Functional Areas in Business: A Comprehensive Guide

This article provides a comprehensive guide to the different functional areas in a business and their importance in ensuring smooth operations and success. It explores the roles of Human Resource, Marketing, Customer Service, Accounting and Financing, Operations, and Information Technology departments. Each department plays a crucial role in the overall functioning of a business and contributes to its growth and profitability.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
Human Resource..........................................................................................................................3
Marketing.....................................................................................................................................3
Customer Service team................................................................................................................4
Accounting and financing............................................................................................................5
Operations....................................................................................................................................5
Information Technology..............................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7
Books and Journals......................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Planning is very important before starting a new business. BE it small or medium or large
size organisation, to make it run smoothly and efficiently, business units or functional areas are
required so that they can excel on their path to success. As the business grown, the tasks and
functions and employee do increases. By dividing the work into different functional areas, each
can work within their area of expertise thus being effective for company’s progress.
MAIN BODY
Every new Business needs a proper guide to manage its working. Business development
is related to the departments working on different functions and their focus. Generally there are 6
functional areas in a business helping them keep on track. These include:
Human Resource
This is the most important component of a business management system. It is the back
bone of organisation and its people. This department is responsible for on-boarding new people
to the company, training the employees of the company and handle any conflicts or issues that
happen within an organisation (Bissola and Imperatori, 2018). They hire people who have the
required skill set, knowledge and experience for the respective job. This department also
provides compensation and benefits to company’s employees as a reward for their work done.
They make sure that the employees are satisfied working in the company and are producing
efficient results for the business. They even look after the health and safety of all the members
working in the organisation. They promote team spirit and handles managers and leaders of all
the teams to work for long and short term goals of the business. They help in attracting best
candidates with great talents and offer them what they want (Chadwick and Li, 2018). Its main
task is to maximise employees and increase productivity and profits by while safeguarding
company’s reputation and protecting from any problems. The life of any organisation lies in its
people, human resource management is thus a vital asset for the company.
Marketing
Customers are very important for any business. Marketing department helps the company
understand the needs and demands of customers. It is a managerial process from which an

individual or a team can have what they want by exchanging their thoughts, perspectives, values
and products. They are the link between customers and organisation. Marketing departments
come with unique and innovative marketing and advertising strategies for promoting products,
vision and goals of a business (Leite, and Azevedo, 2017). They look after packing the product,
its worth and the materials used in creative way in order to serve the best to the targeted
audience. For better understanding of customer’s requirement Marketing department conduct
surveys. They help in defining the brand, manage media and produce many marketing
connections for the employees. In this digital age, social media is an important platform which
helps in connecting with million and trillions of people, it has become one of the fastest growing
industry for marketing functions. Marketing team handle social media accounts for the company
and look after the content to be posted for website and other applications. Promotional strategies
are main source of having good communication with the target customers, they help uplifting
company’s success (Minchin, and Alpert, 2017). Competition is everywhere, be it for students in
school or for companies in market, marketing people monitors the activities of competitors of an
organisation. New businesses should invest in marketing department to make their product reach
out to maximum people quickly and to receive feedbacks from customers and then according
improvising. This helps the company survive.
Customer Service team
Customer service units interact with the customers about inquiries related to their
problems or issues regarding the order from company. These are the first line of representatives
of having contact with public regarding the organisation’s business (AL-RUMAIHI, 2021). They
maintain good relations with people. If the company is offering good services and great product
quality, then they will be committed and loyal to the company. Some customers are even up for
paying little extra to get proper customer care services. This also includes reception or help desk
services provided at contact centres (Daugherty, Bolumole and Grawe, 2019). Customers should
be provided with these services before and even after the purchase of products. Good customer
service department helps in maintaining old customers while gain trust of new ones.

