Financial Management & Decision Making Individual Presentation

FINANCIAL
MANAGEMENT &
DECISION MAKING
INDIVIDUAL
PRESENTATION

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
Implementation of Activity Based Costing – A business case of AstraZeneca..........................3
Advantages & disadvantages of the business implementing ABC...........................................5
Advantages of ABC system over traditional costing techniques.................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8
Books and Journals......................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Financial management is concerned with the decision making pertaining to how funds
could be acquired efficiently by identifying right source of finance, deployment of funds by
making right choice among the available investment proposals and at last deciding how much
should be distributed among shareholders as dividends and how much should be retained with
the company to make further investment (Hansen, Mowen and Heitger, 2021). In this report, the
discussion would be done pertaining to how Activity Based costing system has been
implemented within AstraZeneca which is a global biotechnology & pharmaceutical company
headquartered in Cambridge, England. It provides innovative medicines to the patients residing
across the globe. Therefore, the discussion would be based on how ABC has been implemented
by AstraZeneca, the advantages & disadvantages of this costing system to the business and
extent to which ABC system is beneficial as compared to the traditional costing techniques.
MAIN BODY
Implementation of Activity Based Costing – A business case of AstraZeneca
AstraZeneca is a science led biopharmaceutical company operating at global level whose
operations involves discovery, development as well as commercialization of medicines to be
prescribed to different type of patients worldwide. Its purpose is to transform healthcare and
changing the lives billions of people living across the globe for their betterment and addressing
healthcare challenges faced by humankind. Therefore, the company is indulged in manufacturing
& selling of biotechnology & pharmaceutical products for the treatment of several kind of
diseases & disorders associated with humankind. So, there is always a need for best costing
technique to determine the per unit cost in most effective manner in order to make out the
appropriate sales price for different categories of products. With this, the set targets for the profit
margins become easy to attain. Activity Based Costing or ABC is one of the most preferred
costing technique of the contemporary world with reference to the global manufacturing
industry.
Activity Based costing
ABC involves a method of assigning indirect costs & overhead to the products & services. This
costing system is based activities that are undertaken due to any event or unit of work for the