Functional_Areas_of_a_Business_and_Their_Supporting_Role

Functional areas of a business and their supporting role Functional areas For a business to be successful it must have different areas with specific jobs in, these are called functions. These functions divide a business up into smaller groups that have different specialism with certain staff in each department that are skilled in that particular area. These functions are Marketing, finance, customer service, operations/production, research and development, quality assurance department, human resources and administration and ICT. Without just one of these functions the business would not be as successful. Marketing Finance It is important for the whole company to know how much money is going in and out of the business; this is because all the other departments need money to run, and if they don’t have a budget set they won’t know how much money they can use. Finance handles financial accounts and producing annual accounts and sales. Its job also includes producing budgets and achievements for the whole company. Marketing must be connected with finance because marketing must be able to estimate their sales and resource and this will be estimated from previous sales, which finance will have and provide for them. They also need to have a budget and to work out a budget, finance must inform them of how much the company is bringing in and how much marketing is allowed. Customer Service Customers are what make a business successful, without them the company won’t be bringing in any profit. Having a service for the customers helps provide the business with feedback from real life customers such as a supermarket complaint. Keeping customers happy is one of the most effective ways of getting them to come back for more. A business must offer the customers what they want, do what you saw you are going to do, and listen to what they say to you. The staff that work in the customer service department must be someone who understands how their performance can shape the customers perspective of your business. Another key point in customer service is to ask for feedback, talk to the customers. For example if someone has stopped buying a product, find out why, and find a way to solve this problem. Customer service must always report back to Marketing, this is because marketing need to know that their customer’s needs are fully met and the only way they can do this within the business is through customer services. Operations/production This department is responsible for creating a good product; it has got to be about the customer, knowing what they want and their preference of product. It must work with marketing so they know what type of product they want, if this department didn’t work with marketing they wouldn’t know what to make and have no motivation. They also deal with current assets such as stock of a product and labour of workers. Operations and production often have a lot of overtime for staff because of meeting deadlines that have to be over worked because of late schedules with deliveries or re-scheduling production time. Research and development Research and development can be a very expensive department NEED HELP ON THIS Quality Assurance Department This department is responsible for making sure the quality of their company’s product is good enough and making sure marketing is meeting their customer’s needs. Some customers care more about quality of a product than how much it is worth, so it is important for someone to make sure the customers are satisfied with the quality of a product, I think this department is a very vital part of a successful product. Having a product of good quality helps the business have a good reputation from customers. This department needs to be involved with marketing because they need to inform marketing of how good the product is and marketing must inform this department of what the customers want in their product, it all about keeping the customer happy. Human Resources Human resources is the department that deals with staff, trains them up and puts them in the right department that the manager of human resources believes they will specialize in. They are also responsible for making sure all staff are motivated, on task and are happy with their job. Marketing must be involved with human resources because Marketing must tell this department what their plan is, for example increase sales by 23% and human resources are responsible for letting all the staff know their roles, deadlines and budgets to help make this goal achievable and to make sure no staff is slacking which could jeopardize the company’s success. Administration and ICT Most businesses use ICT, it speeds up tasks such as preparing letters, it helps to communicate with customers and research the market. Because of this a department is needed with staff who specialize in computers, if a system goes down in a company no other department can work because they all work off the same system, so someone has to be there to be able to fix it as soon as possible to help get the company working again. This department works with all other departments because they all need computers to work quicker. It works with marketing because market research would go a lot quicker if staff could use the internet to find out the latest trends, what customers want and to research their competitors. ----------------------- This department is responsible for satisfying the customer and making a profit. Marketing must work with all departments so that they all meet customer requirements. This is a diagram of the marketing plan, showing the steps needing to take to create a successful market for a business.