in IT companies.In my article, I have made details analysis on the cost management and control in IT companies, showed the specific business and management characters, and take BW as an example (BW is a typical IT company, founded in US, is a midsize global company. BW come to China in the1990s). I have summarized the common problems in IT companies cost management and control, and set the cost model then study on some details points:cost structure optimization, asset quality analysis, the specific position on intellectual property management, and the influence about the marketing model and structure. From the analysis above, I have presented a cost management method which fit for the IT companies’business, and subdivided the cost to directed and undirected cost, then divided the directed cost to fixed cost and variable cost. Variable cost can also divided into variable controllable cost and variable uncontrollable cost. My cost management and control solution is based on the analysis and BW real business which including the optimized cost structure and some data in experience, also I have showed the cost effect prediction and the needs to improve the basic cost management work. My study is to enrich the theories and methods to the cost management and control, and I hope it can be a good reference to other IT companies for their cost management and control. |
