Importance of Business Functions in Unilever

This report discusses the importance of various business functions in Unilever and their role in improving decision making. It highlights the significance of departments like marketing, finance, and human resources. The report also emphasizes the importance of teamwork, financial management, and reporting in growing and competing effectively in the market.

INTRODUCTION TO
BUSINESS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Business is form of economic activity which help nation to improve development and
facilities for its citizens. This report discusses importance of various business functions of
Unilever to improve quality of decision making.
TABLE OF CONTENT
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
Role and Importance of Different Departments..........................................................................3
Importance of Teamwork............................................................................................................4
Importance of Financial Management.........................................................................................5
Purpose of Reporting...................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Business is very essential aspect as it increases the economic activities to grow and
develop nation effectively. It also provides better opportunity to society to increase their standard
of living and improve the productivity to achieve objectives effectively. This report discusses
importance of departments in Unilever which are present in businesses; importance of teamwork
is also explained. In addition, report also highlights the importance of financial management and
reporting to grow business and compete in the market effectively.
Role and Importance of Different Departments
Increase in the demand of customers in the market business has to divide their functions
into different department which helps to increase the efficiency of decision making (Barr and
McClellan, 2018). This also helps organisation to make effective strategies to reduce the risks
and gain higher profit margins effectively. Unilever is multinational organisation dealing n
consumer products which are directly used by end consumers.
Marketing Department
Marketing is the combination of different activities which business conducts in order to
understand customer’s needs and wants to develop effective strategy and increase sales of the
company. Marketing department has the role to perform all these activities which helps to
increase satisfaction level of customers and increase profit margins effectively (Rasool, 2017).
Unilever is very reputed and powerful brand in the world due to marketing department increased
company’s brand image in the global market which helps to expand in new market very easily.
Marketing department is also responsible to promote products and services of the company and
aware customers about the vision to make them loyal effectively. Marketing department of
Unilever has also ensured the standardisation of quality which improved the goodwill in the
market and attracted more investors to grow company efficiently.
Finance Department
Finance department is fundamental necessity of every business as it helps to manage all
the monetary transaction and forecast cost and opportunities according to available resources to
increase the efficiency of the business effectively (Chandra, 2017). Roles of finance department
in Unilever is bookkeeping which helps to record all the transactions on daily basis and ensure
the usage of financial resources in the company. It also helps to develop budgets for the entire

department and allocate funds according to requirements to increase the efficiency of the
company to compete in the market and also increase profit margins effectively. Finance
department has role to manage all the taxation related of the company. Unilever has to develop
financial reporting for its stakeholder and this is formulated by finance department to ensure the
true and fair financial position of the company.
Human Resource Department
Human resources department has the duty to ensure right person at right job at right time
to increase the performance of the organisation effectively. This department also develop
different employee related policies which increased the collaborative working in Unilever and
improve the organisational culture effectively. It is very essential for Unilever to have effective
human resource department as it ensures the recruitment and selection of potential candidates
according to job analysis and job description. It increases the knowledge of origination to
develop innovative environment in the organisation to increase opportunity for the company to
gain higher profit margins and compete in the market effectively.
Importance of Teamwork
Teamwork is the capability of employees to work in harmony and increase the potential
of business organisation effectively. It also increases the shared values to communicate and gain
better information and experience to make decisions. Teamwork is directly linked with team
leader’s performance and it is very essential for leaders to develop effective strategies and
theories to achieve the objectives of the company effectively. teamwork helps employees to
develop emotional bonding with their team members and increases the efficiency of
collaborative working.
 Teamwork helps Unilever to motivate their employees and create unity in the business
organisation to achieve objectives faster (Khawam, DiDona and Hernández, 2017). This
also increases the job satisfaction of employees to make them loyal in the organisation
which also reduce the cost of training new employees.
 Unilever has potential employees working in teamwork as it helps to improve the
innovate thinking of team members to achieve their objectives faster and improve the
brand image of the company effectively.

