مشکلات ارزیابی عملکرد نماینده فروش : سعی در هزینه یابی بر مبنای فعالیت

Activity-based costing (ABC) offers a way to improve performance evaluation by providing estimates of the cost of satisfying sales terms to which a sales representative may agree, such as number of batches in which an order is produced and number of training hours provided to customer employees. It also provides estimates of the cost of resources that a sales representative may use while engaging in marketing activities, such as making sales calls and attending trade shows. Traditional costing, which assumes that costs only vary at the unit level, does not provide estimates of the costs of many of these terms and activities.

Is the compensation of your sales representatives growing rapidly while your profit declines? Are your marketing costs increasing while sales remain unchanged? Do you feel that the cost estimates provided by your accounting system are not helpful to you as you evaluate sales representative performance? If the answers to these questions are “yes,” activity-based costing (ABC), a relatively new type of costing system, which analyzes a company's costs differently than does a traditional costing system, may provide the answers to these and other important concerns facing you in your role as marketing manager. Although ABC is frequently thought of in the context of manufacturing cost [1], [2], [3] and [4], it has the potential to provide cost data to facilitate decision making for decisions well beyond those related to the manufacture of a product [5]. The present paper describes ways in which ABC can facilitate managing the marketing function. Specifically, it explores the potential of ABC to enhance performance evaluation for sales representatives. Understanding ABC and how it can facilitate decision making is important to a marketing manager for two reasons. First, a change to an ABC system provides the potential for the accounting department to provide cost data for more informed decision-making. However, it is up to the marketing manager to ask for this data and to understand what it means and how it can help. Second, initiatives to change accounting systems should come from those who use the figures provided by the system. An appreciation for the potential benefits of an ABC system may suggest to the marketing manager that a change to an ABC system will be desirable. In this case, the marketing function can join with other users who may benefit from ABC cost data to push for a change. Section 2 contrasts the types of data available from an ABC system with that available from a traditional costing system with an emphasis on those features that can assist the marketing manager in managing the marketing function. ABC data can assist the marketing manager by providing a more appropriate measure of a sales representative's output to use in evaluating the performance of and determining appropriate rewards for individual sales representatives. It can do this by providing estimates of the costs of features of an order that a sales representative may negotiate. A traditional costing system does not provide such estimates. Separate sections of the paper demonstrate how ABC data reflect (1) the impact of terms negotiated by a sales representative and (2) resources used by sales representatives on firm cost and profitability. The concluding section of the paper provides a summary.