Our ABC workshops are designed to facilitate team working sessions to generate specific documents and deliverables for ABC projects. For more information, contact us at Workshops@HiltonConsulting.com, or click here to register your organization for this workshop series.

Getting Started—An ABC Overview Workshop for Managers and Team Participants. This two hour kick-off workshop provides a conceptual and visual overview of the ABC process. It gives examples of each deliverable to be generated during subsequent workshops, including the Activities Dictionary, the Cost Object Dictionary, Resource Cost Assignment Map, the Activity Assignment Map, the Activity Driver Dictionary, and the ABC Model..

Activities Workshop. This is a multi-session workshop that identifies the core and sustaining processes in your organization, then decomposes those processes into their various activities. Each activity is defined in terms of its tasks. The deliverable from this workshop is the Activities Dictionary for your organization. The process of defining and refining your organization's activities is iterative in nature, and requires several half-day sessions to complete the work. The number and duration of these sessions are tailored to the size and complexity of your organization..

Cost Object Workshop. This workshop defines your organization's cost objects—that is, your products, services, and customers—which consume or benefit from your organization's activity costs. Several sessions are usually required to define and refine the cost objects, depending on the size and complexity of your organization. The deliverable from this workshop is the Cost Object Dictionary..

Resource Cost Assignment Workshop. This workshop first identifies your organization's resource costs from your general ledger, then identifies the relationships between each resource cost and the activities that consume or benefit from those costs. Resource Drivers—or the quantifiable measures through which resource costs are assigned to activities—are identified and defined. The number and duration of workshop sessions required depend upon the size and complexity of your organization. The deliverables from this workshop are the Resource Cost Assignment Map, which documents the source and destination assignment paths between resource costs and activities, and the Resource Driver Dictionary..

Activity Cost Assignment Workshop. This workshop first distinguishes between activities that bear a direct relationship with cost objects and those that do not. Those activities that do not relate directly to one or more cost objects are assigned to other activities that do. Those direct activities are then mapped to the specific cost objects that consume or derive benefit from the direct activity. Activity Drivers—the quantifiable measures through which activity costs are assigned to cost objects—are identified and defined for each activity. This workshop will requires several sessions, depending on the size and complexity of the organization. The deliverables from this workshop are the Activity Driver Dictionary and the Activity Assignment Map..

Cost Driver Data Collection Workshop. The purpose of this half-day workshop is to prepare a plan for collecting the quantitative data associated with the previously identified resource drivers and activity drivers. For each driver, the sources and owners of the data are identified, the data collection methods and media are defined, and data documentation and control methods are identified, the data collection personnel are assigned, and a data collection schedule is established. .

Pre-modeling Review and Verification Workshop. This two-day workshop serves as a comprehensive review to verify the results of the previous workshops before building the ABC Model. Although changes can be readily made to the model both during and after its development, this workshop provides the opportunity to solidify consensus on the outcome of earlier workshops before the modeling process begins.