Implementing Activity Based Costing

Statements on Management Accounting
STRATEGIC COST MANAGEMENT
TITLE
Implementing
Activity-Based Costing
CREDITS
IMA would like to acknowledge the work of Gary Cokins
([email protected]),performance management solutions manager, SAS, on whose work this SMA is based
and Raef Lawson, research director, IMA, who served as
reviewer.
Published by
Institute of Management Accountants
10 Paragon Drive
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www.imanet.org
2006 Institute of Management Accounting
Statements on Management Accounting

Implementing Activity-Based Costing

TABLE OF CONTENTS
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
RationaleWhat Leads to Interest

in ABC? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Defining ABC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
The Role of the Management Accountant .4
Implementing ABC Involves Behavioral
Change Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
Planning for an ABC Implementation . . . . .6
VII. Initial Design of the ABC System . . . . . . .8

VIII. Strategic vs. Operational Cost
Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
IX. Customer Profitability Reporting . . . . . . .18
X. ABC Project Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
XI. Collecting ABC Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
XII. Implementing the Final ABC System . . .27
XIII. Ensuring Successful Use as a
Sustainable System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29
XIV. Commercial ABC Software
. . . . . . . . . .29
XV. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30

Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31
Exhibits
Exhibit 1:
Exhibit 2:
Exhibit 3:
Exhibit 4:
Exhibit 5:
Exhibit 6:
Exhibit 7:
Exhibit 8:
Exhibit 9:
Exhibit 10:
Exhibit 11:
Exhibit 12:
Exhibit 13:
Indirect Costs Are Displacing

Direct Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2
The Activity-Based Cost Management
Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9
Each Activity Has Its Own Activity
Driver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
Multi-Level Cost Assignment Flow .12
ABC Cost Assignment Network . . .14
Profitability Profile Using ABC
Profit Cliff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
Fully Traced Costs to a Cost
Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
ABC Profit Contribution Margin
Layering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
ABC Customer Profit & Loss
Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
Migrating Customers to Higher
Profitability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
Process View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
Final Cost Object View . . . . . . . . .26
ABC Rapid Prototyping with
Iterative Remodeling . . . . . . . . . .27
I . R AT I O N A L E W H AT L E A D S T O
INTEREST IN ABC?
There is a growing desire among organizations to
understand their costs and the behavior of factors that drive these costs. Yet there is confusion over how to go about understanding costs
and how to distinguish competing cost measurement methodologies (e.g., activity-based costing, standard costing, throughput accounting,
project accounting, target costing, etc.). The
result is that managers and employees are confused by mixed messages about which costs are
the correct ones. Upon closer inspection, the various costing methodologies do not necessarily
compete: they can coexist, be reconciled, and
blended.
In an increasingly competitive business environment, organizations seeking to maintain or
improve their competitiveness need cost information that is accurate and relevant. In the past,
companies planned and controlled their operations using accounting information that was
assumed to accurately reflect the costs of their
products and services (and, ideally, their channels
and customers as well). In fact, this was often not
the case. The costing systems of many companies, with their broad averaging allocation of indirect costs, masked by an illusion of precision,
were actually providing misleading information to
decision makers. This resulted in suboptimal decision making by these companies managers.
In order to overcome the over-generalizations of
traditional costing systems, with their excessively simplified cost allocations and resulting lack
of visibility for indirect costs, organizations have
been adopting activity-based costing (ABC) systems. These systems are based on cost modeling that traces an organizations expensesboth
direct and indirectto the products, services,
channels, and customers that cause those

expenses to be incurred.
Exhibit 1 illustrates one factor that has lead to
interest in ABC. Indirect expenses are displacing
the direct expenses that make products or deliver services to customers. When asked for the
cause of this displacement, most say that it is
because of technology, equipment, automation,
or computers. In other words, organizations are
automating what previously had been manual
jobs. But this is only a secondary factor for
explaining the shift in the type of organizational
expenses. The primary cause for the shift is the
gradual proliferation in the types of products and
service lines. Over the last few decades, most
organizations have been offering an increasingly
greater variety of products and services and
using more types of distribution and sales channels. In addition, organizations have been servicing more and different types of customers.
Introducing this greater variation and diversity
(i.e., heterogeneity) creates complexity, and
increasing complexity results in greater overhead
expenses. The fact that the overhead component
of expense is displacing the recurring labor
expense does not automatically mean that an
organization is becoming inefficient or bureaucratic. It simply means that a company is offering more variety to different types of customers.
The problem with traditional costing is that the
increasingly large amount of indirect expenses
continues to be allocated using allocation factors that are typically unrelated to what causes
the costs to be incurred. The consumption of
resources needs to be traced and assigned as
costs based on cause and effect relationships
and that is what ABC does.
Here is a simple way to understand the basic
principles of ABC. Imagine that you and three
friends go to a restaurant. You order a small
EXHIBIT 1. INDIRECT COSTS ARE DISPLACING DIRECT COSTS

Changes in Cost Structure
100%
Overhead
(indirect expense)
Cost
Components
Direct
Material
Trace
and assign,
not
allocate.
Direct (recurring) Labor

0%
1950s
Old-fashioned
1990s
Hierarchical
Integrated
Stages in the Evolution of Business

Source: Gary Cokins.
salad and they each order the most expensive

item on the menua prime rib steak. When the
server brings the bill, the others say, Lets split
the check evenly. How would you feel? You
would feel this is unfair and inequitable. This is
similar to the effect on the calculated cost of
many products and service lines in a traditional
cost accounting system where the accountants
take a large amount of indirect expenses and
allocate them as costs without any logic. There
is minimal or no relationship to how the products
or service lines uniquely consumed the expenses. This likely results in distorted product costs.
ABC avoids this problem. In the restaurant example, ABC is equivalent to the server providing
four individual checkseach patron is charged
for what he or she individually consumes.
Many organizations have evolved beyond using
ABC solely for obtaining more accurate and relevant costing information. For these companies,
the emphasis has shifted from ABC to ABM
activity-based management. These organizations

use an understanding of their cost driversthe
measures of activity that are causal factors in
the incurrence of costto improve their operations. They use their improved understanding of
their cost structure, which is now more highly visible, to proactively manage their resources to
enhance the key elements of value from their
customers perspective. (For more information,
see IMAs Statements on Management
Accounting (SMAs) Implementing Activity-Based
Management: Avoiding the Pitfalls and Tools and
Techniques for Implementing ABC/ABM.)
Organizations involved in business process
reengineering, quality improvement, and lean
management initiatives use both the financial
and nonfinancial insights from ABC as a
measurement system.
II. SCOPE
This SMA provides an overview of the approach
to designing and implementing an ABC system.
The principles contained in this SMA are applicable to any organization, regardless of size or
industry. It provides those considering implementing an ABC system with information regarding:
The roles and responsibilities of management
accountants in ABC projects;
The need for behavior change management
when implementing an ABC system;
How to design and implement an ABC system;
How to plan an ABC project implementation;
How to ensure sustainability of an ABC system;
and
How to evaluate ABC software.
The information in this SMA will enable the reader to design and implement a sustainable ABC
system that provides a greater understanding of
product and customer costs, business processes, and work activities. This understanding provides an organization with the means for making
better business decisions.
III. DEFINING ABC

Traditional costing methodologies and ABC differ
in the following way:
Traditional cost accounting techniques
allocate indirect expenses to products
(and to any cost object) based on characteristics of a single allocation factor that
is typically not causally related to the type
and level of work consumed.1 Traditional
cost allocation factors include the number of direct labor hours required to manufacture a unit, the cost of that direct
1 A cost object is a function, organizational subdivision, contract, product, or other work unit for which cost data is desired
and for which provision is made to accumulate and measure
the cost of processes, products, jobs, capitalized projects,
etc. Intermediate cost objects are internal to a company,
while final cost objects are products, standard service lines,
or the cost-to-serve customers that generally touch external
entities. Organizational sustaining final cost objects are those
not caused directly by suppliers, products, channels, or customers. Senior management and regulatory bodies are examples. Cost objects can be thought of as for what or for whom
work is done.
labor, the purchase cost of merchandise

resold, or the number of days occupied.
These are broad averages that do not
reflect causality for the indirect expenses.
The problem is that use of these allocation methods results in allocations that
vary with changes in the allocation basis.
ABC systems recognize that individual
products or customers do not consume
indirect expenses in those proportions.
Instead, they focus on the work activities
of people and equipment required to produce each product or provide each service, and their consumption of each of
those activities.
As an example of the cost distortion from applying broadly averaged overhead rates, consider a
semiconductor plant that once calculated its
product costs by taking direct labor and direct
material and then added 1600% of these costs
as an allocation of overhead costs. Compared to
this standard cost allocation method, however,
the companys various products consumed the
overhead very disproportionately. The result was
product cost distortions of over 500% relative to
the organizations beliefs. The profitability of the
companys various products and services was
very different from what it believed to be the
case.
ABC traces indirect costs (commonly called
overhead) to products, services, and customers by identifying resource and their costs,
the consumption of these resources by activities, and the performance of activities to produce output. Examples of resource expenses are
salaries, operating supplies, equipment depreciation, and electrical power. They represent the
capacity to perform work.
ABC gives visibility to work activities and their