 Teamwork provides support to increase personal knowledge by feedbacks and self
exploration while doing different tasks.
 Unilever provides challenges to the team which helps the employees to push their limits
further and increase the potential to achieve their personal goals and organisation’s
objectives effectively.
For instance, marketing and finance department learn from each other by increasing their
communication to exchange information in Unilever. Marketing department provides all the
information which are current trends in the market and finance depart has uses that data to
develop budget and identify cost which increases profit of Unilever effectively. It is also very
essential for human resource department to work collaboratively with the entire department in
the organisation to understand the issues which all the employees are facing and developing
effective policies which reduces the issues and develop potential atmosphere to achieve
objectives effectively. Finance, marketing, purchase, sales, operations department has to provide
information to human resource department to increase the efficiency of the organisation to
compete in the market and attain core competency effectively.
Importance of Financial Management
Financial management is the process of managing all the funds and other monetary
transaction of the business to ensure financial performance effectively (Brock and et al., 2017). It
is very essential for business to develop budget which helps to track all the expenses of the
organisation and maintain the cash flow to maintain the system. This also helps to analyse the
cost of business activities and forecast on the basis of available financial resources to increase
the quality of products and services, it also helps to calculate the cost of production of products
and services of Unilever to formulate effective pricing strategy and increase profit margins.
Financial Planning
Financial management helps to understand the requirement of Unilever by analysing its
vision and current objectives. It helps to develop effective financial planning to increase the
performance of organisation to maintain the quality of products and services in the market.
Resource Allocation

Resource allocation helps Unilever to distribute its working capital according to the
requirement in each department which also helps to fulfil their needs to achieve objectives
effectively.
Financial Decisions
Financial management provides solution to the financial crisis which can impact the
market size of the company and also reduce efficiency of Unilever. The decisions which are
made by finance department affect activities of the other entire department and can impact the
performance of the organisation to compete in the market.
Improve Profitability
Financial management increases the brand equity of Unilever by allocation of funds at
right place. Unilever has invested in many activities with the help of financial management
which has increases the profit margins of the company to grow in the market and become leader
in consumer product industry effectively.
Ensure Profit Reserves
Financial management helps Unilever to save some percentage of profit margins as
reserves which can be invested in future to increase the potential and achieve core competency
effectively.
Purpose of Reporting
Reporting is very essential as it helps to provide communication to public and other
stakeholder of the business. It is very essential for Unilever to develop effective financial
reporting annually to increase the trust of investors and provide them all the information about
all the investments company made to increase the productivity in the market and satisfy
stakeholders effectively (Kiani and et al., 2018). This also helps Unilever to analyse its annual
income and other financial related information to improve brand image of the organisation in the
market effectively.
Balance sheet

Balance sheet is analysis of all the assets and liabilities of organisation to determine
financial position in the market (Madura, 2020). It provide information of Unilever at a specific
period in particular date to increase the quality of profit margins effectively. It is very essential
for Unilever to increase its assets and reduce liabilities to increase its financial position.
Profit and Loss account
It is the financial statement which helps to accumulate all the incomes and expenses to
ensure the net profit and net loss of the organisation (Shapiro and Hanouna, 2019). This helps to
provide information about Unilever’s strengths and weaknesses to develop effective financial
strategy and gain higher productivity in the market. the above image is example of income
statement of Unilever which provide all the information to calculate income before tax.
CONCLUSION
In this report it is analysed that it is very essential for business to develop effective
financial strategy to reduce their cost and increase market size effectively. Report discussed
about different roles and responsibilities of marketing, finance and human resource department
to improve the potential of business organisation to compete in the market. Teamwork is very
effective strategy which helped business to grow and expand in different market globally. In this

report importance of financial management was provided for to increase financial performance
of business organisation effectively.

REFERENCES
Books and Journal
Shapiro, A.C. and Hanouna, P., 2019. Multinational financial management. Wiley.
Madura, J., 2020. International financial management. Cengage Learning.
Barr, M.J. and McClellan, G.S., 2018. Budgets and financial management in higher education.
John Wiley & Sons.
Chandra, P., 2017. Investment analysis and portfolio management. McGraw-hill education.
Khawam, A.M., DiDona, T. and Hernández, B.S., 2017. Effectiveness of teamwork in the
workplace. International Journal of Sciences: Basic and Applied Research
(IJSBAR). 32(3). pp.267-286.
Brock, S.E and et al., 2017. Toward more practical measurement of teamwork skills. Journal of
workplace learning.
Kiani, M.M and et al., 2018, August. Automated Monitoring of Collaborative Working
Environments for Supporting Open Innovation. In International Conference on
Knowledge Management in Organizations (pp. 167-178). Springer, Cham.
Rasool, Z., 2017. Collaborative working practices: Imagining better research
partnerships. Research for All. 1(2). pp.310-322.