SALES AND MARKETING: Must make sure that the company’s bills and invoices for different items are paid, as well as organising all the other departments financial budgets
PRODUCTIONS/OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT: Makes sure enough money is flowing into production so that production does not stop and organises production in itself, including the actual place where the production is to take place, and
SECOND DEPARTMENT: Sales and Marketing
In sales, the salesmen and women make and close deals with large companies like music shops such as Spheremusic and Musicroom, or independent buyers, such as the general public, on the products created at manufacturing. They deal with large amounts of money with maximum efficiency needed for speedy buys and sales. They also decide how their products are packaged and presented to the public, as well as the way the whole company is presented to the public. Fender have gone for an all-American look, because the company is advertised by Americans, but they keep a worldwide focus, selling the world over, in places like Brazil, England and Sweden. The way the four P’s (or the marketing mix) is applied in Fender is like this:
-PRICE: Fender guitars come regarded as the best, and therefore, tend to have a higher price tag than most guitars. Fender can get away with this, as the money paid for them is only slightly higher than the money spent making them. Therefore, by keeping a high standard, more money can roll in.
-PRODUCT: Fender provides very good guitars- famous musicians always use their products, and Fender are always spoke highly of by them. Fender are always improving on previous projects, from guitars to amps, and are constantly producing better guitars and amps, and have a wide range of electric, bass and acoustic guitars available to the public.
-PROMOTION: Fender uses several different ways to promote its products, and the company itself including:
BRANDING: The handwritten style of the Fender logo is well remembered and recognised by musicians worldwide and many non-musicians too.
ADVERTISING: Fender has several different ways to advertise their company. They have their own clothing label, they fund music tutoring projects in school in America, they sign up and coming bands, and help promote and sponsor certain bands. They also promote all types of music that uses guitars, with jazz and blues music being catered for as well as rock.
PACKAGING: This does not really apply to Fender in the literal sense, as the guitars and amps are not sold in any packaging. The company itself, however, comes in a very all-American style, but they still ingeniously manage to keep very global, catering for tastes in Mexico and Brazil to Austria and Sweden.
PUBLICITY: Everything Fender gets up to is put on their many territorial websites, and there are links to their sites by bands that use their instruments. A team of representative musicians tour America’s schools; teaching children how to play guitar, and generally promoting a good name for Fender.
PLACE: Fender is set up worldwide, and thanks to the ability to buy Fender products online, they are everywhere and nowhere at once. A team of musician representatives also tour America’s schools, teaching young kids to play guitar, and selling instruments for Fender. Fender also make their instruments available to buy at any concerts or gigs played by bands that support their instruments.
THIRD DEPARTMENT: Production/operations management
Fender is a secondary organisation, and makes items, these items being guitars, amps and plectrums. Fender uses its resources to create these items, just as all businesses use resources to carry out their function.
FOUR GROUPS OF RESOURCES USED:
Fender uses only three of the four groups of resources:
- Fender have large areas of land in London, New York, all over America, Sweden and Brazil where offices and factories where the items are actually produced.
- Fender use of wide range of carpentry tools and equipment to create the best guitars out there
- Fender employs a large number of staff, from skilled instrument makers to create the guitars themselves, and good salesmen and women to sell the instruments, and promotions experts who make sure Fender maintains their generally good public image.
Fender also needs money, also counted as a resource, to fund the activities above, and gains this from the products sold.
Fender uses the funds gained to finance their research and development, so they can keep up with competitor’s R&D, and stay in front.
EFFICIENCY AND PRODUCTIVITY
Fender uses its resources to improve the machinery in the factories, and the quality of their workers, from the guitar makers to the P.R executives. This is shown by the ever-increasing sales Fender makes.
QUALITY CONTROL
Quality control is a way of making sure that everything Fender produces is top quality. Fender do this by making sure they reach a certain number of sales, pre-determined at the start of each year by a board of executives, and if they don’t, they carry out a full inspection of every single factory and office all over the world. This way, they find out what went wrong, and they fix it. If then the sales don’t rise by a considerable amount, they look at their staff, and they may sack certain people, and re-employ better trained staff. They check their guitars by play testing them for hours on end, comparing them to how a guitar should sound. For a perfect sound, they use electronic guitar tuners to test them, and if the guitar doesn’t sound right after it has been tuned to it’s full extent, it is then deconstructed, and built from scratch until it works. This way, Fender do not waste materials, and every single product they turn out is guaranteed to work to its full capacity.
B2 EXPLAIN, GIVING EXAMPLES, HOW AT LEAST THREE FUNCTIONAL AREAS OF ONE OF THEIR CHOSEN BUSINESSES WORK TOGETHER TO SUPPORT THE BUSINESS ACTIVITY
The Production department make the guitars and the amps, which the sales and marketing then advertise and sell, and the finance department deal with the profit made from these sales. Without this chain of events, that incorporates communication between departments, the company would go out of business, to be more accurate, the company wouldn’t exist, they wouldn’t have business.
B3 EVALUATE HOW EFFECTIVELY AT LEAST THREE FUNCTIONAL AREAS OF ONE OF THEIR CHOSEN BUSINESSES WORK TOGETHER TO ACHIEVE THE AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE BUSINESS
To maintain the new development of new styles of guitar, the finance and accounts must first bring the money in, which then the productions will use to create these new, innovative products, and the sales and marketing will promote and sell them, earning more money to carry on production of this new guitar.
To be able to make their instruments for everybody, the sales and marketing must carry out a survey to see what different people like, then productions will take these results and create a guitar that the public want. Then sales and marketing will promote and sell this new guitar, and finance and accounts will deal with the income from these sales, and feed them back to productions to make more guitars.
