Analysis of ASDA's Functional Departments and Financial Reporting

This report provides an in-depth analysis of ASDA's business operations, focusing on the roles of its key functional departments: Human Resources, Marketing, and Finance. It details the specific responsibilities and activities within each department, illustrating their contribution to the overall business strategy. The report also examines collaborative working practices within ASDA, exploring the organizational culture, management, and leadership styles. Furthermore, it provides an overview of financial management and reporting, including explanations of the profit and loss statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement, highlighting their importance in assessing ASDA's financial performance. The report concludes with a summary of the key findings and insights into ASDA's business practices.

Introduction to
Business Practice

Executive Summary
The report discuss about the various functional department of the business and what role they
play in the business while conducting their activities. The highlights of the report is to
understand the role of HR, Marketing and Finance in British Airways along with the
collaborative practices. And what role does the financial management and reporting holds in the
company.

Table of Contents
Executive Summary.........................................................................................................................1
Introduction......................................................................................................................................1
Describe the role of HR, Marketing and finance functions within ASDA......................................1
Describe the role of Human Resource in ASDA....................................................................1
Describe the role of Marketing in ASDA...............................................................................1
Role of Finance function within ASDA.................................................................................2
Develop an understanding of collaborative working practices in ASDA........................................2
Briefly describe the organisational culture in the company...................................................3
Discuss management and leadership style in the ASDA........................................................3
Financial management and reporting within the ASDA..................................................................4
Briefly explain profit and loss statement................................................................................4
Explain what is balance sheet.................................................................................................4
What is cash flow statement...................................................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................5
References:.......................................................................................................................................6
Books and Journals.................................................................................................................6
Appendix:.........................................................................................................................................8

