Английский язык. Практический курс для решения бизнес-задач
Шрифт:
Unfortunately, many companies cannot accurately decompose their aggregate marketing, technical, service, and administrative costs into the cost of serving individual customers. Either they treat all such costs as fixed-period costs and don’t drive them to the customer level, or they use inaccurate methods, such as allocating a flat percentage of sales revenue to each customer to cover indirect «below-the-line» expenses.
The remedy to this situation is to apply activity-based costing (ABC) to accurately assign an organization’s indirect expenses to customers. Many companies, however, have tried ABC at some time during the past twenty years and abandoned it because it did not capture the complexity of their operations, took too long to implement, and was too expensive to build and maintain. Fortunately, a new approach is now available that is far simpler and much more powerful than traditional ABC.
«Time-driven» ABC requires obtaining information on two parameters: the cost per hour of each group of resources performing work; and the unit times spent on these resources by specific activities for products, services, and customers. For example, if a customer support department has a cost of $70 per hour, and a particular transaction for a customer takes 24 minutes (0.4 hours), the cost of this transaction for this customer is $28. The end result is the ability to measure individual customer profitability accurately and in a system that is easy to implement and inexpensive to maintain and update.
The Payoff: BSC Customer Profitability Metrics
The ability to measure profitability at the individual customer level allows companies to consider new customer profitability metrics such as
BSC customer profitability metrics are also highly actionable. If a company finds that an important customer is unprofitable, it should first look internally to see how it can improve its internal processes to lower the cost-to-serve. After all, we can’t expect customers to pay for our inefficiencies. For example, if important customers are migrating to smaller order sizes, the company can focus on reducing setup and order handling costs. The company can ask the customer to use electronic channels, such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and the Internet, that greatly lower the cost of processing large quantities of small customer orders.
Customized pricing policies should be at the heart of any strategy to manage customer profitability. The company can set a base price for a standard product or service, with standard packaging, delivery, and payment. The company also provides customers with a menu of options representing variations from the standard order, such as a customized product or service, special packaging, expedited delivery, or extended credit terms. Each menu item has a price that at least covers its cost, as measured by the ABC model, so the company no longer suffers losses from offering customized services. The menu prices also motivate customers to shift their purchasing and delivery patterns in ways that lower total costs to the benefit of the company and its customers.
Scorecard measures of the incidence of unprofitable customers and the magnitude of losses from unprofitable relationships focus the organization on managing customers for profits, not just for sales – thus making the customer focus align with financial objectives.
Source: Robert S. Kaplan, Balanced Scorecard Report,
August 25, 2005.
Essential Vocabulary
1.property, plant and equipment (PPE) –
2. financial accounting system – система финансового учета
3. embed v – вставлять, укреплять; врезаться, укладывать; внедрять
4. balanced scorecard – сбалансированная система показателей
5. perspective n – перспектива, вид, вид на будущее; угол зрения
6. outcome n – результат, последствие, исход, выход
7. Total Quality Management (TQM) – система тотального управления качеством
8.throughput n – пропускная способность, производительность
9. operating income – операционная прибыль
10. return on capital employed (ROCE) – доходность примененного капитала
11. economic value added (EVA) – экономическая добавленная ценность
12. zero defects – бездефектный
13. shield n – щит (напр. налоговый), защита
shield v – защищать, прикрывать, спасать, отвратить
14. cascade n – каскад
cascade v – спускать вниз по принципу каскада
15. track n – след, остаток, признак; образ жизни; тропа, цепь, ряд; выслеживание, преследование, отслеживание
tracking n – слежение, отслеживание
track v – следить, выслеживать, оставлять следы, прокладывать путь
16. key performance indicators (KPI) – ключевые показатели деятельности
17. overload n – перегрузка
overload v – форсировать режим, перегружать
18. alignment n – расположение по одной линии, выравнивание, совпадение
align v – располагать по одной линии, равняться, выравнивать; наводить
19. accountability n – отчетность, подотчетность; расчет; ответственность
accountable a – отчетный, подотчетный
20. top down – сверху вниз
21. leverage n – леверидж, (финансовый) рычаг
leverage v – использовать как рычаг или двигатель, использовать как средство достижения цели
22. selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses – торговые, общие и административные расходы
23. fixed cost – постоянные затраты