Organisational structures help communication within the company and ensure staff are aware of their job roles.
At Thorpe Park they have a decentralised structure to ensure decisions are as close to those that have contact with their guests.
Thorpe Park offers a range of goods and services to make a profit. By developing their goods and services, customers will purchase more and return. Special events help and Market Research tells them what customers think and ensures they are offering the correct goods and services.
Advantages
- Staff are specialised in their areas.
- Likely to have set salary scales, set holiday entitlement, staff restaurant, a social club, luncheon vouchers, union.
- Greater scope for developing expertise.
- Will have formal procedures regarding e.g. recruitments, promotion, discipline, and staff appraisal.
Disadvantages
- May be difficult to alter teams for specific tasks.
- Likely to encourage set ways of behaviour.
- May slow decision-making.
- The more departments the more difficult it is for information to flow from top to bottom and vice versa.
Thorpe Park Organisation Structure
Functional Areas
Five Functional areas in Thorpe Park
1.Human Resources
At Thorpe Park the Human Resources function is responsible for the selection (usually by interview), recruitment -employment and dismissal of employees, working conditions for employees, health and safety of employees, training, development and promotion of staff. Human Resources records will store all the information needed about salaries and wages to make the correct payments to employees; this will include details of, for example, gross salary, tax code, statutory sick pay and holiday entitlement. Information may also be held concerning personal and career development plans.
2.Marketing and Sales
At Thorpe Park, Marketing has responsible for the planning of future rides, sales, and monitoring of the relationship with customers and potential customers. The Marketing Department supplies information from all parts of the organisation, but particularly from sales, HR, finance. Much of the information that this function creates is used for management decision-making, but information is also passed to sales and design. Externally, Marketing carry out market research to find out exactly what customer want or establish their longer-term needs, ensure these customers are aware of goods and services offered and communicate goods and services through selected promotional techniques. Its primary function is to handle information on forecast for sales, products, HR needs, etc, but it also produces considerable amounts of information on future products and services to be distributed externally.
Special events help Market Research tell Thorpe Park what customers think and ensure they are offering the correct goods and services.
The Sales function in Thorpe Park is responsible for its day-to-day contacts with individual customers. Clearly this function has close links internally with Marketing. Information that the Sales function needs to include products or services costs and prices and all customer information, but may also includes prospective customer lists.
3.Accounts or finance
The Accounts or Finance Department monitors all aspects of the Thorpe Park’s money including incoming and outgoing payments and also sets a budget. This is the financial target for the year
The finance department is responsible for paying the Thorpe Park's supplier, employees (payroll), bank and stockholders. It obtains bank references, sets customer credit limits and deals with bad debtors. It may also obtain finance (loans etc.) to support the development of the company.
4.Health and Safety
The Health and Safety Department has a duty of care to their employees and customers, to ensure their workplace is both safe and reasonably comfortable and if any accident happens to provide medical service.
Health and Safety department also Responsible for organizing the work and ensuring it is carried out safely, consults with the employees on health and safety matters, ensure those safety rules are followed, agrees safety rules and practices, chairs the safety committee, ensures machinery and equipment are safe to use, initiates discipline for breaches of safety rules and initiates request for safety work.
The Health and Safety Department has responsibilities to integrate health and safety matters into their planning and decision-making procedures, identify and choose methods and techniques that can be used to train and communicate with staff, detect, control or eliminate hazards, and monitor and review performance. It also allocates responsibilities and devises a timetable for the implementation of their plan, deals with accidents and records all accidents in an accident book.
5.Engineering
At Thorpe Park the Engineering Department mainly deals with rides and check whether the rides are working properly or not and also deals with health and safety guidelines, environment, landscape/waste, park cleaning, maintenance electricity, cleaning vacancies, planner and architect.
Information Flow Diagram For Thorpe Park
Trigger
The trigger for the accident report to Health and Safety is a member of staff tripping and falling in. This is (Sales and Marketing) require under RIDDOR (Reporting of Injuries Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulation) rectify problems e.g. if same accident is recurring. . Engineering Department complaint to Human resources about a staff member who is responsible for the accident then Human Resources set a interview with member of a staff and then they will diced whether dismiss him or not. Engineering department will send health and safety guidelines to Health and Safety Department and Health and Safety Department send a copy of health and safety guideline to ride operator. Sales and Marketing Department send the accident report form to Health and Safety Department. Health and Safety Department require more staff so they request for staff from Human Resources. Human resources request Finance Department for more funds for next year to train the staff. Finance Department request Human Resources about personal salaries scale.
Information Flow Diagram For Lloyds Pharmacy
Trigger
The trigger for the Lloyds pharmacy fills medical prescriptions for all patients or customers. Medical prescriptions are written by doctors and sent to the pharmacy.