Introduction
Business firm conduct their business activities through different organisational structure that
defines the overall role, responsibility and working culture of an organisation. Commonly
business firms are divided into several functional areas such as operations, marketing, human
resource and finance. These functional departments are responsible for conducting different
activities in the company as per their nature and objective (Ismail and et. al., 2021). Under
functional departments employees are grouped as per their job role and make the right use of
their knowledge and expertise. ASDA was founded in the year 1949, when Asquith family
merged its business with Associate diaries, is a British Super market chain. The objective of the
report is to highlight the role of functional department into ASDA, collaborative working
practices and role of financial management and reporting.
Describe the role of HR, Marketing and finance functions within ASDA
Describe the role of Human Resource in ASDA
From the perspective of Chai, (2021), Human resource management is defined as the process of
effectively managing people within organisation with aim of achieving its objective and gain
competitive advantage over others. This means that, Human resource management is concerned
with the developing and managing the workforce of a company and maiming best use of their
skills, abilities, talent, potentialities and aptitude for achieving organisational and personal goals
(Khan, Snow and Matthews, 2020). Human resource management in ASDA carries out several
activities such as acquiring right talent, retention of employees, remuneration and benefits,
performance management, appraisal programmes, reward and recognition and; training and
development.
 One of the prime role of HR in ASDA to is to get a right people, at right time with right
set of skills and to manage adequate workforce for the execution of business activities.
 HR department at ASDA builds and maintain healthy relations with the employees so
that employee feel motivates, confident, satisfied and more engaged with work.
Describe the role of Marketing in ASDA
From the view point of TWIN, (2020), Marketing can be defined as the process of attracting the
potential buyers for the products and services offered by the company especially designed to
satisfy their needs and wants. This means that, Marketing is the set of activities carried out by the
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company to promote the product or services for the purpose of buying or selling (Seo and
Buchanan-Oliver, 2019). Marketing department of ASDA is responsible for undertaking several
activities such as researching, advertising, selling, delivering goods to the end customer and
conducting post sales activities to check ask whether the product delivered expected value or
not.
Marketing Mix of ASDA
 Product: They are the range of good and services offered by ASDA to meet the needs and
wants of the customer.
 Price: It is the value that customer is expected to pay to meet their demands.
 Place: It refers to the ways product is distributed to the target audience. ASDA operates
through physical and online stores.
 Promotion: They are concerned with tactics used by ASDA to raise, awareness,
advertising the product and promotion of the company as a brand.
Role of Finance function within ASDA
From the view point of Hayes, (2021), Finance is a term used for the management or study of the
monetary and investments matters (Bilan, and et. al., 2020). This means that, financial
management is concerned with the managerial functions such as planning, organising,
controlling and directing the activities of finance in an organisation. Finance function of ASDA
is responsible for procurement, allocation and utilisation of financial resources to ensure that the
shareholders get the adequate return over a specified period time.
 The role of finance function in ASDA is to make the right choice for getting funds such
as issue of debentures and shares, procurement of loans from banks and financial
institution etc.
 Finance department suggest ASDA best investment plans and opportunities for expansion
that results in more profitability.
Develop an understanding of collaborative working practices in ASDA
Organisational culture can be defined as the set of belief, assumptions, values and the way of
interaction among the people determine the social and psychological environment of an
organisation (Modak, Kazemi and Cárdenas-Barrón, 2019). Culture is the shared belief, customs,
attitudes, values shared by the people in society. There are basically five key elements that
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together make up a good organisational culture which are as purpose, ownership, leadership,
community and effective communication.
Charles Handy Concept
According to Handy there are four types of organisational culture:
 Power: In these types of culture powers remains to the few people who holds key
positons and are decision makers. They exert their power on subordinates and they have
no option but to follow.
 Task Culture: Under this organisation is divided into the different teams to achieve the
task or work on specific problem (Guyader and Piscicelli, 2019).
 Person Culture: Employees consider themselves most important and are concerned about
personal goals rather than organisational, and
 Role Culture: Under role culture employees are assigned task as per their qualification,
experience and expertise.
Briefly describe the organisational culture in the company
Culture can be defined as the share values, beliefs, attitude and customs that describe the overall
personality of a company. Culture of an organisation include experience, expectation and values
that guide the behaviour of the each individual which is reflected in company’s working,
interaction with outside world and attitude of people (Kourula and et. al., 2019). ASDA follows a
clan-culture where company puts the needs of their workforce as a priority and is basically
people-oriented. The culture helps ASDA in breaking hierarchical barrier and promotes free flow
of communication which makes the employee more satisfied, productive and engaged at
workplace.
Discuss management and leadership style in the ASDA
Leadership style adopted by the business firm determines its overall success and growth because
leaders plays a central role in managing and motivating people to work in an organisation
towards common goals. ADSA follows a democratic leadership style at the workplace where all
the final decisions are made by the leader but employees at lower level are also encouraged to
