Julie Martinez, manager of the new retail outlet of Super Printing, is pondering the management challenges in her new position. Super Printing is a long-established printing company in a major metropolitan area. The new Super outlet, located at the edge of the parking lot for Western Business School, represents Super’s attempt to break into the rapidly growing business for retail digital imaging. The Super retail store provides a range of copying and digital imaging services for the business school’s students, faculty, and administrators, plus other retail customers. Super’s primary products are black-and-white copies of documents. Variation exists even in this basic product, however, as consumers can choose from a variety of paper colors, sizes, and quality. Super recently purchased a machine that prints color copies from digital input. Color copies also can be produced in a variety of sizes, paper quality, and paper types, including transparencies for overhead projection and photographic-quality reproductions. Other printing products include business cards, laminated luggage tags, and name badges for conferences, executive programs, and students. In addition to physical printing, the Super center provides fax services by which individuals can both receive and transmit documents. When incoming faxes are received, a store employee calls the recipient, who stops at the outlet to pick up the document. The center also has several personal computers, both Windows-based and Macintosh, that students rent by the hour for basic computer processing, Internet access, e-mail, and preparing presentations and résumés. Each computer is connected to Super’s black-and-white and color printers, enabling students to produce paper copies of their presentations and résumés.
Super has other machines that assemble printed pages into bound documents. Two different binding types are available. The store also sells a limited selection of office supplies, including paper, envelopes, paper clips, glue, binders, tabs, pens, pencils, and marking pens. Currently, about five employees (including Julie) work at the retail outlet during prime hours (8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M.) with two to four people working the evening shift (5:00 P.M. to midnight) when walk-in business is much slower. The number of people working during the evening hours is determined by the anticipated backlog of reproduction work that will be performed during these hours.
Prices for the various products and services have been set based on those of competitors, such as FedEx Kinko’s and Staples. Julie receives a daily report on total sales, broken down by cash sales, credit card sales, and credit sales to various programs at the business school; however, she currently does not have a report on expenses such as labor, materials, and equipment for each line of business (black-and-white and color printing, computer services, document preparation, fax services, and sales of office supplies). Thus, Julie is unsure whether each line of business is profitable. Julie is also unsure how efficiently the business is run.
Further, the different business lines require different quantities and types of capital: equipment such as copying and printing machines, computers, and facsimile machines; physical capital such as office space; and the different inventories of paper types, colors, grades and sizes, and office supplies.
If the pilot store that Julie is operating is successful, then the parent company will likely try to open many similar outlets near schools and universities throughout the metropolitan area. For this purpose, the parent company wants to know which business lines are the most profitable, including the cost of capital and space required, so that these lines can be featured at each retail outlet. If some business lines are not profitable, then Super probably will not offer those services at newly opened stores unless they are necessary to build retail traffic. Required Identify the management accounting information needs for the following:
(a) An employee desiring to help serve customers more efficiently and effectively
(b) Julie Martinez, the manager of the pilot retail outlet
(c) The president of Super Printing Be sure to address the content, frequency, and level of aggregation of information needed by these different individuals.