costs. Activities are a group of tasks in the same
function that are governed by the same driver
and same intensity of resource consumption.
The activities performed by an organization are
identified using activity analysis. This involves
determining what activities are done within the
department, how many people perform the activities, how much time they spend performing the
activities, what resources are required to perform the activities, what operational data best
reflect the performance of the activities, and the
value of the activities to the organization.
With ABC, resources are traced to activities
using resource drivers; these are used to calculate the cost of each activity that consumes the
resources. Activity costs are then traced, using
activity drivers, to each product or service (i.e.,
cost object) that consumes a given activity. This
is done by determining how many units of activity output each cost object consumed during any
given period of time. (The topic of drivers can
be confusing; definitions and examples of drivers will be discussed in Section VII.)
ABC originated in the manufacturing sector, but
subsequent implementations by organizations in
virtually every sector of the economy have
demonstrated its universal applicability. For
example, many governmental units and companies in the financial services industry now use
ABC systems to determine customer profitability.
I V. T H E R O L E O F T H E
M A N A G E M E N T A C C O U N TA N T
As with any new management technique, buy-in
from the executive team is crucial to the implementation of an ABC system. Also essential is
the support of an organizations management
accounting staff. These professionals need to
understand that their existing costing system
which they have a vested interest in maintainingis most likely producing inaccurate and misleading costing information. It is essential that
adequate communication take place to demonstrate to the accounting staff that a better alternative existsone that provides operationalrelevant information and enhances the quality of
the information they provide to managers.
Management accountants can perform an important role in the design of an ABC system. Based
on their skills and training, they can help identify
what is appropriate for analysis (product, customer, process, etc.) and explain the probable
causes of an existing cost systems deficiencies.
In addition, based on their detailed knowledge of
the information in their companys costing information systems, they are uniquely qualified to
judge the level of aggregation appropriate to the
ABC costing system. They can use their understanding of costing methods to recommend
appropriate methodologies for the assignment of
costs to activities and cost objects. Finally, they
will be able to use their understanding of the
information and cost relationships to support
the system once it is implemented.
A few notes of caution and a qualifier: ABC calculates historical costs to provide insights,
understanding, and focus. ABC is basically full
absorption costing but without violating rules of
causality as is typically done with traditional cost
allocations of indirect expenses. But decisions
impact the future. To validate the expected financial impact of a decision, one should apply managerial economics that involve marginal cost
analysis that classifies the behavior of expenses
with respect to changes in mix and volumes as
being variable, semi-variable, step-fixed, or fixed
(or include that capability in the ABC model).
Such analysis should also distinguish the difference between capacity provided and capacity
used and consider the presence of unused and

available capacity. Full absorption costing in an
ABC context does not mean that 100% of a periods expenses are traced to customer-related
products, services, and channels. Costs not
related to customers, including unused capacity
expenses, are ideally traced to a final cost object
called business sustaining costs (described in
Section VII).
When the impact of decisions are less obvious
and require validation, marginal cost analysis
methods (such as resource consumption
accounting and activity-based resource planning)
or capital investment analysis using discounted
cash flow (DCF) should be applied. With ABC,
marginal cost analysis and capital justification
techniques apply various versions of past period
costs that can be layered according to which
resource expenses are to be included or excluded depending on the type of decision being made
and the planning horizon. Determining which
expenses to include or not in decision analysis
can be judgmental, such as the cost of unused
capacity. This SMA addresses how to more accurately calculate what something costs today and
gives insight as to what expenses may be
required in the future based on various forecasts.
It is the role of management accountants to
determine which assumptions to make as they
support their organization in decision analysis.
Another caution about limitations of ABC data
involves life-cycle costing. The descriptive view of
ABC typically covers a time period such as a
month, quarter, or year. Products and customers,
however, pass through life cycles. ABC may
measure unusually high product costs during a
products early stages, when it requires attention
to stabilize production. The product may appear
unprofitable today but be profitable in the future
as those costs subside. The lesson here is that
ABC does not calculate the multi-period costs

across a life cycle, but its cost snapshots during
each period can be used as inputs for life-cycle
costing.
V. I M P L E M E N T I N G A B C
I N VO LV E S B E H AV I O R A L
CHANGE MANAGEMENT
As with any new management technique or tool,
an effective change management process must
be in place before implementing an ABC system.
An objective of this process should be to ensure
that there is support for the system at all levels
of an organization. This includes having a toplevel manager to champion the initiative, as well
as acceptance by lower-level managers. The
acceptance by these later managers often can
be obtained by demonstrating that in most cases
the existing cost accounting system produces
distorted, and thus misleading, information. This
distortion often arises because an existing costing system does not reflect the increasing complexity of an organization and the products and
services it offers. By implementing a costing system that reflects that complexityand provides
the operational information necessary for managing a companys operationsmanagers can
see the increased relevance of the information
provided for managerial decision making and
enhanced performance management.
The change management process needs to
specifically address the people issues that will
arise in the implementation of the new costing
system. This includes addressing commitment
to the existing system that various managers
may have, and their reluctance to change. It is
also important to address the effect of the new
system on performance measurement and compensation systems. New performance metrics
may need to be devised, or existing ones
revised, based on information obtained during
the ABC system implementation. An example of

an effect of reporting the new cost data from
ABC is the shift in costs among products. Some
products that were effectively subsidizing others
will now be reported with lower costs and higher
profit margins. The opposite effect will occur with
other products, which will now show lower profit
margins or even losses.
Effective communicationat all levels of an
organizationof the need for change is essential. An organization needs to communicate the
deficiencies of its existing costing system, the
effect of this distortion on managerial decision
making, how ABC costing principles can be used
to provide information that is more relevant for
managerial decision making, and the effect of
the new system on the evaluation and rewarding
of individual employees. Communication is a
two-way process, and employee concerns need
to be addressed.
Implementation of an ABC system needs to be
justified on a cost-benefit basis, just as with any
other investment. Yet the value of having better
decision-making information can be difficult to
measuremore so than, say, the benefits from
an investment that is more tangible, such as the
purchase of a piece of machinery. The key is that
the benefits from having the improved costing
information exceed the extra administrative
effort to produce it. That is, the following equation must be satisfied:
Incremental benefits
Incremental administrative cost
>1
By demonstrating that the equations numerator

is much higher than people realize and that the
denominator can be kept low by being practical
(e.g., using estimates and only minimal extra
data collection), the perceived ratio can be shift-
ed from below 1 to above it (and very likely well

above it).
One ABC implementation technique introduced
in the 1990s that radically accelerated the time
to implement ABC, improved the ABC model
design, and minimized the risk that a project may
run into problems caused by excessive detail
and complexity is called ABC rapid prototyping
with iterative remodeling. This technique
assures that the denominator in the benefits to
cost ratio is kept small. It also raises the numerator by revealing more unrecognized benefits.
This approach is discussed in Section XII. ABC
rapid prototyping can lead to a production ABC
system being created in weeks, not years, and
with minimal support.
VI. PLANNING FOR AN ABC

I M P L E M E N TAT I O N
A guiding principle for an ABC initiative is to work
backwards, keeping the end in mind. Have a compelling reason to reform the existing cost system.
Know a type of decision or analysis the ABC system will improve. In this way, an ABC implementation is no different than implementation of any
other project: before you start, you need to know
what you expect to be the final outcome. By following this principle, an organization can help
ensure that the ABC system it ends up with has
been designed to meet its specific needs, and
not those of some generic organization.
Numerous approaches can be taken when
designing and implementing an ABC system.
There is no generic approach that is universally
appropriate. In order to obtain proof of concept, many companies, especially larger ones,
initially implement ABC using a pilot project
approach, where a segment of the organization
is selected for implementation of ABC costing
concepts.
The pilot project can be implemented using actual revenues and expenses. If the main goal is to
gain buy-in for ABC, budgeted or planned revenues and expenses may be used, but budgets
and forecasts may be substantially different than
actual results. Continuing with the pilot implementation, activities and their interrelationships,
cost drivers, and volumes are identified. Cost
attachment points are identified, and activity
costs are calculated. The consumption of activities by cost objects (such as products or customers) is identified, and the drivers and volumes identified. The successes of the pilot project can also be used to validate the business
case for implementing ABC company-wide and
provide lessons learned for subsequent rollout
of the methodology.
An organization can also opt to fully implement
ABC from the start. In this case, the ABC rapid
prototyping with iterative remodeling approach is
strongly recommended. The structure of the ABC
rapid prototyping approach is similar to that
used in the pilot approach, but it includes more
areas (ideally, the entire enterprise), more data,
and more analysis. By exposing managers (for
which it is important to select advocates and
avoid nay-sayers or those who may feel threatened) to the quickly produced preview of the
reformed costs, buy-in will occur. Use of this
approach enables an organization to achieve a
new awareness of cost system design throughout the organization, giving it the ability to rapidly adopt these systems and use the enhanced
information to improve its performance. People
do not know what they do not know. As these
models are iteratively scaled, managers will see
more outcomes that will stimulate what they
want to analyze. Seeing results accelerates this
learning process.
If the initial approach is a pilot ABC study of a

single department or process, then the organization should be cautious in that pilots address
only a subset of an organizations activities.
Such an approach faces the danger of overlooking activities or costs from departments, cost
centers, and functions in the organization not
being studied. Activity analysis across multiple
departments, and, ideally, organization-wide, is
preferred by process consultants. Also, comparison of the shift in product costs of the existing
costs to ABC costs cannot be done validly by
including only a few departments or attempting
to focus on only one or a few products.
Various questions need to be addressed in the
design and implementation of an ABC system.
One of these relates to ownership of the ABC system. While management accountants will calculate the ABC information, in many cases it is
desirable for the system to be owned by others.
The ownership of an ABC system should be consistent with its primary objective. If, for example,
improving operations is the primary objective of
the system, it is best placed under the control of
operating personnel. Giving this area ownership
of the system instead of the accounting department will help ensure that the system is used
and maintained properly. In practice, however,
this is often a challenge because the accounting
departments role historically has been to collect, validate, and report accounting information
and then analyze it. The result is that the
accounting department typically ends up maintaining the ABC model.
Another issue that needs to be addressed is the
complexity of the system. In designing a costing
system, there is a trade-off between the cost of
the system and the detail, accuracy, and flexibility of the system. A guiding principle of ABC is
that the level of detail and accuracy depends on

