Strategic Cost Management Assignment Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

Strategic Cost Management Assignment Case Solution

Activity Based Costing System

Activity Based Costing is said to be an important tool to determine the cost of various resources which would act as the overheads of the business operations as the use of machine setup costs, labor overhead costs, processing costs and other activity costs that would allow maintaining the overheads of the business under control. However, under the approach, a company would be able to manage its resources effectively due to the fact that every activity would be critically evaluated under the cost and the company would try to reduce it with certain results involved the increase the costing system that allows decreasing the sales and profits of the business (Encyclopedia, Business; 2016). Therefore,this tool is the most successful for operations as it divides the costs into various activities as compared to traditional level, which is not good for the operational benefits if the system comprises of heavy operational activities. Being a CFO, I would analyze different impacts that may increase the firm's profitability overtime, and these are given below:

  • With its use, it can measure the ongoing costs that would have an impact on the business operations and as a result, it would provide the necessary changes to reduce the cost.
  • It is also helpful for determining the customer profitability because it sorts out various costs into different levels and identifies which customer would generate earnings from the associate activities.
  • It handles distribution cost effectively and makes certain decisions in order to alter the level of channels used.
  • Make decisions about make or purchase the product, which means that if the cost is outsourced then what would be the additional costs associated with it and they would have to be eliminated under the shifting towards the in-house manufacturing process.
  • Give a picture to the marketing managers regarding the minimum price that should be offered in order to sustain the growth; this can be done by determining which overhead cost should be eliminated which would have an impact on increasing prices.

Balance Scorecard in business

Balance scorecard is the tool used to assess the company's strategic performance measure that defines four main functions to critically evaluate and then score them in order to implement the need for change to increase the performance overtime. Therefore, in a business, the function can be used to revitalize the company's structure or to increase the size of operations according to the industrial demand. However, the factors involve the use of objectives and measures that would be considered as a baseline to follow the functions and to score with the relevancy of the measures that would increase the company's profitability in the future. So according to the perspective of CEO, there may be various effects on the company's future performance related to the vision or mission of the company.

  • The first impact involves the inappropriate use of measures that would not match with their objectives due to the internal issues involved by the company.
  • Every company cannot implement all the strategies and objectives, therefore some factors would not be executed due to internal or external barriers.
  • Every department’s management has its mindset and objectives to run the department. Therefore, all the objectives in the scorecard cannot be achieved in a particular period.
  • The company would also change its scorecard if the external conditions were not matched with it such as economic downturn or increasing competition.
  • The net score predicted by the company would not be matched with the actual score due to the internal conflicts among the board of directors under a different mindset............................                                                                                                      This is just a sample partial case solution. Please place the order on the website to order your own originally done case solution.
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