At Deutschland Electronics,product Lines Are Charged for Call Centre Support

question 56

Essay

At Deutschland Electronics,product lines are charged for call centre support costs based on sales revenue.Last year's summary of call centre operations revealed the following:

Deutschland Electronics currently allocates call centre support costs using a rate of 0.5% of sales revenue.
Required:
a.Compute the amount of call centre support costs allocated to each product line under the current system.
b.Assume Deutschland decides to use the average call length for information to assign last year's support costs.Does this allocation method seem more appropriate than percentage of sales? Why or why not?
c.Assume Deutschland decides to use the numbers of calls for information and for warranties to assign last year's support costs of $65,000.Compute the amount of call centre support costs assigned to each product line under this revised ABC system.
d.Deutschland Electronics assigns bonuses based on departmental profits.How might the Specialty Products manager try to obtain higher profits for next year if support costs are assigned based on the average call length for information?
e.Discuss the barriers for implementing ABC for this call centre.

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Definitions:

Sample Standard Deviation

A measure that quantifies the amount of variation or dispersion of a set of sample values relative to the sample mean.

Sample Proportion

The ratio of members in a sample that have a particular attribute to the total number of members in the sample.

Error of Estimation

The discrepancy between a population parameter and its estimate, indicating the uncertainty associated with the estimation process.

Statistic

A single measure, calculated from sample data, used to summarize a characteristic of the sample.