what decisions will be made with the information.
The quest for precision is expensive. Ninety-nine
percent accuracy is not required. Those who have
completed an ABC implementation and look back
to compare their previous cost systems inaccurate and flawed costs to their new, more substantially correct costs appreciate why the ABC community proclaims, It is better to be approximately correct than precisely wrong! Reasonable
accuracy, produced economically, is usually good
enough, particularly in light of the inaccuracies
from an existing cost system. In general, systems
that support strategic decision making use more
aggregated data than those used for more operational decision making. The need for additional
accuracy is a long-term issue to be analyzed
based on evolving business needs, and it may be
addressed as the model evolves. In some cases,
data collection can be scaled back as accuracy
requirements and the magnitude of expenses are
better understood.
accounting and becomes a primary source of

information for improving business processes
and forward planning. Organizations use the
information as the basis for activity-based management (ABM); they use the understanding of
their activities and their cost drivers to improve
their processes and enhance their customers
satisfaction. In such cases, data collection is
adjusted to meet the requirements of the ABC
system. The general ledger chart of accounts,
cost center structure, inventory/cost of sales
accounting procedures, interdepartmental
charges, accounts payable and payroll cost distribution practices, financial and management
reports, or other cost-related facets of the
accounting system remain untouched. ABC simply repurposes the transactional information.
Section XIV discusses commercial ABC software.
In that section, the removal of interdepartmental
charges from the general ledger and their
replacement with proper activity-based costs is
described.
The question as to whether to integrate the ABC

system with the financial accounting system is
also an issue. ABC systems can be integrated
into the financial accounting system or exist as
stand-alone systems. In many organizations, a
well-designed, periodically updated ABC model
(e.g., quarterly, semiannually) is sufficient for
decision-making needs. An offline ABC implementation enables these organizations to obtain
improved costing information without disrupting
day-to-day information system activities. This
approach to ABC modeling is especially appropriate for small and mid-sized organizations. It can
also serve as a first step toward implementing
ABC in larger organizations.
VII. INITIAL DESIGN OF THE

ABC SYSTEM
In situations where ABC is fully integrated into an

organizations management information systems, it goes beyond the traditional role of cost
An ABC system can be viewed in two different

ways: the cost assignment view and the process
view. The cost assignment view provides information about resources, activities, and cost
objects. The process view provides operational
(often nonfinancial) information about business
processes and the activities that belong to them.
These two views of ABC can be visualized as pictured in Exhibit 2.
The cost assignment view of ABC can be seen in
the vertical portion of Exhibit 2, while the
process view is represented by the exhibits horizontal portion. Work activities in the intersection
are essential for both views. For purposes of
measuring costs, the difference is:
EXHIBIT 2.
THE ACTIVITY-BASED COST MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK

(THE CAM-I CROSS)
Cost Assignment View (ABC/M)
What Things Cost
Resources
Resource Driver
Assignment
Process
View
Cost
Drivers
Activities
Resource
Drivers
Measure and
Manage
Processes
Activity Driver
Assignment
Final Cost
Objects
(Outputs)
Activity
Drivers
Better
Decision
Making
Why Things
Have Cost
Source: Adapted from CAM-I
Source: Adapted from CAM-I.
The cost assignment view transforms the

expenses of resources (e.g., salaries, supplies)
into the costs of the work activities (for both
people and assets) and ultimately into the final
cost objects (e.g., products, customers).
The process view sequences the work activities in time and accumulates the build-up of
activity costs from start to end of a business
process.
More about the distinction between these two

views is contained in Section XI, which describes
the process/value stream mapping that ABC
information can supplement. The emphasis of
ABC is typically on the cost assignment view.
Although ABC is the acronym for activity-based
costing, much of the utility from its information
comes from its measurement of the costs of the

diverse types of outputs (cost objects) and the
driver-based consumption of activities they
cause.
The term drivers can be confusing. Resource
drivers for employees reflect the time they spend
performing work activities. Resource drivers for
indirect material purchased items reflect their
usage by an activity, such as energy expenses
kilowatts by a machine. Activity drivers are a
measure of the output of an activity. For example, for the customer-related work activity, processing a sales order, the activity driver would
be the number of sales orders processed. A cost
object driver is where a final cost object consumes a mix of another final cost object, such as
EXHIBIT 3. EACH ACTIVITY HAS ITS OWN ACTIVITY DRIVER

From: General Ledger
To: Cost Objects
To: ABC Data Base

Activity-Based View
Chart-of-Accounts View
Actual
Salaries
Equipment
$621,400
161,200
Key/scan claims
Favorable/
Plan
(unfavorable)
$600,00
$(21,400)
150,000
(11,200)
Travel expense
58,000
60,000
2,000
Supplies
43,900
40,000
(3,900)
Use and
occupancy
Total
Analyze claims
Suspend claims
Receive provider inquiries
$914,500
30,000
121,000
32,500
101,500
Resolve member problems
83,400
Process batches
45,000
Determine eligibility
119,000
Make copies
145,500
Write correspondence
Attend training
30,000
$ 31,500
77,100
158,000
#of
#of
#of
#of
#of
#of
#of
#of
#of
#of
Products/Customers
Claims Processing Department

Claims Processing Department
------
$880,000 $(34,500)
Total
$914,500
$914,500
Resource
drivers
Activity
drivers
when a customer purchases a mix of products.

The costing principle for selection of all drivers is
that the level of costs incurred should vary
directly with quantity of the driver.
ers are generally cross-functional, they often

point to areas of improvement. While cost drivers often are not quantifiable, they often provide
the why when looking at ABC results.
The term cost driver can be ambiguous. It is

more general than the driver types just
described. It can be described in words but not
necessarily with quantitative measures. For
example, a severe storm is a cost driver that will
cause insurance claims to be processed. One
cannot easily measure a storms intensity, but
you can measure the number of claims
processed that resulted from it. ABC restricts
itself to only measurable resource, activity, and
cost object drivers. Cost drivers are typically
examined in ABC analysis. They are linked to
processes or activities to stimulate discussion
about impact or potential impact. Since cost driv-
The cost assignment view has evolved from the

two-stage ABC approach of the early 1980s to a
multiple-stage approach. We will first discuss the
two-stage approach to appreciate some fundamental principles of ABC, and then discuss the
multiple-stage approach.
Two-Stage ABC Approach
Exhibit 3 illustrates the two-stage ABC approach.
Sub-accounts of the general ledger are distributed to the various activities in the appropriate
proportions using what were originally called firststage cost drivers and now are referred to as
resource drivers. The costs accumulated in these
10
activities are then distributed to cost objects

using what were initially called second-stage
cost drivers but are now called activity drivers.
For example, costs such as unemployment insurance and equipment maintenance might be allocated to activities based on labor cost and
equipment hours, respectively, based on
resource drivers. Costs accumulated in the various activities are then reassigned to products
using activity drivers such as the number of
equipment setups, orders, purchase orders,
equipment run minutes, direct labor hours, and
so forth.
The left-side box in Exhibit 3 is the monthly cost
center spending report. An important reason as
to why ABC is being adopted is the realization
that, in this cost center, the responsibility report
using chart of account elements, such as
salaries and supplies, is structurally deficient in
its ability to transform expenses to calculated
costs. This is a strong statement. But it is not
until the ledger expenses are restated in different formatas activity coststhat the activity
drivers can be attached to activity costs in order
to reassign them to the activities outputs in proportion to their consumption of the resources.
This problem is compounded as companies flatten and de-layer their organizations. Employees
from cost centers flexibly multitask, often working jointly on common activities, making the tracing of cost to products (or other cost objects)
more difficult, especially when using a traditional
costing methodology.
In other words, for business process owners
those individuals responsible for the performance of business processes that cross multiple cost centersto see the costs of their
processes, activity costs must first be translated
from expenses classified based on the general
ledger. They must be reassembled based on the
activities that make up the sequential steps that

comprise a process. Again, the general ledger
cost center report is structurally deficient to do
this. It has been said that when cost center managers receive their monthly reports comparing
actual to budget (or planned) spending, they are
either happy or sad, but rarely are they any
smarter! ABC information makes them smarter.
A more stinging commentary on the general
ledger-based report is that it is at best useless
(except for collecting transaction data) and at
worst leads to dysfunctional and misleading
decisions. The data needs to be transformed
into meaningful costs that reflect cause and
effect behavior.
Note the total expenses and costs are equal in
the resource, activity, and cost object views; they
must reconcile. The important message here is
that the general ledgers view of the chart of
accounts only answers what was spent. By transforming expenses into calculated costs in the
next two views in Exhibit 3, there are more valuable and useful answers regarding why it was
spent, what caused the rate of it to be spent,
and for whom or what it was spent.
Multiple-Stage ABC Approach
The multiple-stage approach represents an
advancement in ABC modeling. Rather than simply tracing the cost of resources to activities and
then to cost objects, the multiple-stage approach
models cost flows in a manner that more closely reflects the actual flow of costs through a
organization. This approach includes an understanding of the relationships between indirect
work activities and other activities, as well as
between those activities and cost objects. Costs
are traced from activity to activity in a series of
stages, all based on cause-and-effect relationships. (To simplify the size of the ABC model,
some organizations use the concept of resource
11
EXHIBIT 4. MULTI-LEVEL COST ASSIGNMENT FLOW

