Julie Martinez, manager of the new retail outlet of SuperPrinting, is pondering the management challenges in her newposition. Super Printing is a long-established printing company ina major metropolitan area. The new Super outlet, located at theedge of the parking lot for Western Business School, representsSuper's attempt to break into the rapidly growing businessfor retail imaging.
The super retail store provides a rangeof copying and digital imaging services for the businessschool's students, faculty, and administrators, plus otherretail customers. Super's primary products are black-and-white copies of documents. Variation exists even in this basisproduct, however, as consumers can choose from a variety of papercolors, sizes, and quality. Super recently purchased a machine thatprints color copied from digital input. Color copies also can beproduced in a variety of sizes, paper quality, and paper types,including transparencies for overhead projection andphotographic-quality reproductions. Other printing products includebusiness cards, laminated luggage tags, and name badges forconference, executive programs, and students.
In addition to physical printing, theSuper center provides fax services by which individuals can bothreceive and transmit documents. When incoming faxes are received, astore employee calls a recipient, who stops at the outlet to pickup the document. The center also has several personal computers,both Windows-based and Macintosh, that students rent by the hourfor basic computer processing, Internet access, e-mail, andpreparing presentations and résumés.
Super has other machines that assembleprinted pages into bound documents. Two different binding types areavailable. The store also sells a limited selection of officesupplies, 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 theevening shift (5:00 p.m. to midnight) when walk-in business is muchslower. The number of people working during the evening hours isdetermined by the anticipated backlog of reproduction work thatwill be performed during these hours.
Prices for various products andservices have been set on the basis of those of competitors, suchas FedEx Kinko's and Staples. Julie receives a daily reporton total sales, broken down by cash sales, credit card sales, andcredit 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-whiteand color printing, computer services, document preparation, faxservices, and sales of office supplies). Thus, Julie is unsurewhether each line of business is profitable. Julie is also unsurehow efficiently the business is run.
Further, the different business linesrequire different quantities and types of capital: equipment suchas copying and printing machines, computers, and facsimilemachines; physical capital such as office space; and the differentinventories of paper types, colors, grades and sizes, and officesupplies.
If the pilot store that Julie isoperating is successful, then the parent company will likely try toopen many similar outlets near schools and universities throughoutthe metropolitan area. For this purpose, the parent company wantsto know which business lines are the most profitable, including thecost of capital and space required, so that these lines can befeatured at each retail outlet. If some business lines are notprofitable, then Super probably will not offer those services atnewly opened stores unless they are necessary to build retailtraffic.
Required:
Identify the management accounting information needs for the following:
a. An employeedesiring to help serve customers more efficiently andeffectively.
b. JulieMartinez, the manager of the pilot retail outlet.
c. Thepresident of Super Printing.
Be sure to address the content, frequency, and level of aggregation of information needed by these different individuals.