Cost Analysis and a correct imputation of costs allow us to calculate the contribution margin for each product or family of products, for each business unit and for the company as a whole; the contribution margin is what makes possible for the company to cover overhead expenses, financial charges, taxes and profits.

Only a Company that knows exactly its contribution margins can determine, within the budget, the price-quantity equilibrium optimal for the achievement of its economic goals, conditionally to its own potential and to the constraints of the market.

A budget is at first a provisional tool, which aims to foresee the possible future impact of internal and external events on the Company's overall trend.

After this, implementing a budget forces a growth of the Company's culture in the direction of a higher level of engagement of the workforce. Every employee, according to their skills, must partecipate in the preparation of each single operating budget (sales budget, production budget, capital expenditure budget, financial budget, …) which will form the overall Company's budget.

In this view, the budget becomes a tool for developing a "think to the future" mindset, enabling to cope with future events in a more conscious, thus more confident way; A budget helps the Company to allocate its resources in the best possible way, avoiding elements of waste and cutting the costs that don't add any value for customers, as they don't improve in any way the COmpany's processes and/or products.

An in-depth cost evaluation requires an attentive analysis of the organisational and decision making processes, in order to achieve two complementary results:

• continuous improvement of the processes as a coordinated flow of activities aimed to the accomplishments of set goals. Breaking down a process into elementary steps, it is possible to find the points of weakness, and to remove the causes of these possible faults, in an effort to simplify, rationalise and structure the overall organisation.
  
  
• Responsibility assignment to personell within the process: in order to empower and motivate every member of the staff, developing a positive company culture, each individual's tasks and responsibilities will be clearly singled out and defined. This is of paramount importance for the management to plan and put in practice corrective and positive actions whenever necessary. Only if every member of the organization knows exactly their responsibilities and their goals, a process of skill promotion can take effectively place, and represent a keystone for the succesful growth of the company.