GCSE Applied Business - Strand B Theory

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Strand B – Theory

Functional Areas within the Business

I am going to describe the work carried out by at least three functional areas of Asda, I will explain how these areas work together to support the business activity and I will evaluate how effectively these functional areas work together to achieve the aims and objectives of the business. The areas I am going to investigate are finance, IT and marketing and sales.

There are 7 main functional areas within businesses customer services, administration and IT support, marketing and sales, human resources, research and development, finance and operations. However not all businesses use these areas. Sole traders might do every function by themselves and some businesses may use only a few functional areas or make sure that employees are able to work in each functional area

In large businesses people work together in these separate functional areas. The areas concentrate on and carry out certain functions. All functional areas link together to achieve aims and objectives. Good communication and co-operation is needed.

Functional areas can be organised by charts such as the one below.

Fig. 1

Customer service

        Customer service is concerned with customer relationships. Their activity is to “identify and satisfy customer needs”. They provide information, credit facilities, after sales service, deliver goods and give advice. Examples of this include, if a person has a problem with a new product such as a washing machine, then they will phone up customer services and someone will talk them through what they have done so that they can try to correct the mistake such as not switching the washing machine on. Good customer services mean happy customers. An example of good customer services is a shop e.g. furniture. If a person bought a piece of furniture then they could get customer services in the form of the retailer suggesting other products that could be better suited to the job which the consumers want the product for. The retailer could also offer for the furniture to be delivered or installed where the customer wants it. Bad customer services annoy people and make them not want to use the company again. An example of bad customer services is if you order a phone and it doesn’t turn up on time. You then ring customer services and have to spend about 2 hours of your time and your phone bill on something that should be a simple process. Customer services is very important as if a company was only focused on selling goods or services, then people would not feel comfortable or happy with the business and so would not want to use it, the business might then loose customers. The times 100 website tells us “High quality customer service helps to create customer loyalty”. The website also tells us that customers are not only interested in buying a product, they are also interested in the services that they receive when they enter the shop such as a nice welcome and good refund polices for faulty products. Customer service also gives advice on what a customer could do if they had a problem. Companies such as Portakabin have mottos that focus purely on customer service. Portakabin’s motto is 'Quality - this time, next time, every time' they apply this to both products and customer services. Businesses know that if a customer gets a good service that seems to be less of a ‘chore’ than usual then they will be more likely to return and use the business again.  tells us “Customer service is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase.” The GCSE Applied Business FOR OCR book tells us that “customer service is all about providing this positive experience”. Customer services are expected to provide information, give advice, provide credit facilities, deliver goods and provide an after sales service. As information required can vary from customer to customer, it is unlikely that a customer service assistant will know the answer to every question or query that a customer could ask. However, this is not drastically important, whats more important is that the query is dealt with well, this means that there is a “friendly smile” and “a promise to find out quickly” as the GCSE Applied Business FOR OCR book tells us.advice is also important as the advice is personal to the customer, wheras information is personal to the product. Credit means that items are received by the customer immediately but they pay for it over a set time, maybe several months or years. The GCSE Applied Business FOR OCR book tells us “customers often require credit when they buy an expensive item such as a car”.  

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Administration and IT support

        Administration and IT support are concerned with clerical work, such as mail and record keeping, health and safety, security, cleaning and maintenance and provide support for software applications, electronic communications and electronic transactions. For example, if a person within the business accidentally downloads a virus, then admin and ICT will need to know and they will then be able to sort out the problem. If something like this goes unchecked for too long then there is a chance that the virus could spread and then the whole network could fail. This could mean major ...

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