If you have all your operating costs in one large bucket, like administrative costs, break it up into meaningful sections.  Among the departments you may consider are:
•    Product or service development or research and development- depending on your business or stage, these could be very large and very critical costs.  It shows you how much you are spending for the future versus operating the present.
•    Sales and marketing- keep track of the more fixed costs here, which do not vary automatically with sales.
•    Variable selling costs- commissions, credit card fees, incentive plans, royalties, advertising.  These can be split separately when significant.  You see how these change with sales.  Meanwhile, you keep a better focus on more fixed marketing and sales costs.
•    Information technology- this has gotten bigger share of spending, first with personal computers (PC’s) and then the Internet.
•    Outside services- if you spend a lot of money on attorneys, consultants, accountants and others, split this out.
•    Customer service- this might be significant enough to split out.  It could be a sign of how well you are or are not taking care of your customers.
•    Personnel costs- you may still want to see your total personnel costs separately.  You could still show the allocation out to different departments.  For example, you could show total fringe costs so you see what you are paying for benefits, then allocate these costs to marketing, IT, etc.
•    General administrative- everything else goes in here.  However, if the total is still a big number, consider splitting it out or seeing what should be allocated to other departments.

If you already have operating costs split, good for you.  Take a look however and make sure:

•    See if any one area, like administrative, has grown to a large number.  As you grow, you may incur expenses in areas you never had to spend much on before.  It could be time to split those costs out into a separate area.
•    Do you have costs in administrative or personnel areas that really need to be moved or allocated out to other departments?  Common ones that are missed are payroll taxes and fringes.  If not allocated, you understate your total personnel costs in each department.

If you make some changes, do you go back?  I suggest you go back to the past year.  That way you have a meaningful comparison between years.  You can spot the trends better.  Your accountant or controller may balk at this, but go ahead and have them do it.  You are not changing your total operating expenses last year; you are just regrouping these costs.  You want to see trends now instead of waiting for a year to have more history. 

Now that you have your operating costs split out, use them.

•    If you have a one page financial summary, consider splitting out the operating costs into the departments you set up.
•    Look at your budget with the same groupings in operating expenses.
•    Modify your dashboards if you have one.  You may want to track certain key operating costs weekly, rather than wait for month end.
•    Notice the trends by department in your monthly financials.  Then dive deeper into departments where costs are climbing.  For example, see if IT costs are holding steady or climbing.  If growing, look at the detail and see where.