Detailed Report on Business Functions and Practices at The Body Shop

This report provides an executive summary and detailed analysis of The Body Shop's business operations. It explores the roles of human resources, marketing, and finance within the organization, highlighting their importance in achieving business objectives. The report also delves into collaborative working practices, emphasizing their benefits and principles. Furthermore, it demonstrates an understanding of financial management and reporting, including profit and loss accounts, balance sheets, and cash flow statements. The conclusion summarizes the key findings, emphasizing the significance of each business function and the role of financial management in ensuring ethical and smooth business conduct. The report utilizes academic sources to support its claims.

INTRODUCTION TO
BUSINESS STUDIES
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The main aim of this report is to understand the concept of business studies in respect with a company that
is Body shop. The report comprises a discussion upon various business functions that every organisation makes in
order to achieve its task with specialisation within each step involved in it. Finance, human resource, marketing
are some of the most important functions of any business without presence of whose no company can attain
success. On the other hand having collaborative working practices within an organisation is very important that
brings team work and great level of productivity.
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Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY......................................................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................................................... 4
TASK 1: Describing the role of HR, marketing and finance functions within organisation:....................................................4
Role of Human Resource:....................................................................................................................................................4
Role of marketing function:.................................................................................................................................................5
Role of finance function.......................................................................................................................................................5
TASK 2: Development of an understanding of collaborative working practices:.....................................................................6
TASK 3: Demonstrating knowledge of the role of financial management and reporting within the organisation:...................6
Profit and Loss Account.......................................................................................................................................................7
Balance Sheet....................................................................................................................................................................... 7
Cash Flow Statement............................................................................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................................................................ 8
REFERENCES........................................................................................................................................................................ 9
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INTRODUCTION
The term business studiers refer to knowledge of certain business concepts and its operations that any
organisation performs in its company in order to have proper and smooth conduct of business. A firm cooperates
within an industry with collaborative efforts of several departments such as finance, human resource, production,
marketing, supply chain and various others who performs individual work but are focused towards common goal
of a business (Basdas, 2021). The department of financial management assists business in maintain and report
various financial statements that help in taking several business decisions along with having a proper record of
each transaction made by company in a specific year. The present report focuses on discussion upon the role of
finance, human resource and marketing functions of a company that is Body Shop along with an understanding of
some collaborative working practices within it. Last, but not the least it includes the role of financial management
and reporting in an organisation.
TASK 1: Describing the role of HR, marketing and finance functions within organisation:
Human resource, marketing and finance are such functions of a company without which operating
business operations or working is not possible. The human resource function is related with the hiring, training as
well as retaining employees in an organisation who performs actual task in order to attain objective (Das and
Rangarajan, 2020). Department of marketing is concerned with making advertisements or promotion of
company’s goods and services to the market which enhances company’s sales and ultimately brings revenue for
the firm. Whereas, the finance is related with acquiring of capital, allocation and making investments from it so
that company can meet its working capital requirements along with a generation of returns from such
investments. The role of human resource, marketing and finance are mentioned below:
Role of Human Resource:
The term human resource is related with the workforce of a Body Shop company who contributes their
skills, knowledge, and potential in real workings of objectives so to attain them in effective manner. The various
roles of human resource function within an organisation are mentioned below:
 The role of human resource department of Body Shop is to recruit and hire competent candidates for the
proper functioning of business as per the requirement of other departments.
 To train and develop all employees of Body Shop with highest level of knowledge as well as by
experienced personnel’s from industry so that the employees can be trained to their full potential and give
their best for the success of their organisation (Diyorbek, 2020).
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 The main role of human resource department is to retain its employees for long term within an
organisation so that company can have experienced and talent employees who are well familiar with the
culture of an organisation.
 To co-ordinate with other departments in order to know their demands in relation to recruitment and
training of their employees along with a communication to marketing department for publishing the
advertisement in respect to vacant job positions.
Role of marketing function:
The function of marketing in an organisation Body Shop is concerned with advertising company’s product
or services along with a publication of vacant job position (Lassl, 2020). The department is responsible for
enhancing the sale through adoption of various promotional measures for customers to attract them in high
volume. The different roles of marketing function within an organisation are mentioned under:
 The role of marketing department of Body Shop is to promote and advertise company’s product or
services with an aim of catering more customers for high sales.
 To publish company’s requirement in respect to human resource who will work for the company to bring
success.
 To promote vision and mission of an organisation through managing and defining company’s brand in
market (Prohl and Kleinaltenkamp, 2020).
 Maintaining communication with other departments of Body Shop such as with production in terms of
giving estimation for manufacturing of goods, provide sales estimation data to sales and distribution
department, etc.
 Performing market and customer research so to find different areas of opportunities which assist company
in understanding perceived value of their goods or services.
Role of finance function
The finance department of Body Shop organisation is a core function without which no firm can meet its
working capital requirement as well as make returns. It is responsible for acquiring, allocating and investing
funds in various sources that give returns for the company which acts as their income and is helpful in achieving
organisational objectives (Selvarajoo, Ghazilla and Mamat, 2020). The main role of finance functions are
mentioned below:
 To acquire funds from various sources which involves less cost in acquisition process and demands for
less interest.
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 The role of Finance department of Body shop is to allocate funds for the working of various departments
such as for purchasing raw material by production department, advertisement expenses for marketing
department and like others.
 To make various investments both short term and long term which provides high returns to company.