Accounting and financing
This department takes care of matters related to money. To start any business needs
money and to keep the business going smoothly, a proper circulation of money in the
organisation is important. It takes care of both, account receivables and amount to be paid. If
human resource department is there to hire and fire people, accounting and finance department is
there to look after the payrolls of each employees and make sure that they are paid on time. They
create budgets and decision making process regarding any money related conflicts (Nguyen and
et.al. , 2018). There are several accounting applications and software making the job easy for the
people working in this department. They are responsible for auditing and organising company’s
finances and producing annual or half-yearly financial reports. A proper cash flow is really
necessary for a business, company cannot operate without money.
Accountants give managers the important information they need to make appropriate
decisions about resources of the company (Sousa and Rocha, 2019). They represent financial
tractions related to business. Managerial accountants provide information about budgets, assets,
costs and appraisals helping them in better decision making process. Financial mangers plan
company’s funds considering both long and short period. They analyse the need of borrowing
depending on the capital needs and its impact on well being of company. Raising funds by taking
loans or investing into stocks and longer health of business are all things that company’s finance
department must handle.
Operations
Operations are where outputs are produced from given inputs. The roles and
responsibilities of operation department vary from company to company. There is one person
supervising everyone below them and are responsible for controlling the process of production.
They make sure that the business is running in effective ways by having complete use of its
resources with no wastage (Goodman, 2019). Their aim is to deliver high quality products and
services to its targeted audience. They can redesign the business operations according to what’s
more benefitting the company. They ensure proper flow of materials in the business. In a defined
quantity, they pump out goods and aids with quality best for the customers. Their responsibilities
include from ordering raw materials to producing goods and managing all the work in between
this process. The functions not only restricts to equipments but also the processes. In new

business it is usually the owner leading this section. They have to manage a business not work
for some job.
Information Technology
Every business has the use to computers and technologies, this department deals with
related work. They are responsible for hardware, software, communication, even architecture and
networking in a business. They work for all departments, they produces software helping in their
work and provides then assistance for data management (Wilson, 2019). This also involves
communication technology used for marketing purposes and any transport requirements. They
understand the need of the employees and balance the budgets according to their demands. They
must be creative while using technologies and stay updated with any technological advancements
(Ulrich, and Grochowski, 2018). If any equipment not in that much of a use and is very
expensive then the team should try retaining it or subcontracting according to the production
requirements.
CONCLUSION
Just like working of every body part is necessary for proper functioning of body,
similarly, proper functioning of each unit in a business is important. They all work to achieve a
common goal which is making a successful business. Some departments are crucial for every
business and some are dependent on the type of business or a company. Every employee working
in any of the unit must have the requires skills and should be well known about the job in order
to work properly as a whole company.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
AL-RUMAIHI, A.S., 2021. Digitalized Customer Service.
Bissola, R. and Imperatori, B., 2018. HRM 4.0: The digital transformation of the HR department.
Chadwick, C. and Li, P., 2018. HR systems. HR departments, and perceived establishment labor
productivity. Human Resource Management. 57(6). pp.1415-1428.
Daugherty, P.J., Bolumole, Y. and Grawe, S.J., 2019. The new age of customer
impatience. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management.
Dixon, M., 2018. Reinventing customer service. Harvard Business Review. 96(6). pp.82-90.
Goodman, J., 2019. Strategic customer service: Managing the customer experience to increase
positive word of mouth. build loyalty. and maximize profits. Amacom.
Leite, R.A. and Azevedo, A., 2017. The Role of Digital Marketing: A perspective from Porto
Hotels’ Managers. International Journal of Marketing. Communication and New
Media. (2).
Minchin, C. and Alpert, F., 2017. Realising Drucker and Kotler's Vision for a Strategic
Marketing Department. Available at SSRN.
Nguyen, N.P and et.al. , 2018. Cross-functional knowledge sharing, coordination and firm
performance: The role of cross-functional competition. Industrial Marketing
Management. 71. pp.123-134.
Sousa, M.J. and Rocha, Á., 2019. Skills for disruptive digital business. Journal of Business
Research. 94. pp.257-263.
Ulrich, D. and Grochowski, J., 2018. Building a world class HR department. Strategic HR
Review.
Waghmare, S., STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE AND ITS IMPORTANCE IN MANAGEMENT
OF ORGANISATION.
Wilson, E., 2019. Get your HR function right. HR Future. 2019(10). pp.20-21.