A stock file is checked and if there is sufficient stock then a pharmacist reviews the order, check the patient's file to determine the appropriateness of the prescriptions, and fills the order and a prescription label is generated listing the patient's name, the drug type, and dosage, an expiration date, and any special instructions. The label is placed on the drug container and the orders are sent to the patient and if any part of order cannot be filled, an out-of-stock notice is sent to the customer/patient and the patient will pay for the any part of the order that can be filled.
The sales assistant will inform the manager when any items are low in stock so that an order can be raised and send to the supplier. On receiving the order the supplier will send back confirmation of the order to inform the manager that the good are in stock and give a date for delivery goods. The goods that arrive at the pharmacy will be accompanied by a delivery note listing what has been delivered. This should match the order but it might not some of the items might be sent in a different delivery for instance. As soon as invoice arrives from the supplier, the manager will pay for the order.
Conclusion
Thorpe has a most effective communication because Information Technology has changed Thorpe Park working practices and business processes. Through communication, design, analysis and implementation, their aim to make their company more efficient.
Information Technology affects five main areas. They are:
Electronic booking.
Communication and Information handling, Office and Business Systems
Tills/merchandising
Security
Rides Control
Thorpe park business is spread over a large area; necessitate their using several methods of communication. E-mail is used increasingly: their current software is Microsoft exchange server and Outlook. It should help to cut down considerably on memos, forms, notice board information and bulky reports. This has the dual effect of saving paper, ink and printing costs and conserves environmental resources.
E-mail address and website: . E-mail goes directly to The Tussauds Group Head Office, and via networks from there to the other attractions in The Tussaud’s Group using an ISDN link (Integrated Services Digital Network). The main telephone switchboard is also ISDN. Voicemail is used to prevent unanswered calls, and an automated attendant kicks in on the rare occasion when their receptionists are unable to answer all the lines, and it automatically operates after office hours. Through a desktop interface they can monitor calls. This is an invaluable tool for analysis of calls, determining their busiest times of day and helping them to plan their casting resources accordingly.
They use mobile phones, particularly those whose work takes them away from the office. Nearly all their cast rely on radios to keep in touch with each other when they are spread about the Park, which enables cast to be diverted to specific areas wherever, and whenever necessary. Cast can relay information about queue lines on rides and alert security cast to any emergency situation. If a Park-wide emergency situation should arise, cast in the control room can broadcast at the same time to every radio holder in the Park.
The main security system is CCTV (Closed Circuit Television), which uses infrared cameras throughout the Park, linked to 24-hour video recorders. Black and white and colour monitors in the Control Room can pan and zoom to any area. In this way cast response to a particular incident can be co-ordinated cast response to a particular problem.
In merchandising, sophisticated till systems are in use in all the shops and food outlets. EPOS (Electronic Point of Sale) is used for their products with barcode scanning facilities for the whole range of goods on sale. This is linked to the central stock control to monitor the movement of all their merchandise and food items from both our warehouses. This is essential for maintaining sell-by dates and to forecast sales accurately.
EFTOS (Electronic Fund Transfer Point of Sale) is the system through which credit and switch cards are debited immediately and automatically through the national banking system. Any credit or switch cards used in the shops are attached to a polling machine. This is essentially a communications technique, which determines when a terminal is ready to send data–the banks own computer will check all its attached terminals on a regular basis.
Software programmes are applications that are bought in from major manufacturers such as Microsoft, Oracle (database), Computer Associate (backup) and Network Associate (anti-virus). These can be specifically suited to a particular business function, such as Finance packages, which include wages and payroll systems, spreadsheets, etc. Other more sophisticated software, such as AutoCAD, may be necessary for their Engineers and the production team for their Entertainment’s Department. They primarily use Microsoft Office 97, which contains a comprehensive range of applications such as Word, Excel, Outlook, Access and PowerPoint.
It is possible to customise their own databases – for instance, they have one specifically written for their Guest Services Department, Charter 2000. This logs comments made by guests, produces a personalised reply, and collates information so that it can be reproduced in report form using a programme called Business Systems.
The sales and admission system is called Omni Ticket Network. OTN have supplied all the hardware apart from the hard drives, VDU screens and keyboards, which are standard hardware made by Compaq. The software used is called Overview. Its primary purpose is to provide a data repository for Sales, guests and admissions data and to provide tools to allow analysis of this imported data. A secondary function is to facilitate the exchange systems, and General Marketing Database (GMD), the external guest contact system. Attractions General Database (AGD) configures all the information taken from Overview (information collected through Admissions on the tills each day) and turns it into reports for Finance and Marketing.
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