The Glade 4.0

By that logic, everything in the company except for the sales team is a "cost center."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_centre_(business)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_center

Basically. Yes.

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Holy shitsnacks!

That is what sales and marketing want you to believe. It is not actually the case.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Yeah, my wife tries to tell me how much she saves when she uses a coupon at Khol's.

You either bring cash in or not, and "saving" money isn't the same as making money, and you sure as hell don't save money by spending. It doesn't mean it's not important, but still, the very best you can accomplish is not spending as much.

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In time, this too shall pass.

That would depend very much on the company and the industry.

For example, the Surgery department at a hospital is a revenue center. The coding department is a cost center. This is despite the fact that money wouldn't come in the door without the coding department.

All companies have units that actually make or deliver the product, and companies that support delivery. The latter are cost centers.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Do you buy software, use software?


Can you compete with others without technology?

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Elmo, IT/Support/HR/Customer service/etc all do not directly generate revenue in accounting terms no matter what you may think of their necessity.

Which is why they are often left sucking hind tit in terms of cutbacks or downsizing.

Which is also why IT people generally hate accounting people.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Everyone hates accounting people. They're right in there with lawyers.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Doesn't really matter. You're trying to argue business definitions with me. I didn't invent them, I'm just using them properly.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

This isn't necessarily true.

Some of the best organized companies actually organize their accounting so that Information Technology bills the departments that use their services. IT management determines what the cost is for a particular product or service, and funds are transferred from one cost center to another internally. ("This business division has 2000 people with mailboxes, using 2 Terabytes of drive space. The monthly cost for this is...") This cost comes out of the budget for the departments using the service, and is used to create the budget for IT. IT can actually show a profit like this (although in reality, they are discouraged from doing so.)

The advantage of this accounting model is it actually shows where the inefficiencies are located in your company, rather than dumping everything on the service providers.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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