equally participate in the decision making process through their suggestions and solutions (Ismail
and et. al., 2021). It is also referred as the participative leadership where leaders value the
opinion, beliefs and views of each individual.
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With the help of this leadership style ASDA have enabled to create collaborative working
culture where each and every employees respect the decisions of each other and work with unity
while maintaining dignity and respect of each person. Employees with this type of leadership
feel motivated and valued in an organisation and work with zeal, positivity and dedication in the
organisation towards the common goal. Democratic leadership add value to the work of
employees and enhance their satisfaction level which keeps them motivated and retain in an
organisation (Khan, Snow and Matthews, 2020).
Financial management and reporting within the ASDA
Financial management and reporting refers to the communication of financial information of
the company, ASDA, to the investors and creditors with the help of financial statements such as
cash flow statement, balance sheet and profit and loss statement. These statements helps the
company to keep the records of the financial transaction, determine the financial performance in
market and assist in decision making.
Briefly explain profit and loss statement
An income statement or profit and loss statement is one of the significant financial
statement that keeps records of the company’s expenses, revenue and cost generated over a
specified period of time, generally for a quarter or year. The statement reveals information about
the company’s ability or inability to generate profit through reducing cost or increasing revenue.
Importance of P&L Statement to ASDA
 Income statement helps ASDA in making strategic decisions as it reveals a clear picture
of company’s capability to generate adequate amount of profit for the survival of
business (Seo and Buchanan-Oliver, 2019). ASDA, based on this statement takes
corrective measures to improve the profitability of company.
 Result of the profit and loss statement is the net income generated for the ASDA that act
as figure for calculation of tax to be paid by the company for the financial year.
Explain what is balance sheet
Balance sheets or statements of financial position of a company discloses the information
related with firm’s assets, liabilities and owner’ equity or net worth. It is the statement which
shows how much own, owes and have invested into the market. Along with the cash flow
statement, profit and loss statement, balance sheet helps the company to determine its
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profitability, leverage, liquidity and efficiency for a given period. Balance sheet has a two equal
sides that needs to be balanced, therefore, Total Assets= Total Liabilities and Capital
Importance of Balance sheet to ASDA
 The statement is helpful is studying the financial position for ASDA to the stakeholders,
investors and several financial institutions (Bilan, and et. al., 2020).
 Analysing the balance sheet helps ASDA in determining its ability to undertake
investment and expansion opportunity. It basically reveals companies capability to meet
unforeseen situations like liquidation of firms or default in payment to creditors.
What is cash flow statement
Cash flow statement in another form of financial statement that keeps the records of the
firm’s cash inflow from the business operations and other sources and cash outflows made by the
company for investments and business activities. The statement helps in determining the
availability of liquid to the business to meet its daily operations such as pay taxes, remuneration,
rent, and pay ban loans.
Importance of Cash flow statement to ASDA
 Cash flow statement helps the ASDA to make projection and forecast regarding with the
cash requirement in future. The statement helps to maintain desired financial position as
per the requirement (Modak, Kazemi and Cárdenas-Barrón, 2019).
 With the help of Cash flow statement ASDA maintains adequate working capital to meet
its day to day activities.
Conclusion
From the above state report it has been conclude that different functional department have
different objectives in an organisation but work in a cohesive manner towards the common goals.
These functional departments employ the people as per their knowledge, experience and
expertise and allocate them the work which suits their profile. Working in a collaborating brings
unity and harmony at workplace which helps the business firm in working with more efficiency
and productivity thus helps in achieving organisational goals.
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References:
Books and Journals
Ismail, A.I., and et. al., 2021. Moderating effect of management support on the relationship
between HR practices and employee performance in Nigeria. Global Business
Review. 22(1). pp.132-150.
Khan, A.H., Snow, S. and Matthews, B., 2020, July. Tracing Design: Practitioner Accounts of
Design Value, Documentation & Practices. In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM
Designing Interactive Systems Conference (pp. 2091-2105).
Seo, Y. and Buchanan-Oliver, M., 2019. Constructing a typology of luxury brand consumption
practices. Journal of Business Research. 99. pp.414-421.
Bilan, Y., and et. al., 2020. Hiring and retaining skilled employees in SMEs: problems in human
resource practices and links with organizational success. Business: Theory and
Practice. 21(2). pp.780-791.
Modak, N.M., Kazemi, N. and Cárdenas-Barrón, L.E., 2019. Investigating structure of a two-
echelon closed-loop supply chain using social work donation as a Corporate Social
Responsibility practice. International Journal of Production Economics. 207. pp.19-
33.
Guyader, H. and Piscicelli, L., 2019. Business model diversification in the sharing economy: The
case of GoMore. Journal of cleaner production. 215. pp.1059-1069.
Kourula, A., and et. al., 2019. New roles of government in the governance of business conduct:
Implications for management and organizational research.
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Online Source
[Online] Available through: < https://searchhrsoftware.techtarget.com/definition/human-
resource-management-HRM >./
[Online] Available through: < https://www.ama.org/the-definition-of-marketing-what-is-
marketing/ >./
[Online] Available through: < https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/finance.asp >./
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Appendix:
8