Cost Driver
A cost driver is a structural factor which determines the cost of an activity or a change in its cost. The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants defines a cost driver as: although a different meaning is assigned to the term by the business writer Michael Porter, who states: Approaches Porter's approach defines a "cost driver" not just as a simple ''variable in a function'', but as something that ''changes the function'' itself. For example, the driver "economy of scale" leads to different costs per unit for different scales of operation (a small cargo vessel is more expensive per unit than a large bulk carrier), and the driver "capacity utilisation" leads to greater costs per unit if the capacity is under-utilised and lower costs per unit is the utilisation is high. In general, the cost driver for short term indirect variable costs may be the volume of output/activity; but for long term indirect variable costs, the cost drivers will not be related to volume of output/acti ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chartered Institute Of Management Accountants
The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) is the global professional management accounting body, based in the United Kingdom. CIMA offers training and qualification in management accountancy and related subjects. It is focused on accountants working in industry and provides ongoing support and training for members. CIMA is one of the professional associations for accountants in the UK and Ireland. Its particular emphasis is on developing the management accounting profession. CIMA is the largest and the oldest management accounting body in the world, with 115,000 members and 6,500 CGMA students in 2020. The Chartered Global Management Accountant ( CGMA) qualification has the academic standing of a master's degree in the UK (recognised at Level 7 by NARIC). History CIMA was formed in March 1919, as the Institute of Cost and Works Accountants, by a group of legal professionals and businessmen who wanted to develop an approach to accounting that would meet the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Customer Service
Customer service is the assistance and advice provided by a company to those who buy or use its products or services, either in person or remotely. Customer service is often practiced in a way that reflects the strategies and values of a firm, and levels vary according to the industry. Good quality customer service is usually measured through customer retention. Successful customer service interactions are dependent on employees "who can adjust themselves to the personality of the customer". Customer service for some firms is part of the firm's intangible assets and can differentiate it from others in the industry. One good customer service experience can change the entire perception a customer holds towards the organization. It is expected that AI-based chatbots will significantly impact customer service and call centre roles and will increase productivity substantially. Many organisations have already adopted AI chatbots to improve their customer service experience.Krishnan, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Management Accounting
In management accounting or managerial accounting, managers use accounting information in decision-making and to assist in the management and performance of their control functions. Definition One simple definition of management accounting is the provision of financial and non-financial decision-making information to managers. In other words, management accounting helps the directors inside an organization to make decisions. This is the way toward distinguishing, examining, deciphering and imparting data to supervisors to help accomplish business goals. The information gathered includes all fields of accounting that educates the administration regarding business tasks identifying with the financial expenses and decisions made by the organization. Accountants use plans to measure the overall strategy of operations within the organization. According to the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA), "Management accounting is a profession that involves partnering in management decisi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Value Chain
A value chain is a progression of activities that a business or firm performs in order to deliver goods and services of Value (economics), value to an end customer. The concept comes from the field of business management and was first described by Michael Porter in his 1985 best-seller, ''Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance''. According to the OECD Secretary-General , the emergence of global value chains (GVCs) in the late 1990s provided a catalyst for accelerated change in the landscape of international investment and trade, with major, far-reaching consequences on governments as well as enterprises . Role of the business unit According to Porter, the appropriate level for constructing a value chain is the business unit within a business,Michael E. Porter (1985) Competitive advantage: creating and sustaining superior performance. The Free Press not a division (business), business division or the company as a whole. Porter is concerned that analy ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Variable Cost
Variable costs are costs that change as the quantity of the good or service that a business produces changes.Garrison, Noreen, Brewer. Ch 2 - Managerial Accounting and Costs Concepts, pp 48 Variable costs are the sum of marginal costs over all units produced. They can also be considered normal costs. Fixed costs and variable costs make up the two components of total cost. Direct costs are costs that can easily be associated with a particular cost object.Garrison, Noreen, Brewer. Ch 2 - Managerial Accounting and Costs Concepts, pp 51 However, not all variable costs are direct costs. For example, variable manufacturing overhead costs are variable costs that are indirect costs, not direct costs. Variable costs are sometimes called unit-level costs as they vary with the number of units produced. Direct labor and overhead are often called conversion cost,Garrison, Noreen, Brewer. Ch 2 - Managerial Accounting and Costs Concepts, pp 39 while direct material and direct labor are oft ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Activity-based Costing
