functional areas in a business

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Functional Areas Within Businesses

Every organisation must be sure about what they are capable of doing. In this case the functional areas of the organisation helps marketers meet their objectives. Functional areas of an organisation are usually made up of eight vital factors which are: finance, marketing, customer service, operations/productions, research and development, quality assurance, human resources and administration/IT.  Functional areas are very important because this is what the organisation relies on as all these departments link up although they all have their own individual tasks to do, however it is all work towards the same objective. This is a process called Departmentalisation. Although they are separate departments that work on the same objective, it still means they have to work closely together so that they can meet customer needs. However the functional areas in all business vary depending on what they produce, who their target audiences are and so on.

Diagram of the main Functional Areas

Marketing

The marketing department has a responsibility of making sure that what ever is being produced meets the consumer’s requirements suitably because you cannot just offer a product to a consumer for ridiculous prices so in other words the marketing department make sure that the product meets the consumer’s needs at reasonable and profitable prices. Like all the other departments the marketing department also have a budget to work to and they will also have to work very closely with the research and development department to compare prices and check new product offers which all helps figure out customer needs and budget. The marketing department is also responsible for guaranteeing the finance department invests money into promotional activities which is a good way of communicating with customers to find out what type of products and materials suit their needs. The customer service is the area where customers/consumers have their opportunities to ask all the questions they want. So basically marketing is a very important functional area in an organisation as it links with several other departments to satisfy a consumer. A good example of a company’s marketing department is Sainsbury’s. This multi-billion pounds food retail company relies on their marketing department as they face a lot of competition such as Tesco’s, ASDA, and Morrison’s and so on. The marketing department plays a massive role in the Sainsbury’s business because they keep ahead of the market by lowering prices and introducing new items to the market on a regular basis. It also helps the company sell millions of products weekly as most of the products meet customer needs.

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Finance

The finance departments of businesses usually keep records of all transactions that are made. So they keep all information many things such as: the products that were sold to customers by checking the till records after each day, they check the quantity of products and prices of products with suppliers so in other words manage the money that comes in and out of the organisation. They also set every other department a budget of money to work to and also sort out most problems to do with certain departments. So for example the Administration/ICT group need money to order ...

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