Measuring Customer Profitability in a B-To-B Service Company: CIM Case Study

We investigate the relationship between cost accounting systems and customer profitability in business-to-business service companies. We analyze the methodological characteristics that a cost accounting system must have in order to manage properly customer. Two innovations are identified: the final object of cost measurement and the creation of a new intermediate costs containers (cost destinations). The case of an Italian leader provider of services for banks is presented. Findings show that service components constitute a key element to link variations of activity costs and customer profitability and extend previous research on value creation models by integrating approaches of attribute-based cost assignment.