Chapter 3

Understanding the Business

Introduction

In the previous chapter we spent a lot of time considering the need for planning as we look to build the road to where we want to be. It was clear that we need to understand how each functional aspect of our organization will contribute to keeping our business in motion as we strive to achieve our strategic objectives. Among other things, this means that we need to know what the cost of our activities will be. But what do we mean by cost?

In the context of our organization, cost may be explained as the valuation in money terms of the effort, material, use of long-lived resources, consumption of utilities, wasted time, risks incurred, and opportunities foregone in making a product or service available ...

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