Analyzing a Potential Warranty Call Center Budget Overrun: A. Faye Borthick |
ABSTRACT: In this case, students experience developing and using database queries to analyze possible causes of a potential budget overrun for telephone warranty service for a company that sells personal computers (PCs). Students query a Microsoft Access ® database with tables for sales of PCs, time estimates for technician time, employees, technician costs, and service minutes provided. The queries illustrate the kinds of queries that accountants could prepare to analyze transaction-level data to develop insights about business operations. Query-based approaches to analyzing transaction data are likely to become more common as businesses take advantage of the wealth of data available to them for solving business problems and exploiting emerging opportunities. This case is appropriate for students that have attained rudimentary database querying proficiency, e.g., at the level developed by Borthick et al.'s (2001) case on assuring compliance for responses to Web site referrals. Key Words : Budget overrun; Call center; Database querying; Query strategy; Queries |