 To prepare and present a financial budget along with statements that gives a fair picture of income and
expenses for a year.
 Forecasting future business market position along with management of taxes which Body Shop is required
to pay out of its incomes.
TASK 2: Development of an understanding of collaborative working practices:
The term collaborative working refers to a working within an organisation through combining efforts of
various departments as well as employees in order to achieve a common goal. In such working practices
organisational interest is much important than individual interest. The main benefit of having collaborative
working practices within Body Shop is to enhance morale of each employee within an organisation by bringing
them together to use specialization and experience of each personnel in achieving effective outcome. Along with
certain benefits of collaborative working there are some principles that needs care by Body Shop of which is very
much essential while having collaborative working such as development of trust, respecting the suggestions and
opinions of other employees, showing willingness to take any initiative, empowering support staff and
maintaining effective interaction with all (Titley and Dolan, 2020). This allows Body Shop to attain long term
objective along with sustainability within market. Body Shop can develop collaborative working practices
through making a team for a specific task or asking a group of employees to bring solution or innovation to a
particular issue with which a company can attain success and justify the purpose of business existence.
TASK 3: Demonstrating knowledge of the role of financial management and reporting
within the organisation:
The various roles of financial management and reporting within Body Shop are mentioned below:
 To maximise the interest of various shareholders of the company Body Shop who has invested their huge
amount of money in such business.
 Creating high values along with an ability of an organisation through allocating various limited resources
for competing organisational opportunities.
 Preparation of various financial statements such as profit and loss account, balance sheet, cash flow
statements and other relevant statements that are used in decision making and forecasting future market by
Body Shop.
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 Analysing the various trends off market in order to grab various opportunities for business expansion as
well as achieving growth (Wei and Yao, 2020).
 Making certain decisions related to investment that generates higher returns in long term for business and
becomes an important asset for the company.
 Managing various business risks associated with market position or brand so to have smooth and flawless
working of an organisation without facing any financial crunch.
 The department of financial management at Body Shop reports top level management in order to develop
various business strategies in order to achieve vision, mission or objective by understating company’s
financial position.
Profit and Loss Account
The term profit and loss refers to a presentation of firm’s gains or losses for a year which it occurs form
the sale and operations of business. This depicts the gross and net profit or losses incurred form revenues, cost
and other expenses. This is important in order to know a true and fair position of Body Shop’s net profit or loss
along with an idea of yearly expenses. This is also helpful for Body Shop in taking further business decisions.
Balance Sheet
The concept of Balance sheet within a company is a representation of its yearly monetary balances in a
summarized form which presents a complete and fair picture of firm’s assets, liabilities as well as an idea of
shareholder and capital. This is important for Body Shop to know its obligation towards its debts which are
considered as firm’s liabilities and a valuation of its assets. The net profit or losses are being transferred to
company’s balance sheet from the profit and loss account.
Cash Flow Statement
The term cash flow statement of any company shows all its cash inflows as well as outflows which a firm
makes during a conduct of a business for a specific year. It includes three components that is cash flows from
operating activities, financial activities and investing activities. It is important for Body Shop because this
presents all entries related to business and presents an idea about its investments with the help of which a Body
Shop can make further decisions related to its investment, sources of acquiring finances and even related to its
daily operations.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it can be concluded that for a smooth and successful operations of business there is
an essential requirement of various business functions such as human resource, finance, marketing and others
who performs their responsibilities and roles in order to attain organisational objective. Each function of business
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has different roles and responsibilities but carries a common business goal. Collaborative working practices are
very helpful in effective and efficient achievement of business purpose as this brings organisation interest prior to
the individual interest. The financial manager of any organisation is a person, who is responsible of each working
by finance or accounts department such as maintaining records, creation of financial budget and statements,
making communication with other departments in order to meet their working capital requirements and several
others. In order to achieve success and growth within an organisation it is very much important to have proper
study of each and every aspect related to the ethical as well as smooth conduct of various practices.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Basdas, U., 2021. The Role of Financial Inclusion: Does Financial Inclusion Matter?. In Research Anthology on
Personal Finance and Improving Financial Literacy (pp. 374-398). IGI Global.
Das, M. and Rangarajan, K., 2020. Impact of policy initiatives and collaborative synergy on sustainability and
business growth of Indian SMEs. Indian Growth and Development Review.
Diyorbek, B., 2020. ANALYZING MARKETING ENVIRONMENT AND IT'S STRATEGY AND
FUNCTIONS. In НАУКА 2020. ТЕОРИЯ И ПРАКТИКА (pp. 3-5).
Lassl, W., 2020. Organizing the Secondary Functions. In The Viability of Organizations Vol. 3 (pp. 243-264).
Springer, Cham.
Prohl, K. and Kleinaltenkamp, M., 2020. Managing value in use in business markets. Industrial Marketing
Management. 91. pp.563-580.
Selvarajoo, S., Ghazilla, R.A.R. and Mamat, A., 2020. Industrial practices of collaborative manufacturing
involving tool and die development: Malaysian perspective. Journal of Manufacturing Technology
Management.
Titley, B. and Dolan, C., 2020. Complete Business Studies for Cambridge IGCSE® and O Level. Oxford
University Press-Children.
Wei, R. and Yao, S., 2020. Transformation from Financial Accounting to Management Accounting: A Study of
the Offshore Oil Enterprises. Journal of Coastal Research. 107(SI). pp.9-12.
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