Title: Costs function assessment: an empirical business analytics approach for decisional purposes

Authors: Antonio Focacci

Addresses: Management Sciences Department, School of Economics, Management and Statistics, University of Bologna, Piazza Scaravilli, 2 – 40126 Bologna, Italy

Abstract: The aim of the present paper is, without any pretension of to be exhaustive, to propose a business analytics contribution in the elaboration of a reliable and accurate assessment of firm's costs function for decision purposes. As a matter of fact, the analyst/consultant, the entrepreneur itself or also the manager has not always the possibility to access to the wide range of all the needed useful information to deal with this task. Income statements or general accounting documents could not record - for an appropriate and sound assessment - all relevant figures. In these (not-extraordinary) cases, supplementary and accurate data gathering is both extremely hard to carry on and not synchronised with entrepreneurial needs. Hence, an analysis developing informed business decisions seems not possible except of roughly approximations. Considering these binding constraints, business analytics tools - by recurring to their interdisciplinary versatility - can surely support managerial decision-making widening and strengthening possibilities to enhance the value of retrievable insights from traditional firm's accounting data. Under this perspective, management accounting combines its traditional informational power with sound scientific support for a renewed, more efficient and multidisciplinary approach to business.

Keywords: management accounting; business analytics; variable costs; fixed costs; statistical analysis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBSR.2018.088452

International Journal of Business and Systems Research, 2018 Vol.12 No.1, pp.1 - 12

Received: 25 Sep 2015
Accepted: 07 Jan 2016
Published online: 11 Dec 2017 *

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