Based on the data in its ABC model, Banta instituted a nonnegotiable minimum order size, reduced the inventory of unprofitable products, promoted sales of high-profit products, negotiated with customers either to reduce the demand for high-cost services or to reprice them, and offered incentives to its salespeople to increase the net profits of their customers. It also renegotiated with vendors to recoup the cost of processing customer rebates. The general manager of sales used the information to transform his sales representatives from order takers to consultants, helping them to create customers and territories that were more profitable for Banta. He reports, “Salespeople can now increase their gross profits not by simply adding points to their margin but by knowing which items to sell.”
By accurately projecting the cost and profits of proposed business, Banta has been able to take on new business that has increased revenues by 35% and generated immediate profit improvements of 43%, with a further 25% yet to come through from future opportunities. (See the exhibit “Profitable Decisions at Banta Foods.”) Its performance has led to the distinction of being named “Innovator of the Year” by the industry journal, Institutional Distributor.
Profitable Decisions at Banta Foods
Over the past 15 years, activity-based costing has enabled managers to see that not all revenue is good revenue and not all customers are profitable customers. Unfortunately, the difficulties of implementing and maintaining traditional ABC systems have prevented them from being adopted on any significant scale. Time-driven ABC has overcome these difficulties, offering a transparent, scalable methodology that is easy to implement and update. It draws on existing databases to incorporate specific features for particular orders, processes, suppliers, and customers. Activity-based costing is no longer a complex, expensive financial-systems implementation; the time-driven ABC innovation provides managers with meaningful cost and profitability information, quickly and inexpensively.
A version of this article appeared in the November 2004 issue of Harvard Business Review.
Robert S. Kaplan is a senior fellow and the Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School. He is co-developer of Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing and the Balanced Scorecard.
Steven R. Anderson (sanderson@acornsys.com) is the founder and chairman of Acorn Systems, a software and consulting firm headquartered in Houston. Kaplan serves on the board of Acorn Systems.