Cost-driver Table
Resource Expenses
($70)
Resources
$10
$10
$30
$10
Support
activities
$30
Activities
$10
$15
Resource *Inter- Final activity
drivers mediate drivers
drivers
$10
$5
Direct
Material $10
$10
Final cost
objects
Product
activities $15
$20
$15
Products
$25
Customers
$20
$25
$45
Price
*Intermediate activity drivers reassign

each activitys cumulative input costs
plus its own cost.
Customer
activities $20
Business
sustaining $25
$25
External Customers/Orders + Sustaining

$70
pools to accumulate similar expenses into categories before assigning them to activities.)
other activities based on the demand for those

activities, services, or resources.
For a manufacturing company, the activities performing maintenance and operating the tool
room will accumulate the costs directly related
to those activities. (Note that activities are best
described using an action-verb and noun grammar convention.) Under the two-stage approach,
an activity (or second-stage) driver would be
used to allocate the costs of these activities
directly to cost objects. The multiple-stage
approach differs in that it recognizes that the
maintenance activity is not directly consumed by
the final cost objects. The maintenance activity
supports other activities (including some activities of the tool room). In general, an activity may
directly support both final cost objects and other
activities; the latter are called intermediate cost
objects. The costs accumulated in those activities are distributed to either final cost objects or
To some, this multiple-stage method of assigning

expenses may appear to be the traditional stepdown cost allocation method of full absorption
costing. ABC is more granular, however, tracing
costs at the activity level and not at a department level. The allocation of expenses at a
department level induced errors because it
restricted the allocation basis of those costs to
a single activity driver. As a rule, all assignments
in ABC are based only on usage and consumption. If an activity does not use part of a
resource, it is not allocated any of that
resources costs.
Activity-to-activity cost assignments and an
entire enterprise-wide view of an ABC cost
assignment network are illustrated in Exhibit 4,
where $70 of resource expenses are fully
12
absorbed as calculated costs into customer and

business sustaining cost objects (the latter
being traced mainly to senior management).
Note how the $30 of support activities is traced
to three other types of activities, which are then
traced to products, customers, or business sustaining cost objects.
Business sustaining costs ($25 in Exhibit 4) are
activity costs not caused by making products or
delivering services to customers. The consumption of these costs cannot be logically traced to
products, standard service-lines, channels, or
customers. (They can be arbitrarily allocated, but
not with a causal relationship.) Examples include
the monthly closing books activity of the
accounting staff and file government regulatory
papers activity of the legal staff. The cost of
these activities should be traced to senior management and the regulatory agency, respectively,
as business-sustaining cost objects. While it is
true that the business must recover these costs
with its revenues, the point is that allocating
them to products or customers is misleading
and would overstate their costs, sending the
wrong signals to employees who use product
cost information for decision-making purposes.
The cost of customer activities is often called
the cost-to-serve. These activities not only
include examples such as processing sales
orders, call center assistance, and handling
returned items, but also the sales forces activity making sales calls. This last activity may
appear odd since the customer may not initiate
a sales call, but the purpose of ABC is to measure how much effort goes into work and where
that work is consumed. An important or difficult,
high-maintenance customer may consume substantial sales-call-related costs. These costs
may be a greater proportion of the customers
revenues than smaller, less demanding cus-
tomers. ABC measures and detects this type of

not-so-obvious relationship.
Exhibit 4 also shows that some final cost objects
(e.g., the $25 of product costs) can be consumed by other final cost objects that use them.
For example, customers consume (i.e., purchase) uniquely different baskets of products
or services. In this example, the products are
traced using cost object drivers, such as the
number of products purchased. Other examples
include the type of order (e.g., special vs. standard) or type of sales channel (e.g., truck vs. rail,
human bank teller vs. an ATM machine).
Also note that in the exhibit, the price for products and service-lines enters as revenues only
after all of the costs have been assigned. A price
cannot be distinguished as to whether it is for
the product or cost-to-serve costs (unless it is
unbundled separately as a fee). This property
provides the insight that layers of profit contribution margins (i.e., the profit and loss statements
bottom lines, not top lines) can be reported as
the various work activities ultimately are traced
logically and causally to customers. It must be
understood that ABC deals with cost. Pricing is a
management decision that typically is market
based. What ABC provides is a much more accurate middle line so that the profit margin,
derived from sales less traceable costs, can be
made more visible.
Exhibit 5 disaggregates and expands Exhibit 4 to
reveal a generic ABC structure that is a good representation of any universal costing model for
any organization. Note that direct material
expenses are sometimes traced directly to products. A more common modeling practice is to
have direct material expenses touch a passthrough intermediate cost objects in the Activity
13
EXHIBIT 5. ABC COST ASSIGNMENT NETWORK

Resources
Salary, Fringe
Benefits
Direct
Material
Phone,
Travel
Supplies
Depreciation
Rent,
Interest, Tax
(general ledger)
Direct Material
(1) Demands on Work

Costs (2)
Final
Cost
Objects
Costs Measure the Effects
Work
Activities
Support
Activities
People
Activities
cost-to-serve
paths
Products
Services
Business
Sustaining
Suppliers
Customers
view so that the three cost views equate in terms

of total costs (e.g., they all equal $70 in
Exhibit 4).
To understand Exhibit 5, imagine the cost assignment paths (the arrows) as pipes or straws
where the diameter of each path reflects the
amount of cost flowing. The power of an ABC
model lies in the fact that the cost assignment
paths and their destinations provide traceability
to segment costs from beginning to end, from
resource expenditures to each type of (or each
specific) customerwho ultimately are the origin
for all costs and expenses. The cost assignment
network captures and reflects the diversity and
variation in how cost objects uniquely consume
resources and activities. To understand costing,
it is useful to mentally reverse all the arrow-
heads in Exhibit 5. This polar switch reveals that

all expenses originate with a demand-pull from
customers. The calculated costs simply measure
the effect. Costs are always a measure of
effecta basic principle in costing.
With integrated ABC software, the direct costing
of indirect costs is no longer an insurmountable
problem, as it was in the past. (Commercial ABC
software is discussed in Section XIV.) ABC allows
intermediate direct costing to a local process, an
internal customer, or a required component that
is causing the demand for work. In short, ABC
connects customers to the unique resources
they consumein proportion to their consumption. Visibility to costs is provided everywhere
throughout the cost assignment network.
14
EXHIBIT 6. PROFITABILITY PROFILE USING ABCPROFIT CLIFF

$ 30.0 sales
28.2 expenses
= $ 1.8 profits
$8
Cumulative Profit (Millions)
$6
Net
Revenues
Minus $4
ABC Costs
Unrealized profit revealed by ABC
$2
$1.8 profit
$0
Misleading profit data

from traditional cost
allocations.
Specific Products, Services, and/or Customers

(ranked most profitable to least profitable)
V I I I . S T R AT E G I C V S .
O P E R AT I O N A L C O S T
MANAGEMENT
There are two broad purposes for using management accounting information:
Strategic cost managementto determine the
right things to do, i.e., selecting the correct
processes, suppliers, products, channels, and
customers.
Operational cost managementto perform well
on those things identified as strategic, improve
productivity, and remove waste.
This section discusses both forms of cost
management.
Strategic Cost Management

After implementing ABC, organizations typically
experience shock. Their erroneous beliefs
regarding the true profitability of their products,
channels, and customers produced by the flawed
and misleading costs of traditional costing have
been replaced by knowledge of their true costs.
ABC reveals which products are over- or undercosted, exposing the magnitude of sources of
profits and losses. Exhibit 6 presents a typical
scenario. This diagram is popularly called a
profit cliff.
15
Insights gained from answering questions that

are stimulated from analyzing the profit cliff
are examples of strategic cost management. The
insights can address rationalizing which products, channels, and customers to develop,
acquire, grow, retain, and improveand which
ones not to. But an organization must be careful
not to improperly conclude what actions to take
when analyzing ABC data. Ultimately, management accounting, including ABC, is a methodology for discovery and focus. Better management
accounting does not provide all the answers. It
does not answer questions directly, but rather it
allows more and better questions to be asked.
Here are three problems from reacting to ABC
data prematurely:
It must be recognized that measuring the costs
and profits during a time period such as a
month or quarter does not recognize the costs
and profits of individual products, service lines,
and customers during their entire life cycle.
Hence, servicing an apparently unprofitable
product or customer today may be done with the
intention of developing a very profitable one in
the future. Life-cycle profitability must also be
analyzed (and ABC unit costs are essential for
such an analysis).
In some cases, a business will deliberately sell
some products at a loss to promote purchases
of other more profitable ones. Similarly, some
unprofitable customers may be retained or pursued to retain or attract profitable customers
with which they have referral relationships.
Retention of these customers is a management
decision, but it is important to understand how
much these customers are costing the firm.
Abandoning unprofitable products and customers reduces activity costs but not the
expenses of the resourcesit merely frees up
capacity in those resources. To realize a profit
impact from dropping products or customers,
the unused capacity created must either be

filled with new, profitable orders, shifted to perform value-added work elsewhere, or altogether
removed (e.g., closing an operation or terminating employees). The resource cost of freed up
unused capacity created by dropping unprofitable products or customers should not be
reassigned in the ABC cost assignment network
to existing products or customers. They did not
cause it. It should be traced to a business sustaining final cost object, Unused Capacity.
Failure to assign expenses in this way results in
over-costing the existing products and customers, giving the illusion they have become
less profitable and, therefore, are new candidates to drop. This has been referred to as the
overhead death spiral. Inappropriate decisions to drop more products or customers due
to prior period removals, sometimes blamed on
the use of ABC, is a result of flawed cost assignment assumptions.
Cost management must always be done in the
broader context of performance management,
which adds the dimensions of time, quality, risk,
service levels, and other strategic goals to maximize value from existing customers and potential
new ones.
Operational Cost Management
Exhibit 7 illustrates how the activity costs (with
each activity initially traced from its resource
expenses) from Exhibit 6 are assigned to each
cost object and then summed or stacked. In
Exhibit 7, a products true cost is more than its
price, creating a loss during that period. This is
represented by the descending products located
on the right-hand side of the profit cliff depicted in
Exhibit 6.
Managers and employee teams are seeking more
transparency and visibility of their costs. Having
16
EXHIBIT 7. FULLY TRACED COSTS TO A COST OBJECT

ABC provides insight for the products or services cost drivers and
driver quantities.
Work
$
Activities
$ loss
each activitys
driver quantity
X
unit activity
driver cost
(e.g., # of registrations)
Price/Fee
(Revenue)
Activity
Costs
reliable unit costs of their outputs of work using

ABC is useful for benchmarking best practices or
to report trends when measuring performance
improvement. Exhibit 7 visualizes how this need
is met. It removes the illusion that overhead
costs are necessary and, therefore, appear to be
free when in fact they are not. The exhibit also
indicates that the costs of a cost object can be
reduced (i.e., lowering the stack) by:
Reducing the quantity, frequency, and/or intensity of the activity driver (e.g., a fewer number
of inspections reduces the inspect product
activity cost).
Lowering the activity driver cost rate from productivity improvements (e.g., shorten the time
for each inspect product event).
Understanding the sources and causes of
waste leading to nonvalue-adding activities to
reduce or eliminate them (e.g., solve the
problem that requires an inspection in the first

place).
These three items are examples of how ABC
data leads to operational cost management.
Note how these actions support the continuous
improvement principles of the Six Sigma quality
and Lean management initiatives that are
embraced by the operations and quality communities. There is further discussion of
process/value stream mapping to improve operations and quality in Section XI.
ABC Attributes
There is an added bonus to using ABC with commercial ABC software. It can report another
dimension of coststhe color of money spent.
It applies cost attributes, usually to an activity, by
tagging or scoring it with a code. This dimension
of cost does not exist in general ledger accounting systems because attributes are tagged to
17
activities or to cost objects, not to resource

expenses.
An example of a tag would be whether an activity adds value (value-adding) or not (nonvalueadding). Another example is the five cost of
quality (COQ) categories of work, which
increase sequentially in their severity: error free,
prevention-related, appraisal-related, internal failure work, and external work. Attributes do not
alter the cost of anything calculated by ABC, but
they facilitate grouping activity costs into various
categories that in turn help focus management
attention (e.g., nonvalue-adding costs) and can
suggest actions. Commercial ABC software can
keep track of a work activitys attributes and
trace it to cost objects. For example, one may
discover that the unit cost of delivering two similar service lines is relatively the same, but one
service line consumes much more nonvalueadding activity costs than the other. Presuming
operational improvements can reduce the
nonvalue-adding costs, this means that one service line has a greater likelihood of having a
lower cost in the future. This could never be
detected using the broad-averaged cost allocations of general ledger cost center reporting.
I X . C U S T O M E R P R O F I TA B I L I T Y
REPORTING
Some customers purchase a mix of mainly lowmargin products. After adding the costs-toserve those customers apart from the products
and service lines they purchase, these customers may be unprofitable to a company and to
its extended value chain. Customers who purchase a mix of relatively high-margin products
may demand so much in extra services that they
also are unprofitable. How does one properly
measure customer and supplier profitability?
After the less-profitable customers and suppliers
are identified, they need to be migrated toward
higher profits using profit margin management

techniques or, if that is not possible, they need
to be fired.
If two customers purchased the exact same mix
of products and services at the exact same
prices during the exact same time period, would
both customers be equally profitable? Of course
not. Some customers place standard orders with
no fuss, whereas others demand nonstandard
everything, such as special delivery requirements. Some customers just buy your standard
product or service line, and you hardly ever hear
from them. Others you always hear fromand it
is usually to change their delivery requirements,
inquire about expediting their order, or return or
exchange their goods. Some customers require
more post-sale services than others do. In some
cases, just the geographic location of the customer makes a difference.
What kinds of customers are loyal and profitable? Which customers are only marginally profitable or, worse yet, losing you money? Strategic
ABC is the accepted methodology to economically and accurately trace the consumption of an
organizations resource expenses to the types
and kinds of channels and customer segments
that place varying demands on the company. It is
typical to find 10%-20% of your customers are
unprofitable; in some cases the percentage of
unprofitable customers is 40% or more, particularly with banks, where a minority of highly profitable customers carry less-profitable customers
who have the potential to become profitable.
Exhibit 8 decomposes the network of the ABC
Cost Assignment Networks final cost object module depicted in Exhibit 5. It displays two layers of
a nested consumption sequence of costs. A
metaphor for this consumption sequence is the
predator food chain. The final cost object, which
18
EXHIBIT 8. ABC PROFIT CONTRIBUTION MARGIN LAYERING

DIRECT
MATERIAL
SALARY &
FRINGE BENEFITS
RELATIONSHIP
MANAGEMENT
PURCHASES,
RECEIPTS
# POs
# Receipts
NON-WAGE RELATED
CAPITAL
(equipment-related)
*BRAND/PRODUCTRELATED WORK,
*BRAND/PRODUCTRELATED ADVERTISING
& MERCHANDISING
*FACILITIES COST
MACHINES
MAKE PRODUCT,
MOVE PRODUCT,
SET-UPS
(e.g., operating supplies)
TRADE SHOWS,
IMAGE ADVERTISING
SALES CALLS,
ORDER HANDLING,
FREIGHT
# Sales calls
# orders
# shipments
SUPPLIERS
# Machine hours
# Material moves
# Set-ups
# Advertisements
BRAND
SUSTAINING
# Punds
# Gallons
# Meters
PRODUCT/SERVICE
LINE SUSTAINING
SUPPLIERRELATED
SENIOR
MGT
ARBITRARY
(for full absorption)
Product-specific
UNIT &
BATCH
LEVEL
WORK
ACTIVITIES
(examples)
FINAL
COST OBJECTS
Facility costs
SUPPLIER
SUSTAINING
RESOURCES
# Shows
# Advertisements
OSHA
DOT
IRS
Etc.
Gvt. Regulators
UNUSED
CAPACITY
R&D
BUSINESS
SUSTAINING
RELATED
CUSTOMER
SUSTAINING
UNIT &
BATCH
LEVEL
UNIT &
BATCH
LEVEL
PRODUCTS/SKUs
PRODUCT & SERVICE LINE-RELATED
ARBITRARY
(for full absorption)
CUSTOMERS CUSTOMER-RELATED
in this exhibit is the customer, ultimately consumes all the other final cost object costs, with
the exception of the business sustaining costs.
Each of the major final cost object categories
(e.g., supplier, product/service line, and customer) has its own sustaining costs that are
assignable to its end-product or customer. When
tracing these sustaining costs, however, one
cannot apply a measurable product- or customerspecific quantity. For example, a product branding
program from the marketing department may benefit only a select group of products, but how much
of the branding cost should be charged to each
specific product within the brand? Even though
there is no cause-and-effect relationship, these
product sustaining costs can be traced using
some shared basis, such as sales unit-volume,

or be spread evenly.
As costs flow from one final cost object to another, each flow will consume the unique mix of the
upstream cost object. That is, an individual customers total costs (apart from its direct costs-toserve) are inclusive of only the product quantities
and mix that it purchased. In the ABC cost assignment network, each product incurs its own activity costs with a cause-and-effect relationship, not
with an arbitrary indirect cost allocation. This
then creates layers of costs that produce many
profit margin layers.
Exhibit 9 is an example of an individual customer
profitability statement. Using ABC, there can now
19
EXHIBIT 9. ABC CUSTOMER PROFIT & LOSS STATEMENT

CUSTOMER: XYZ CORPORATION (CUSTOMER #1270)
$$$
Sales
Product-Related
Supplier-Related costs (TCO) $xxx
Margin $
(Sales oCosts)
Margin
% of Sales
$xxx
98%
Productrelated
costs
Direct Material
Brand Sustaining
Product Sustaining
Unit, Batch*
xxx
xxx
xxx
xxx
xxx
xxx
xxx
xxx
50%
48%
46%
30%
Distribution-Related
Outbound Freight Type*
Order Type*
Channel Type*
xxx
xxx
xxx
xxx
xxx
xxx
28%
26%
24%
Customer-Related
Customer-Sustaining
Unit Batch*
xxx
xxx
xxx
xxx
22%
10%
Business Sustaining
xxx
xxx
Capital Charge**
xxx
xxx
8%
8% Operating Profit
2%
6% Economic Profit
(inventories, receivables)
Customerrelated
costs
(for EVA)
* Activity Cost Driver Assignments use measurable quantity volume of Activity Output
(Other Activity Assignments traced based on informed (subjective) %s)
**Capital charges can also be directly

charged as imputed interest to products & cust.
be a valid profit and loss income statement for

each customer and for logical segments or groupings of customers. A tremendous amount of
detail lies below and within each of these
reports. For example, individual product and service lines can be examined in greater detail; they
comprise a mix of high- and low-profit margin
items based on their own unit costs and prices.
In other words, in a customer-specific profit and
loss summary, the product or service-line profit
margin is reported as a composite average, but
details about the mix are viewable by drilling
down into the product mix information. In addition, the user can drill down further within each
product or service line to examine the content
and cost of the work activities and materials

(the bill of costs).
What does all this information reveal? First, it
quantifies what everyone may already have suspected: All customers are not the same. Some
customers may be more or less profitable based
strictly on how demanding their behavior is.
Although customer satisfaction is important, a
longer-term goal is to increase customer and corporate profitably. There must always be a balance between managing the level of customer
service to earn customer satisfaction and the
impact that doing so will have on shareholder
wealth. There is a difference between customer-
20
EXHIBIT 10. MIGRATING CUSTOMERS TO HIGHER PROFITABLITY

Types of Customers
bl
e
High
(Creamy)
Pr
of
ita
Very
Profitable
Un
pr
of
ita
b
le
Product Mix
Margin
Low
(Low Fat)
Low
High
Cost-to-Serve
Very
unprofitable
focused and customer-obsessed. The best solution is to increase customer satisfaction profitably. Because increasingly more customers will
expect and demand customization rather than
standard products, services, and orders, understanding this balance is important. ABC data
facilitates discussions aimed at arriving at that
balance.
There are two major layers of profit margin in the
company profit and loss statement in Exhibit 9:
1. Mix of products and service lines purchased,
and
2. Costs-to-serve apart from the unique mix
of products and service lines.
Exhibit 10 provides a two-axis view of customers
with regard to these two major layers. Any single
customer (or cluster) can be located based on
these two attributes. The vertical axis measures
the composite margin of what each purchases

(reflecting net prices to the customer), and the
horizontal axis measures a customers costs-toserve. Exhibit 10 debunks the myth that the
company with the highest sales must also generate the highest profits.
Exhibit 10 also reveals that the objective is to
make all customers more profitable, graphically
represented by driving them to the upper-left corner. Although this is a partial list, making customers more profitable can be accomplished by:
Managing each customers costs-to-serve to
a lower level;
Establishing a surcharge for or re-pricing
expensive costs-to-serve activities;
Reducing services;
Raising prices;
Increasing costs on activities that a customer
shows a preference for;
21
Shifting the customers purchase mix toward

richer, higher-margin products and service
lines; or
Discounting to gain more volume with low
costs-to-serve customers.
An extreme action is to fire the customer

terminate the relationship when one concludes it
will never be a profitable relationship.
Note that migrating customers to the upper-left
corner is equivalent to moving customers from
right to left in the profit profile in Exhibit 6.
Knowing where customers are located on the
matrix requires ABC data. Changes can be made
only by knowing the activity detail behind the
numbers.
X. ABC PROJECT PLANNING

Once questions involving the initial ABC model
design and construction are answered, planning
for the ABC project can move forward. Like any
major organization-wide systems project, a formal project management structure and project
plan is necessary for an effective implementation. The structure should include a steering
committee composed of upper management
whose main role is to ensure that the ABC system is consistent with the organizations business strategy and needs and to ensure that
there is participation and cooperation from all
affected areas of the organization. The project
manager reports to the steering committee and
is supported by a cross-functional team. The size
of the team and level of involvement of the various members would depend on the specifics of
the project. The important point is that all affected functions of the organization must participate
in the development and implementation of the
ABC system in order to foster buy-in and commitment throughout the organization and to improve
its design.
An important element of a successful implementation of ABC is training. Although it is not necessary for management to become ABC experts,
they must understand the need for ABC, its benefits, and its key concepts. On the other hand,
members of the project teamthose actually
designing and implementing the systemdo
need to develop a thorough understanding of
both the hows and whys of ABC. Because
ABC is as much an art as it is a science, it is not
enough to master the mechanics. The designers
and implementers must comprehend the various
approaches and the levels of scope, accuracy,
and detail that will result in the most costeffective system for their particular organization.
Those who will be providing data input for the
system, both during its development stages and
its ongoing execution as a repeatable reporting
system, must understand the significance of the
data they provide.
Finally, the system will not be effective unless its
users understand the new information that ABC
provides. At some organizations, ABC will contradict many of the beliefs about the organizations
costs and profit margins. For example, most
manufacturing firms have believed for decades
that direct labor efficiency was the key measurement of productivity. Under ABC, many of these
firms found that direct labor may be an immaterial component of the cost equation relative to
indirect expenses, and focusing on direct labor
efficiency drew attention away from important
issues. The project team must ensure that everyone involved understands the new systems output and how it can best be put to use in improving the organizations operations.
X I . C O L L E C T I N G A B C DATA
Two types of information are required for an ABC
project:
conceptual
and
transactional.
Conceptual information is needed to develop the
22
overall design of the ABC system, and transactional information is needed to simulate the cost
flows through the system model. Transactional
information also serves as the raw data from
which to develop and validate some of the conceptual information.
The goal of the data-gathering activity is to accumulate the necessary information to:
1. Identify the work activities performed by people and equipment in the organization (for
both the cost assignment and process
views);
2. Identify the organizations elements of cost
(for the cost assignment view) and performance measures (for the process view);
3. Determine the relationships between the
various activities and elements of cost (for
the cost assignment view); and
4. Identify and measure the activity drivers that
determine the work load (for the process
view) and cause accumulated activity costs
to flow to other activities or to the organizations products and services (for the cost
assignment view).
1. Identifying Work Activities
Even a small organization can identify an almost
limitless number of activities. The work activity
identification exercise, however, should be guided by materiality and the objectives of the ABC
system. For example, if the objective is strategic
(e.g., product line profitability, pricing policies),
the primary need is to accurately assign costs to
final cost objects. In such cases, activities can
be broadly defined. If the intent is to improve
operations (e.g., eliminate nonvalue-added
processes), however, the need is for information
about work activities and intermediate cost
objects. For example, in a purchasing department, what is the difference between the unit
costs of a special order vs. a standard order vs.
a blanket purchase order? What activity costs

comprise each, and what activity drivers cause
each? In these cases, activities must be defined
more narrowly.
Materiality will also impact activity aggregation
definitions. For example, an organization with
only two individuals in the purchasing function
will not gain as much by dividing the function into
20 separate activities as will an organization
with 50 individuals.
2. Identifying Elements of Cost
Elements of cost are the expenses of the organizations resources, including labor salaries and
expenses of capital, machinery, buildings, materials, supplies, equipment, and utilities. An organizations general ledger is typically the source of
information about these cost elements, but it
does not break those cost elements down by
activity performed. That is why ABC reassigns
those resource expenses into activity costs
using resource drivers.
3. Determining the Relationship between
Activities and Elements of Cost
The ABC system designer must assign the
expense data contained in the general ledger to
activities. This assignment is determined by the
relationships between the various work activities
and the elements of cost. Mentioned earlier as
an optional design, some ABC models first group
similar expenses into categories or jobs, referred
to as resource pools. The elements of cost or
resource pools can be assigned to activities by
assigning them in some directly measurable
manner (e.g., metering electric consumption,
charging maintenance via a work order, charging
requisitioning activities for supplies) or through
estimation (as determined through questionnaires and interviews).
23
Arbitrary cost allocations, particularly those

using broad averages, should be minimized
whenever possible. This is because they do not
improve the understanding of the economics of
performing activities. In addition, over-averaging
the allocations distorts the costs of cost objects
by over-costing some while under-costing others.
(Remember that for past period costing, there
must be zero-sum errors.)
4. Identifying and Measuring Activity
Drivers
Activity drivers are the usage-based variables that
explain the behavior and magnitude of activity
costs. They reflect the consumption of expenses
by activities and the consumption of activities by
other activities, products, or services.
The quest for precision tempts ABC system
designers to select too many excessively
detailed activities (effectively, tasks), each of
which will require an activity driver. Decisions
must be made as to the trade-offs between higher accuracy and administrative effort, as well as
the difficulties of operating a more complex costing system.
Sources of ABC System Information
There are three primary sources for the information needed to develop an ABC system: people,
the general ledger, and the organizations information technology (IT) systems.
1. The people who perform the work can provide information about the organizations
activities, the resources consumed, and the
performance measures used.
2. The general ledger provides information
about an organizations elements of cost. In
some cases, the ABC system can directly
extract data from the payroll and accounts
payable systems that are summarized in the
general ledger system.
3. IT systems provide data that measures the

outputs produced. Collectively, the organizations IT systems should contain information
about most of the cost objects and the
resource and activity cost drivers. For example, the number of invoices paida potential
activity drivershould be available from the
accounts payable system.
Including representatives from the IT function on
the cross-functional ABC project team can help in
the determination as to whether the required
information is already available in the transactional and other IT systems. This will facilitate capturing and processing of information. Some of the
data used in developing the ABC system, however, will come from interviews and questionnaires
directed to the organizations personnel because
they are the best source of this information.
It is important that the ABC project team be reasonable in its determination regarding the level
of detail needed to design the system properly.
Knowledgeable estimates of the relevant items
are preferable to precise calculations of irrelevant ones. As a result, team members must not
become too focused on details and should keep
the concept of materiality and Paretos 80-20
rule (80% of an outcome can be explained by
20% of all the information potentially available)
in mind at all times.
The interview process can be supplemented with
tools such as process mapping and value
chain/stream analysis, which help to document
the results of the data collection process and
organize the information to ensure it is complete, understandable, and can be readily analyzed. As mentioned in Section VII, these tools
are embraced by the operations and quality communities to remove waste, focus on value-adding
work, and improve productivity.
24
EXHIBIT 11. PROCESS VIEW
Dept. 1
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
Resources
Work Activities are

CENTRAL to processes and
stakeholders.
Dept. 2
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
Dept. 3
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
Outputs
Process Measures
x = activities
= process
= cost drivers
Value chain/stream analysis, as it relates to

activity-based costing, requires the subdivision of
an organizations processes into its distinct strategic activities. Basically this is the disaggregation
of the end-to-end business processes into the
work activities that belong to each of them. These
activities provide the building blocks by which the
organization creates value for its customers.
Leveling business processes to a useful level of
detail can be a challenge, and accountants tend
to excessively disaggregate them. Disaggregating
is the result of refining the verb-noun grammar of
an activity. For example, the activity process
invoices can be disaggregated into process
domestic invoices and process international
invoices. For ABCs purpose, the amount of time
and cost for each will sum to the higher aggregate, but dividing them provides better structure
to trace each activity using its own individual
activity driver. The result will be a more accurate
distinguishing of the unit cost of processing a

domestic invoice relative to an international
invoice (where the latter is likely be a higher unit
cost due to the extra steps involved). Without disaggregating the unit cost per processed invoice
for each type, the result will be an average unit
cost for the two types. ABC is in effect a de-averaging technique. At some level, however, the
insights gained and the increased cost accuracy
is not worth the effort. Typically, you do not want
to divide activities into their tasks. Keep in mind
that the level of detail and need for accuracy
depends on the decision for which cost data is
needed.
Strategic work activities should be considered
distinct and, therefore, isolated if they represent
a significant percentage of operating cost, the
behavior of their cost is unique, they are different
from the activities performed by competitors, or
25
EXHIBIT 12. FINAL COST OBJECT VIEW
Dept. 1
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
Resources
Work Activities are

CENTRAL to processes and
stakeholders.
Dept. 2
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
Dept. 3
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
Outputs
Process Measures
x = activities
= process
= cost drivers
Sustaining
Suppliers
Products
Orders
Customers
they have potential for differentiating the product

or services in the market place.2
Process mapping sequences the activities across
time. It does not involve reassigning those activities into their final cost objectsthe bottom of
the three cost views in Exhibit 5. ABC does that.
In contrast, during any time period, ABC typically
does not consider how activities relate in time
whether an activity occurs before or after another
one. In a sense, the ABC view for final cost objects
is time-blind but mix-sensitive.
2 For a more complete description of value chain analysis,
see John D. Shank and Vijay Govindarajan, Strategic Cost
Management and the Value Chain, Journal of Cost
Management, Winter 1992, pp. 5-21; and Shank and
Govindarajan, Strategic Cost Analysis: The Crown Cork and
Seal Case, Journal of Cost Management, Winter 1989,
pp. 5-16.
In contrast, the process view of activities is mixblind but time-sequence sensitive. Exhibits 11
and 12 illustrate this difference.
Other useful data can often be found in the
records that support operating employees unofficial systemsthe ones they maintain because
they do not believe the official accounting system or because the data they need is not collected in that system. This data can be either financial or nonfinancial. Since these employees need
to get their job done in spite of an ineffective
cost system, often they will have accumulated a
wealth of relevant data that will support a properly designed ABC system.
26
EXHIBIT 13. ABC RAPID PROTOTYPING WITH ITERATIVE REMODELING
Each iteration enhances the use of the ABC system.
ABC System
(repeatable, reliable, relevant)
ABC Models
#0
#1
#2
#3
Finally, informed observation is a valuable

information-gathering tool. With a sound understanding of the basic philosophy of ABC, an
observer can see inconsistencies between the
cost system and the real world when watching
the organizations product being manufactured or
service being performed.
XII. IMPLEMENTING THE FINAL

ABC SYSTEM
Exhibit 5, the multiple-stage cost assignment
system, represents the generic structure at a
high level of what the ABC project team must
design, but scaled at a lower level. Think of this
as the scale model that must be inflated and disaggregated to become a permanent, repeatable
production costing system.
Exhibit 13 illustrates the ABC rapid prototyping
with iterative remodeling approach that has
proven to be a successful implementation
approach, avoiding the failures of ABC systems
in the 1990s. The prior approach presumed ABC
was a big system and required devoting months

to build large components, such as the employee time collection systems, that were ultimately
all assembled and integrated. This approach
sometimes failed because executives began to
doubt if the result would be worthwhile, particularly with regard to the effort required to sustain
the model because the final result was so complex that even the accounts could not understand it. The ABC rapid prototyping approach has
these benefits:
It prevents over-design and excessive detail in
the ABC system. The major determinant for
accurate costs is the design of the cost
assignment path flow structure. That is, cost
accuracy is much less influenced from having
correct driver measures. Remember that the
periods general ledger expenses to be transformed into calculated costs are basically
100% correct. Having modest inaccuracies in
drivers from using employee estimates rather
than extracting more precise information from
data sources of other business systems typi-
27
cally has minimal impact, and most errors

dampen out (i.e., error offsets) further down
the cost assignment network. The result of not
understanding this property of costing (which
admittedly is counterintuitive, but it becomes
apparent after the ABC models are constructed) is excessive administrative effort to collect
the transactional input data and transform it
into costs.
The initial models, although not yet attaining
the needed accuracy requirements (which
should never be 100%) or the necessary levels
of disaggregation of activities, products, or
customers, accelerate the learning and shift
the focus from building a more perfect cost
system to determining the best uses of the
improved cost information in decision support
for profit margin analysis (strategic cost management) and productivity improvement (operational cost management). This shifts attention from squabbling about how the new costs
are derived to how the information will lead to
higher-profit-generating decisions.
Organizational learning by managers about
ABC principles and how to use ABC information is accelerated simply because it is much
more engaging to learn about ABC by applying
it to their own organization, where they are
familiar with its current business problems
and processes, than it is to learn from a case
study or examples using fictitious companies.
The theory becomes reality.
It is difficult to construct the final ABC system
correctly to get the right levels, selection of drivers, determination of which drivers can be estimated or require data extracts, and so on. The
ABC rapid prototyping approach with iterations
allows for mistakes early rather than later,
when they can be very expensive to correct.
Some employees may fear the disclosure of
the new cost information or feel adversely
affected by the resulting shift in cost assign-
ments relative to the existing reported costs.

For example, a product manager may learn his
or her products are no longer the most profitable, but are now actually much lower in profit ranking. These employees will be threatened
and
exhibit
resistance
to
change.
Implementing ABC is much more about behavioral change management than it is about
doing the ABC math. By briefing select groups
of managers with the early ABC prototypes, the
ABC project team and those managers can
develop risk-mitigation plans to deal with the
expected resistance.
Decisions based on the ABC information are
made sooner, increasing the ABC projects
return on investment (ROI). Higher-level managers who are briefed on early ABC cost iterations will find that the information both validates a conclusion they intuitively thought (but
which was distorted on not disclosed by their
existing cost system) and reports costs wildly
contrary to their beliefs (formed by flawed
costs from their existing cost system). With
both outcomes, they will likely make
changesdecisions resulting from the preliminary ABC information. A major influencer that
increases the ROI of any investment or project
is how quickly cash inflows are generated
(from revenue enhancements or cost savings).
Common sense assists with the remaining implementation steps to convert the most recent ABC
iterative model into a permanent, repeatable production system. By that point in time, the cost
assignment structure is designed and all the drivers are identifiedresource, activity, and cost
object drivers. In effect, the IT task of data
requirements definition has been completed.
The remaining tasks are to automate the import
of data into the calculation model, routinize the
procedures (e.g., a monthly cycle), and develop
28
reports. Fortunately, general ledger, sales order,

and operational systems (e.g., enterprise
resource planning or ERP systems) are common,
and they serve as the sources of raw transaction
data to program and feed the ABC modeling software. Driver data that may not be easily available
or is not yet measured can be estimated by functional employees who are familiar with their
processes. Using reasonable estimates for
expenses or activity costs that are not substantially large will not introduce significant costing
errors that could potentially jeopardize good
decision making.
XIII. ENSURING SUCCESSFUL

U S E A S A S U S TA I N A B L E S Y S T E M
The best ABC system will be useless if no one
understands how to use the information. There
is an anecdote of an untrained end-user who was
given the ABC reports and replied, I feel like a
dog watching television. I dont know what Im
looking at. As important as it is to design and
implement a theoretically sound and properly
maintained system, it is just as important to
make sure that (1) management has been
trained in the concepts and use of ABC, (2) management receives reports that are not only useful but understandable, and (3) the ABC information is kept current.
An important step in ensuring the sustainability
of an ABC system is to get the buy-in and signing on of managers at the beginning of the project by convincing them that their old, flawed
methodology is incorrect and denied them the
ability to see and understand large portions of
the companys cost behavior. Again, the ABC
rapid prototyping methodology assists with
securing buy-in. As the new system is developed
and becomes usable, these individuals should
be shown how the new ABC system overcomes
the deficiencies and related problems of the pre-
vious system and how the new costing system

provides information that will enable each manager to make better decisions. One way to
accomplish this is by developing new reports
with relevant data and eliminating old reports
that were published but rarely used.
In planning the ABC implementation, it is useful
to identify the key purposes for the ABC information and work backwards with those ends in
mind. That is, have compelling reasons for using
ABC data, such as obtaining better price quote
profit margin estimates. A well-designed ABC
system can also be the basis for improved budgeting, planning, and capacity resource planning.
Ultimately, management accounting information
is used for many diverse purposes. If a few key
purposes are satisfied, the rest will eventually be
accommodated, too.
The ABC system must be kept current to prevent
inaccurate costs from gradually creeping in.
When recalculating the model at periodic intervals (typically monthly), the general ledger
expenses used for the update are typically accurate. Not all the driver data needs to be recollectedonly the data that experiences volatility. The
rest can be reanalyzed or re-estimated on quarterly or semiannual cycles. This lowers the
denominator in the benefits to costs ratio, raising ABCs return on investment. Constant vigilance of the structural ABC model maintenance
is necessary in regard to new processes, work
activities, products, channels, and customers.
X I V. C O M M E R C I A L A B C
S O F T WA R E
Some organizations initially construct their ABC
model using a personal computer and spreadsheet software. They aggregate general ledger
expense accounts into groups, as yet undefined
activities into processes, and products and cus-
29
tomers into families and segments with similarities. The spreadsheet ABC model hits the wall
when it becomes apparent that: its columns-torows math logic is restrictive, multiple-stage
assignments are necessary, disaggregation is
required, and there are too many columns-torows calculations. It is also at this stage that it
becomes apparent the ABC spreadsheet will
never graduate from an ABC model to a reliable,
repeatable ABC system. Consequently, the selection of a commercial ABC software package
becomes the only option.
Commercial ABC software is designed to interface with general ledger, sales, and operating
systems, such as ERP. The software itself is
designed to calculate the multiple-stage cost
assignment network. After that, raw transactional data is loaded, and the laborious calculation
of costs is automated.
Some ERP software packages include an ABC
module, but much of the driver data may come
from a multitude of disparate data sources outside of the ERP system. Also the priorities of an
ERP software vendor are typically transactionbased operations and control. The trend of commercial ABC software is toward advanced modeling capabilities. These packages typically possess functionality to report multidimensional
views of costs and to display visual cost assignment paths that can be quickly and flexibly
remodeled. As ABC software modeling capabilities advance to reflect expense and cost behavior with regard to volume and mix changes, there
will be further improvements in reliability of forecasting and predictive analytics to evaluate whatif scenarios.
The premier commercial ABC systems reside on
top of a single, integrated information platform
that has already extracted and cleansed data
from disparate sources (although data sources

can still be directly accessed). Since management accounting is only one component in what
are now popularly becoming called business
intelligence systems deployed for enterprise performance management, there is synergy to having all components of a performance management portfolio linked, including customer relationship management analytics. The ABC system
produces key performance indicators (KPIs) for
the increasingly popular scorecard and dashboard applications, and the ABC information not
only helps monitor the KPI dials of dashboards,
but, more importantly, it also moves them.
Systems integration is no longer required, and
these systems also provide powerful, Web-based
query and reporting capabilities.
X V. C O N C L U S I O N
ABC is a powerful management tool that has
evolved in response to the ineffectiveness of traditional cost accounting and cost management
practices. Advocates of ABC have been won over
following their realization that the general
ledgers cost center and chart of account
expense data is structurally deficient in calculating costs and providing cost visibility and driver
understanding. They realize that broad-based
cost allocations create grotesquely distorted and
misleading costs compared to tracing costs with
ABC principles.
The adoption rate of ABC is propelled by increasing proliferation of all businesses outputs
(including types of suppliers, products, services,
channels, and customers) that cause increased
complexity and increased indirect expenses to
manage the complexity. Appeals by quality and
Lean management to their sales colleagues to
standardize cannot overcome customers
demand for customization. Operations managers
tasked with streamlining processes and remov-
30
ing waste recognize that ABC data is useful for

comparable benchmarking and quantifying the
magnitude of nonvalue-added costs and of
profit-reducing costs of quality.
The need to measure customer profitability and
value, in which most companies rarely go beyond
product costing, is escalating. For most companies, products are becoming commodities, and
they must shift to differentiating services for different customers in order to gain a competitive
edge and to maximize shareholder wealth. It is
no longer about simply growing sales, but rather
it is about profitably growing sales. ABC principles can also be applied to expenses below the
product gross margin line, and customer-related
cost-to-serve costs may be arguably more critical
to understand than product costs.
As important as it is, however, ABC is not a
panacea. As mentioned earlier, cost management
should always be done in the broader context of
performance management that integrates time,
quality, service levels, risk, capacity planning, and
costs. Given that, it is critical that an organization
understands its cost structure. Having a management accounting system that supports that
understanding, such as ABC, is critical for all of
its stakeholdersits employees, its community,
its loyal customers, and its shareholders.
G L O S S A RY
ACTIVITY DRIVERA factor used to assign cost
from an activity to a cost object. A measure
of the frequency and intensity of use of an
activity by a cost object.
CAPACITYThe physical facilities, personnel,
and processes available to meet the product
or service needs of customers. Capacity
generally refers to the maximum output or
production ability of a machine, person,
process, factory, product, or service.
COST DRIVERA measure of activity that is a

causal factor in the incurrence of cost to an
entity. Examples include direct labor hours,
machine hours, beds occupied, computer
time used, flight hours, miles driven, and
contracts.
COST OBJECTA function, organizational subdivision, contract, or other work unit for which
cost data is desired and for which provision
is made to accumulate and measure the
cost of processes, products, jobs, capitalized projects, etc.
COST OBJECT DRIVERThe best single quantitative measure of the frequency and intensity
of demands placed on a cost object by other
cost objects.
RESOURCE DRIVERA measure of the quantity
of resources consumed by an activity (e.g.,
the floor space occupied by the activity).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS
James A. Brimson, Activity Accounting: An ActivityBased Costing Approach, John Wiley & Sons,
New York, 1997.
Gary Cokins, Alan Stratton, and Jack Helbling, An
ABC Managers Primer: Straight Talk on
Activity-Based Costing, McGraw-Hill, New
York, 1993.
Gary Cokins, Activity-Based Cost Management: An
Executive Guide, John Wiley & Sons, New
York, 2001.
Gary Cokins, Activity-Based Cost Management
Making It Work: A Managers Guide to
Implementing and Sustaining an Effective
ABC System. McGraw-Hill, New York, 1996.
Ernest Glad and Hugh Becker, Activity-Based
Costing and Management. John Wiley &
Sons, New York, 1996.
Douglas T. Hicks, Activity-Based Costing: Making
It Work for Small and Mid-Sized Companies,
John Wiley & Sons, New York, 2002.
31
Robert S. Kaplan and Robin Cooper, Cost &

Effect: Using Integrated Cost Systems to Drive
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Michael C. OGuin, The Complete Guide to
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TEXTBOOKS
Edward Blocher, Cost Management: A Strategic
Approach, 5th edition, McGraw-Hill, New
York, 2006.
Ronald W. Hilton, Cost Management: Strategies
for Business Decisions, 3rd edition, McGrawHill, New York, 2006.
ARTICLES
Peter C. Brewer, Paul E Juras, and E. Richard
Brownlee II, Global Electronics, Inc.: ABC
Implementation
and
the
Change
Management Process, Issues in Accounting
Education, February 2003, pp. 49-69.
Stephen Bruesewitz and John Talbott,
Implementing ABC in a Complex
Organization, CMA, July/August 1997, pp.
16-19.
Gary Cokins, Identifying and Measuring the Cost
of Error and Waste, Journal of Cost
Management, March/April 2003, pp. 6-13.
Gary Cokins, Measuring Profits and Costs across
the Supply Chain for Collaboration, Journal of
Cost Management, September/October
2003, p. 22-29.
Gary Cokins, Measuring Customer Value: How
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Business Performance Management, February
2006, pp. 13-18.
Robin Cooper and Regine Slagmulder,
Designing ABC Systems for Strategic
Costing and Operational Improvement,
Strategic Finance, August 1999, pp. 18-20.
Robin Cooper and Regine Slagmulder, Activitybased BudgetingPart 1, Strategic

Finance, September 2000, pp. 85-86.
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Finance, October 2000, pp. 26-28.
Robin Cooper and Regine Slagmulder, ActivityBased
Cost
Management
System
ArchitecturePart I, Strategic Finance,
October 1999, pp. 12-14.
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Cost
Management
System
ArchitecturePart II, Strategic Finance,
December 1999, pp. 69-70.
Robin Cooper and Regine Slagmulder, ActivityBased
Cost
Management
System
ArchitecturePart III, Strategic Finance,
February 2000, pp. 63-64.
Edward Forrest, How to Implement a Successful
ABM Program, Accounting Today, August 25September 7, 1997, pp. 16, 34.
Michael Gering, Activity-Based Costing Lessons
Learned Implementing ABC, Management
Accounting, May 1999, pp. 26-27.
Ernest Glad, Implementation Considerations for
an ABC System, Management Accounting
(UK), July/August 1993, pp. 29.
David E. Keys and Robert J. LeFevre, Why Is
Integrated ABC Better? Journal of
Corporate Accounting & Finance, March/April
2002, pp. 45-53.
John Krieger, Establishing Activity-based
Costing: Lessons & Pitfalls, Newspaper
Financial Executives Quarterly, Third Quarter
1997, pp. 14-17+.
Raef Lawson, Beyond ABC: Process Based
Costing, Journal of Cost Management, Fall
1994, pp. 33-43.
Raef Lawson, Process Based Costing at
Community Health Plan, Journal of Cost
Management, Spring 1996, pp. 31-43.
32
Mohan Nair, The Keys to Implementing Activitybased Management, Journal of Corporate

Accounting & Finance, March/April 2000,
pp. 37-42.
Mohan Nair, Helping Ensure Successful
Implementations
of
Activity-based
Management, Journal of Corporate
Accounting & Finance, January/February
2002, pp. 73-86.
Paul M. Nolan, Critical Success Factors for
Implementing an Enterprise-wide ABC
Journal
of
Performance
Solution,
Management, vol. 17, no. 3, 2004,
pp. 15-22.
Matti Sievanen and Katja Tornberg, Processbased Costing: The Best of Activity-based
Costing, AACE International Transactions,
2002, pp. CS151-CS156.
Ken Whittaker, Five Keys to Deploying Activitybased Costing, The Armed Forces
Comptroller, Winter 2005, pp. 6-8.
33

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Statements on Management Accounting

STRATEGIC COST MANAGEMENT

2006 Institute of Management Accounting

Statements on Management Accounting