Dosificación

Responsibility centers:

A responsibility center is an organization unit that is headed by a manager who is responsible for its activities. In a sense, a company is a collection of responsibility centers. Each of which is represented by box on the on the organization are responsibility centers for section work shifts or other small organization units. At a higher level are departments or business units that consist of several of these smaller units plus staff and management people these larger units are also responsibility center. And from the stand point of senior management and the board of directors, the whole company is responsibility center although the term is usually used to refer to unit within the company.

Nature of responsibility centers

A responsibility center exist one or more purpose are its objectives. The company as a whole has goals, and senior management has decided on a set of strategies to accomplish these goals. The objectives of responsibility centers are to help implement these strategies. Because the organization is the sum of its responsibility centers, if the strategies are sound and if each responsibility center, if the strategies are sound and if each responsibility center meets its objectives the whole organization should achieve its goals. A responsibility center uses inputs, and a variety of services. Its work with these resources and it usually require working capital, equipment, and other asset to do this work. As a result of this work the responsibility center produces output which is classified either as goods if they are tangible or as services if they are intangible. Every responsibility center has output that is it does something. In a production plant, the outputs are goods. In staff units, such as human resources, transportation, engineering, accounting, and administration, the output s are services. For many responsibility centers, especially staff units, outputs are difficult to measure; nevertheless, they exist. The products produced by a responsibility center or to the outside marketplace. In the first case, the product are inputs to the other responsibility center in the latter case, they are output s of the whole organization.

Types of Responsibility Centers Cost Center

Cost centers are divisions that add to the cost of the organization, but only indirectly add to the profit of the company. Typical examples include Research and Development, Marketing and Customer service. Companies may choose to classify business units as cost centers, profit centers, or investment centers. There are some significant advantages to classifying simple, straightforward divisions as cost centers, since cost is easy to measure. However, cost centers create incentives for managers to underfund their units in order to benefit themselves, and this underfunding may result in adverse consequences for the company as a whole (reduced sales because of bad customer service experiences, for example). Because the cost centre has a negative impact on profit (at least on the surface) it is a likely target for rollbacks and layoffs when budgets are cut. Operational decisions in a

contact centre, for example, are typically driven by cost considerations. Financial investments in new equipment, technology and staff are often difficult to justify to management because indirect profitability is hard to translate to bottom-line figures. Business metrics are sometimes employed to quantify the benefits of a cost centre and relate costs and benefits to those of the organization as a whole. In a contact centre, for example, metrics such as average handle time, service level and cost per call are used in conjunction with other calculations to justify current or improved funding.

Profit Center

A responsibility centre is called a profit centre when the manager is held responsible for both costs (inputs) and revenues (outputs) and thus for profit. Despite the name, a profit centre can exist in nonprofits organizations (though it might not be referred to as such) when a responsibility centre receives revenues for its services. A profit centre is a big segment of activity for which both revenues and costs are accumulated: A centre, whose performance is measured in terms of both - the expense it incurs and revenue it earns, is termed as a profit centre. The output of a responsibility centre may either be meant for internal consumption or for outside customers. In the latter case, the revenue is realized when the sales are made. That is, when the output is meant for outsiders, then the revenue will be measured from the price charged from customers. If the output is meant for other responsibility centre, then management takes a decision whether to treat the centre as profit centre or not. In fact, any responsibility centre can be turned into a profit centre by determining a selling price for its outputs. For instance, in case of a process industry, the output of one process may be transferred to another process at a profit by taking into account the market price. Such transfers will give some profit to that responsibility centre. Although such transfers do not increase the Company’s assets, they help in management control process.

Investment Centre

An investment centre goes a step further than a profit centre does. Its success is measured not only by its income but also by relating that income to its invested capital, as in a ratio of income to the value of the capital employed. In practice, the term investment centre is not widely used. Instead, the term profit centre is used indiscriminately to describe centers that are always assigned responsibility for revenues and expenses, but may or may not be assigned responsibility for the capital investment. It is defined as a responsibility centre in which inputs are measured in terms of cost / expenses and outputs are measured in terms of revenues and in which assets employed are also measured. A responsibility centre is called an investment centre, when its manager is responsible for costs and revenues as well as for the investment in assets used by his centre. He is responsible for maintaining a satisfactory return on investment i.e. asset employed in his responsibility centre. The investment centre manager has control over revenues, expenses and the amounts invested in the centre’s assets. The manager of an investment centre is required to earn a satisfactory return. Thus, return on investment (ROI) is used as the performance evaluation criterion in an investment centre. He also formulates the credit policy, which has a direct influence on debt collection, and the inventory policy, which determines the investment in inventory. The Vice President (Investments) of a mutual funds company may be in charge of an Investment Centre. In the Investment Centre, the manager in charge is held responsible for the proper utilization of assets. He is expected to earn a satisfactory return on the assets employed in his responsibility centre. Measurement of assets employed poses many problems. It becomes difficult to determine the amount of assets employed in a particular responsibility centre. Some of the assets are in the physical possession of the responsibility centre while for some assets it may depend upon other responsibility centers or the Head Office of the company. This is particularly true of cash or heavy plant and equipment. Whether such assets should be included in the figure of assets employed of the responsibility centre and if included, at how much value, is a difficult question. On account of these difficulties, investment centers are generally used only for relatively large units, which have independent divisions, both manufacturing and marketing, for their individual products.