Activity-based costing (ABC) is a costing method that identifies activities in an organization and assigns the cost of each activity to all products and services according to the actual consumption by each. Therefore, this model assigns more indirect costs ( overhead) into direct costs compared to conventional costing. The UK's Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), defines ABC as an approach to the costing and monitoring of activities which involves tracing resource consumption and costing final outputs. Resources are assigned to activities, and activities to cost objects based on consumption estimates. The latter utilize cost drivers to attach activity costs to outputs. The Institute of Cost Accountants of India says, ABC systems calculate the costs of individual activities and assign costs to cost objects such as products and services on the basis of the activities undertaken to produce each product or services. It accurately identifies sources of profit and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Srikant Datar
Srikant Datar is an Indian-American economist and the Dean of Harvard Business School. At Harvard, he concurrently serves as the Arthur Lowes Dickinson Professor of Business Administration. Early life and education Datar attended the Cathedral and John Connon School in Mumbai. He graduated with distinction in mathematics and economics from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, St. Xavier's College, University of Mumbai in 1973. At IIM Ahmedabad, he was a gold medalist and the General Secretary of the Student's Council (1977–78). He is a chartered accountant and holds two master's degrees in economics and statistics and a doctorate in accounting from Stanford University. Additionally, he has also completed the ICWA (Institute of Cost and Works Accountant) Course. Career Since 2015, he has been faculty chair of the Harvard Innovation Labs and Senior Associate Dean for University Affairs at Harvard Business School. He is a member of the boards of directors of ICF International, Stryke ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Charles T
Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English and French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was "free man". The Old English descendant of this word was '' Ċearl'' or ''Ċeorl'', as the name of King Cearl of Mercia, that disappeared after the Norman conquest of England. The name was notably borne by Charlemagne (Charles the Great), and was at the time Latinized as ''Karolus'' (as in ''Vita Karoli Magni''), later also as '' Carolus''. Etymology The name's etymology is a Common Germanic noun ''*karilaz'' meaning "free man", which survives in English as churl (James (wikt:Appendix:Proto-Indo-European/ǵerh₂-">ĝer-, where the ĝ is a palatal consonant, meaning "to rub; to be old; grain." An old man has been worn away and is now grey with age. In some Slavic languages, the name ''Drago (given name), Drago'' (and variants: ''Dragom ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Marketing
Marketing is the act of acquiring, satisfying and retaining customers. It is one of the primary components of Business administration, business management and commerce. Marketing is usually conducted by the seller, typically a retailer or manufacturer. Products can be marketed to other businesses (B2B Marketing, B2B) or directly to consumers (B2C). Sometimes tasks are contracted to dedicated marketing firms, like a Media agency, media, market research, or advertising agency. Sometimes, a trade association or government agency (such as the Agricultural Marketing Service) advertises on behalf of an entire industry or locality, often a specific type of food (e.g. Got Milk?), food from a specific area, or a city or region as a tourism destination. Market orientations are philosophies concerning the factors that should go into market planning. The marketing mix, which outlines the specifics of the product and how it will be sold, including the channels that will be used to adverti ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Michael Porter
Michael Eugene Porter (born May 23, 1947) is an American businessman and professor at Harvard Business School. He was one of the founders of the consulting firm The Monitor Group (now part of Deloitte) and FSG, a social impact consultancy. He is credited with creating Porter's five forces analysis, a widely used management framework. He is generally regarded as the father of the modern strategy field. He is also regarded as one of the world's most influential thinkers on management and competitiveness as well as one of the most influential business strategists. His work has been recognized by governments, non-governmental organizations and universities. Early life and education Michael Porter's father was a civil engineer and Georgia Tech graduate who had also gone on to a career as an army officer. During Porter's childhood, his family moved around the United States, and to France and Canada. This contributed to Porter's interest in understanding the economic development ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cost Pool
Cost pools is an accounting term that refers to groups of accounts serving to express the cost of goods and service allocatable within a business or manufacturing organization. The principle behind the pool is to correlate direct and indirect costs with a specified cost driver, so to find out the total sum of expenses related to the manufacture of a product. While the exact construction cost pools differs, most companies choose to form numerical based sequences that can then be allocated to the desired project. More frequently, a single cost pool will have up to ten digits in the sequence, with certain groups of those digits used to relate back to the project or something else. Cost pool accounts consists of ten digits. The first three digits of the cost pool categorize a particular branches, the next three assign the project itown, and the final four digits assign a specific sub-group of expenses of the project, such as clerical costs. Cost pools consists of overhead costs admin ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |