CHAPTER 1: COST MANAGEMENT AND STRATEGY EXERCISES

1-24 Strategy; Real Estate Services (15 min)
This exercise can be used to provide a good perspective for the students to see the role of cost management in solving business issues, and in placing the management accountant in more of a leadership role in the firm. It also provides an early motivation for the cost behavior issues to be discussed later in chapter 3 and chapter 8. The management accountant has a hunch that the company is about to take on a potentially damaging strategic initiative. This is a great opportunity to begin to play more of a strategic role in the company. The first step should be to obtain the relevant information about projected revenues and costs and do a careful analysis of the likely profitability of developing the new, smaller customers. Here’s how the case might be used in a class discussion. First, ask the class to identify the types of costs likely to be incurred by this company in providing its service. The answers are likely to include labor costs and materials for cleaning and maintenance, in addition to costs for maintaining the firm’s office. As these examples are given, put them on the chalkboard and collect 6 or 8 of them. Then, ask how each of these costs might differ between large and small customers. For example, the cost of cleaning labor and materials will likely be somewhat proportional to the square feet of space each customer occupies, so that cost projections based on current customer experience is likely to be useful in estimating the costs/profits of the smaller customers. However, security costs are likely to not vary greatly based on the size of the customer. How does this affect the pricing and the potential profitability of the smaller customers? Similarly, how will the office-related costs of managing the customer account differ between