My Experience of the Customer Service, IT, Administration and Finance Departments at BP.

by ellouise1997hotmailcom (student)

I have completed a six week summer internship at BP; BP is one of the world's six major and companies. BP are a public limited company (Plc) which means that shares are available to be bought by anyone and is listed on the London stock exchange. BP have various departments that work together to achieve BP’s main aims and objectives. The departments in BP include, finance, human resources (HR), IT, Admin, security, sales, marketing, customer service, research and development, shipping and operations. However, I will be focussing on four 4 departments, including, Customer service, IT, Administration and Finance.

All departments in BP interlink to work towards achieving BP’s main aims and objectives. BP have a 10 point plan which lists all their aims and objectives; the main points include, focus on safety, playing to strengths, be simpler and more standardised, generate around 50% more in operating cash flow, have half of incremental operating cash for reinvestment and lastly, have a strong balance sheet. In order for BP to pursue their objectives they set clear priorities, actively manage a quality portfolio and employ distinctive capabilities.

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Firstly, BP has a customer service department. Customer service deals with customers before, during or after a purchase; they may provide information, answer questions, and contact with other departments to sort customer’s items like repairs, get feedback and to sort any complaints that the customer may have. Customer services will interlink with all departments in order to resolve customer issues. For example, if a customer has ordered some oil from BP but it hasn’t been listed on their statement or invoice, they will contact customer service. It is then customer services job to contact finance and forward the customer onto ...

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Another main department that BP have is finance. Finance are involved with money and future plans. They will prepare accounts like invoices, management accounts, and financial accounts for shareholders. They will also prepare wages and salaries for the employees and obtain capital and resources such as money for expansion or to pay for resources such as equipment and materials. Finance will work with other departments in BP; the main reason is to create a budgets for the department, both departments will have to agree on the amount. Finance will create the financial records such as balance sheets and trading profit and loss accounts and therefore will work towards achieving one of their goals, to have a strong balance sheet. After finance have created these sheets, they would have to communicate with management to report on the progress of the business financially. Additionally, finance may have to communicate with sales in order to achieve the goal of having 50% more in operation cash flow. This is because sales will need to find ways to make more cash which may make them contact marketing to find new exciting ways to promote their products to have more people buying from them.

BP have an IT department; IT are involved with anything to do with technology. They will buy and install new hardware and software, update systems and provide online support for all employees if they face issues; they will give advice on how to fix the issue or may fix it themselves by doing computer repairs. The IT department interlink with the other departments throughout the business to resolve any issues. For instance, marketing may need to create a new campaign using a certain software but the computers may not have the latest version or they may be having issues with the software. Therefore, it’s IT’s job to help marketing resolve the issues they have and renew or install he latest software. Moreover, IT will work with all departments to resolve any issues, such as computers failing or struggling to export files into a excel sheet. BP have an online service which allows you to message somebody from IT to help with IT problems which makes the process fast and efficient.

Lastly, Human Resources is another main department in BP. Human resources is about retention, dismissal and employing people. Tasks HR would do would include staff training, performance evaluations, career planning, health and safety, job classification, working conditions and unions. Human resources will interlink with every other department. This is because if one department need to recruit new staff, human resources will be in charge of finding candidates for the job and they will then report back to the departments. Also HR will be involved with training so they will work with other departments making sure every staff member is fully trained to do their job efficiently. One of the biggest aims in BP is to have great health and safety, HR will be involved at making this goal achievable. For instance, they will make sure every employee knows of all the rules they have at BP to ensure safety such as holding the hand rail and keeping lids on all drinks. They will also be involved at giving local inductions to team members to ensure they know where the nearest fire exit is and the nearest first aider.

Overall, all functional areas in BP carry out different tasks to contribute to organisational efficiency. And they also interlink with other departments to achieve business objectives which will lead them to grow into a more successful business.

Unit 33 P1