Identifying the Key Departments/ Functions Within Businesses | Assignment

Title: Identifying the key departments/ functions within
businesses, discuss their role in enabling the organisation to
meet its business goals.
The ultimate goal of business is generating profit. Profit is not only a clear indicator
of how well the business is doing, but it also fuels growth and development, and
maximizes the wealth of shareholders.To achieve this ultimate goal and move
onwards and upwards, a business must have stable key departmentswith their
respectivefunctions within the firm. In general, four distinct dimensions – strategy,
operations, marketing and finances – account for every decision a company makes
(Gilkey, 2011).These four key dimensionsserve six most important functions of
business: production function, human resources function, marketing function, finance
function, information management function, and research and development function.
This report will consider how these dimensions and functions compose a business.
Strategy dimension is the core of any business.It is incumbent on theChief Executive
Officer (CEO), whose typical responsibilities include creating and implementing the
company’s vision, leading the development of the company’s short- and long-term
strategies, and communicating with shareholders, government entities, and the
public on behalf of the company (CFI, no date). The CEO cannot and should not
single-handedly make important decisions. The CEO and Chief Operation
Officer(COO) jointly set up mid- and long-term plans in consultation with the Chief
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Management Officer(CMO) and Chief Finance Officer(CFO) because every
perspective is needed to make a solid plan.
When the CEO develops a vision and strategy, theoperationdepartment executes
action plans by designating tasks to the best-suitedhuman resources (HR). Led by
the COO, the operation department covers production and HRfunction.Robertson
(2022) introduces how to create an operation plan. The foremost part is identifying
the goals, followed by meticulously planning who, what, where, and when to execute
the plans anddefining the necessary resources to achieve the goals. The necessary
resources include training the staff and managing tools for new tasks or software
programs to improve work processes.Planning is followed bythe actual production
function. A production manager ensures that the quality of goods and services meet
the requirements and the delivery schedule(PreserveArticles.com, no date).
Meanwhile, the Human Resources manager determines where to allocate which
employees by means of job analysis and recruitment procedures. Job analysis is an
important step to select the right candidate for each task and it serves as foundation
of HR works.
Job analysis refers to a systematic process of identifying and collecting detailed job
information, including necessary skills, roles, responsibilities and processes of a
specific job (Darwinbox, nd). Solid job analysis willfacilitate successful manpower
planning and provide objective job performance standards and basis for job
evaluation.The task of arranging job training, promotions, transfers, compensation
and welfare also falls under the competence of a human resources manager, and
successful job analysis will serve as the basis for those duties.
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With the help of HR, the operation department may produce high quality goods or
provide high quality serves. Theitems delivered or provided, however,cannot
promote themselves.Oxford Languages defines marketing as the action or business
of promoting and selling products or services. Marketing is building a story that can
sell and it playsan increasingly important role in a company. Guttermann (2021)
notes that the number of people engaged in the marketing sectorgrew rapidly in the
United Kingdom from 148,000 in 2011 to 197,000 in 2020. Furthermore, marketing
spending grew by 10.56 percent in 2021, and 12.8 percent of UK marketer
experienced increase in their budget to win market share(Guttmann, 2022).
Different time eras have different communication and marketing strategies. In this
Internet age of the 21st century, marketing in traditional media such as television,
newspapers, radio and magazines is giving its way to social media marketing
(Saravanakumar&SuganthaLakshmi, 2021).Social media platforms such as
Facebook or Instagram can easily reach millions and billions of potential customers–
more than two billion active Facebook users and 1.4 billion active Instagram users,
according toStatista (2022). With the number of social media users rapidly soaring,
promoting products or services through social networking sites has become an
indispensablemarketing platform.Saravanakumar and SuganthaLakshmi also
suggestthat publishing blog posts, using social network to capture and communicate
with customers, and uploading products on the review sites could be effective social
media marketing strategies. In sum, the key of social media marketing is making
effective use of the vast ocean of Internet users to build a company store and
promote brand images, products and services.
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