Business and financial modeling still lags far behind the tools available off the shelf. Concepts such as Activity Based Management, the Balanced Score Card, Business Alignment, and Lean Accounting are still just concepts, seldom understood and applied in a practical manner. Our research may help.

Lean Accounting is the first really new concept in accounting in years, where key progress includes double-entry bookkeeping (Middle Ages), Standard Financial Statements (early Nineteenth Century), overhead allocation (early Twentieth Century), and …

Essentials of Corporate Finance

If you really want to learn the disciplines and techniques of finance, this college text is an excellent source. It's relatively readable and very thorough. We wish the Primus version (an extract that focuses on a subset of knowledge) had better cross-reference indices - it can be a little frustrating for use as a reference - but we like the many examples and web research suggestions.

We have used this textbook at Daniel Webster College, supplemented with ROI-Team training modules, with excellent results.

Practical Lean Accounting: A Proven System for Measuring and Managing the Lean Enterprise

Brian Maskell and Bruce Baggaley have created a genuinely useful step-by-step guide to bringing lean accounting concepts to life in this well-organized book and included CD-ROM. Starting with the maturity grid that helps determine where to start, the reader gets a rich introduction to lean operations for context and a complete set of tools to structure and implement lean accounting. If your company is committed to lean, this 2004 book is today's best bet to get the accounting team positioned as lean leaders rather than bewildered followers.

Cost & Effect: Using Integrated Cost Systems to Drive Profitability and Performance

Robert Kaplan and Robin Cooper have written this defining work (in 1998, but still fresh) on activity based cost management, demonstrating its power in driving business performance. From prioritizing business improvements to choosing low-cost suppliers to designing the most profitable product set, this book describes the key role costing plays. While the book is written for a wide audience of executives, managers, and business professionals, its concepts are critical basic knowledge for accounting and financial workers.

Computer: A History of the Information Machine (The Sloan Technology Series)

Before the next computer generation, when all our combined memory of how we arrived at it may be lost, we should do another reading of Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray's engaging and well-researched 1996 book. Starting in the early 1800's, when computers were well-organized human beings (and you thought YOU work in a cubicle!), the narrative moves along smartly to the early days of the Internet (remember the '90's?). Along the way, you'll meet the fascinating, brilliant eccentric folks on whose shoulders we all stand. This is fun reading for history buffs, and even provides good insights into how the magic machines work.

The Power of Alignment : How Great Companies Stay Centered and Accomplish Extraordinary Things

This one is more for the executive team, but its common-sense vision of alignment axes is as useful for workers whip-sawed by misalignment as for the “C“ team trying to turn complex organizations into integrated, effective teams. George Labovitz and Victor Rosansky use solid analogies and examples to construct a model so compelling that the Chairman of FedEx opined, “alignment is the essence of management.“

Excel Power Programming with VBA

John Walkenbach has written many excellent "how to" books on Excel and VBA. This one contains a wealth of information for the serious VBA programmer. It's a little difficult as either textbook or reference, due to the complexity of VBA itself, but with patience you're likely to find anything you need to do anything VBA is capable of.

Microsoft Small Business Accounting 2006

Quick Books pretty much had the field to themselves until this Microsoft entry. It's limited to small businesses with no more than 25 employees, but if it fits, it's a pretty sharp accounting package with very nice reporting and analysis features.

Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies, Fourth Edition

What REALLY drives the stock value of a company? McKinsey & Company has updated their best seller (in 2005), so it includes some insightrs into the Internet bubble along with its uncommon wisdom applied to traditional businesses. It's a basic source for analysts who want to increase their air time with the executive team - or join it.

Valuation has a companion workbook that provides step-by-step exercises and texts to ensure you master the topic.