Welcome to Alta Via Consulting, LLC.
Our Philosophy
In a business world prolific with consulting firms, Alta Via Consulting promises a different experience. Most consulting firms are staffed with generalists who work to solve focused challenges with general solutions. As a niche provider, we specialize in addressing the specific challenges associated with advanced cost management solutions and supporting managers’ optimization process such as planning, control, and taking corrective and adaptive actions. We are passionate about what we do and proud of our record in this market segment.
Highlights...
From All of Us to All of You - Have a Very Happy 2009 Holiday Season!
12/15/2009
All of us at Alta Via Consulting want to offer a sincere 'Thank You' to all of our clients, partners and business associates for the past year and also extend to everyone around the globe a joyous and peaceful holiday season !
Happy New Year 2010 !
Just Published Part 3 of 3 in Debating the Principles Series
09/25/2009
The third article in the Debating the Principles series titled, Debating the Principles: ABC and Its Dominant Principle of Work by Anton van der Merwe has just been published in the September/October 2009 edition of Cost Management magazine. The series highlights questions and concerns with the principles that underlie the existing management accounting (MA) approaches, in particular pointing to issues related to the principles used and asking whether or not they are conducive to effective decision support. The first article in the series looked at the Theory of Constraints (TOC): the Scientific Method and its use of relevance as a guiding principle. The second paper dealt with the principles in Lean accounting and was titled: Asking Questions of Lean Accounting, it was also published in Cost Management (September/October 2008 edition). The third article in the series concerns Activity-based Costing including the recently revised Time-driven ABC and in particular the dominance of the principle of work in ABC. To access a copy of the article please visit the Alta Via Library.
Alta Via With myDials™ Targets Health Care Industry
08/21/2009
On August 11, 2009 Alta Via Consulting together with myDials™ presented a webinar called Performance Optimization in Healthcare: Making Profitability Visible and Managing It. This webinar targeted the health care industry and highlighted how to improve upon the traditional costing approach. By using Resource Consumption Accounting as the costing foundation and myDials™ as the front end Dashboard – its visualization capabilities will cater to both the C-Suite level executives and individual operations managers, who need critical and timely costing information with drill-down functionality. To download the webinar (approx. 50 min.) please click here.
Alta Via Consulting Assists With New IFAC International Good Practice Guidance Publication
08/12/2009
The Professional Accountants in Business (PAIB) Committee of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), has just released its International Good Practice Guidance (IGPG) publication, Evaluating and Improving Costing in Organizations with the help of task force members Anton van der Merwe, Principle of Alta Via Consulting, Larry White, RCA Institute Executive Director and Northern Illinois University’s managerial accounting professor Dr. B.Douglas Clinton. Their contributions focused on providing significant insights to working with universal costing principles and how Resource Consumption Accounting offers organizations the greatest level of accuracy and visibility for managerial accounting information (see pages 19 & 25; Costing Levels Maturity model). We would like to thank IFAC for allowing us the opportunity to contribute to this international guidance paper and “how better costing can result in better management decision-making”.
IFAC's IGPG publication Evaluating and Improving Costing in Organizations can be downloaded here. Costing Levels Maturity model can be viewed here.
Alta Via’s Sponsored Webcast Provided Excellent Forum for RCA Q&A’s
08/03/2009
Resource Consumption Accounting: Linking Operations and Finance to Drive Business Performance webinar held July 16 was well received and provided an excellent opportunity for thoughtful questions asked by participants in the Q&A portion of the webcast. According to Larry White, Executive Director for the RCA Institute, “The webcast with MESA demonstrated the need by operations managers for greater insights and participation into the determination of costs in their organization”. Mr. White elaborated, “Too often, cost information is based on information for GAAP financial statements, which simply aren't designed to meet the decision making needs of managers inside an organization”. A transcript of the Q&A’s, answered by Larry White, Wolfgang Doeller from macs Controlling™ and Mark Arrieri, Controller, US Technical Products from Neenah Paper, offers valuable insight and is provided courtesy of the RCA Institute. To view the Q&A's and additional RCA information click here.
Jedox AG Whitepaper Released
07/21/2009
Alta Via’s business associate Jedox Enterprise Spreadsheets has published a Whitepaper that answers many questions about the evolution of business intelligence (BI) and how this open-source application can help your organization. Insightful diagrams shows the PALO overview, components of the PALO BI suite, PALO ETL-(extract, transform, load) Server Architecture and additional information detailing ‘before & after’ scenarios on how this Excel-Add-In has been realized at different corporations. This Whitepaper is a must-read whether you have downloaded or intend to download the PALO application. To access the Jedox Whitepaper, click here (Note: Please scroll down once pdf loads).
Alta Via's 2009 Service Project Completed !
07/20/2009
Alta Via has just completed our latest service project on the Cottonwood Flats near Chinle, Arizona on the Navajo Nation. From July 12 to July 16, we worked in conjunction with WorldServants to complete several construction projects for the Tselani-Cottonwood Chapter House community. We also took time to connect with the Navajo community by holding a Kid’s Club every day which included playing Frisbee, soccer, singing and making various crafts with the children each morning. To learn more about our service projects...
Testimonial for Jedox/PALO open-source software
07/01/2009
Alta Via Consulting assisted Vonco Products, Inc. with designing and implementing the Jedox/PALO software for their business spreadsheet requirements. Vonco, a manufacturer for thermoplastic custom packaging has been in operation since 1955 and is located in Lake Villa a northwestern suburb of Chicago. After their data had been imported and configured in the PALO model, John LaRoi, VP and General Manager of Vonco, commented, "We needed real time labor reporting and business analytics; and we were tired of living in the past with integrating massive spreadsheets from multiple sources. PALO is helping us get there." To learn more about Jedox...
Professional Accountants in Business (PAIB) Acknowledges Benefits of RCA in Sustainability Framework
06/30/2009
The International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), through one of its independent international standard-setting boards, released a Sustainability Framework that has generated a record 33,000 page views since its launch in February '09. In this web-based document, the Professional Accountants in Business (PAIB) committee members have recognized and cited Resource Consumption Accounting (RCA) as one of the key ways to help organizations “improve their understanding of environmental (and social) costs through their costing systems and models”. The RCA reference can be found under the sub-heading Improving Information Flows to Support Decisions under the Internal Management area of the Framework. The committee informs readers that proper cost allocation can be built "directly into the cost accounting system" and RCA is an alternative that offers this functionality. To learn more about RCA…
Announcing New Jedox Training Sessions
06/15/2009
Alta Via Consulting in conjunction with Jedox will begin Training Sessions for PALO, one of the leading commercial open-source BI solutions for corporate performance management. PALO was launched in the North American market this past February ’09, and this OLAP-based planning, analysis and reporting Tool reduces spreadsheet chaos by integrating seamlessly with spreadsheet software (i.e. MS-Excel). Training sessions begin in August 2009, for both Beginners and Advanced PALO users. To learn more about Jedox Training Sessions...
Past Highlights...
