Comprehensive Essay: The Interconnectedness of Business Functions

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of four key business functions: human resources, operations/production, marketing, and accounting/finance. It defines each function, outlining their significance within an organization and the responsibilities they entail. The human resources function focuses on managing employees, including recruitment, training, and compensation. The operations function manages production and inventory. The marketing function concentrates on selling goods and services. The accounting and finance function handles financial data and resource allocation. The essay emphasizes the interconnectedness of these functions, highlighting how their coordination is essential for organizational success, and concludes by reiterating the importance of collaboration between these departments for achieving business objectives.

RUNNING HEAD: BUSINESS FUNCTIONS
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Business Functions

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Introduction
Organization is defined as the group of people with specific duties and responsibilities that act
together for attaining specific objective determined by the organization. According to
Kotler,2013, an organization is an entity where more than two person work in harmony for
achieving a common goal. Further, an organization is divided into functional areas or
departments that have assigned responsibilities. Some of departments are operations, finance,
customer services, human resources, research and development, sales and marketing and
administration (Bratton and Gold, 2017). In this essay, four main business functions that
performed in the organizations are explained that includes human resources, managing
information, marketing and accounting functional departments and its connection and relation to
each other are discussed in the below sections along with that applications of different concepts
and principle are provided in the essay.
Business Functions and its significance
Business functions are considered as the activities that are performed in the organization; further
these activities are categorized into support functions and core functions. Core functions are
those activities that are directly related to generation of income such as production department
and sales department. Support activities are those that support the core functions that include
managing information, human resources, and distribution and logistics.

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Source: (Armstrong et.al,2018).
Human Resources
The human resources department takes responsibility to manage people in the organization. In
the HR department, responsibilities of people include recruitment, training and development,
salaries and wages and employee relations and welfare (Stair and Reynolds, 2012). Management
of people in the organization is an important aspect as with that the company can get competitive
advantage and boost efficiently and effectiveness in achieving organizational goal.
Significance:
 Ensure availability of human resource in the organization and coordinate activities with
other departments
 Develop realistic compensation structures that help in to get competitive advantage by
attracting skilled people
 Reduce turnover, attrition rate and replacement of workers that ensure high efficiency
 Ensure motivation of employees and high morale and satisfaction levels throughout the
workforce
Operations/ Production
The production function is considered as the clearest of all functions. This function ensures
production management in the organization, the responsibilities of this department includes
development of products, production planning, research and development, inventory
management and control. The production or operation department ensures timely production of
goods and manages all activities related to inventory, quality, method of production and
employees required for production (Kotler,2013).
Significance:
 Help firm to understand needs and wants of customers and accordingly development of
products that leads to expansion of firms.
 This helps in reduction of production cost and tries to maximize outputs through
minimize inputs.
 Ensure proper utilization of firm’s resources and bring more return in the organization.

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Marketing
The marketing is the heart of any business that tends to have the most direct contact with
customers. Marketing department focus on selling goods and services to the target customers and
includes much broader concept. The responsibilities that includes in marketing functions are
setting of marketing strategies according to the target market, development of products and
researching the market needs and wants so that products can be manufactured accordingly
(Armstrong et.al,2018).
Significance
 Key for selling products in the market and make people aware about products
 Handle customer queries and interact with customers in order to satisfy their wants and
needs
 Ensure business activities impact positively on the society and make positive impact in
the mindset of customers
 Marketing department ensures effective communication through different techniques in
order to attract more customers this leads to strong financial position of the organization.
Accounting
The accounting function and finance department is responsible for all issues of the organization.
An organization flow of money handled by finance department and the main function is the
management of money so that financial resources of the firm can be utilized properly in order to
get higher return (Anandarajan et.al 2012). Accounting functions includes recording, collection,
presentation, and storing of financial data that can be used by the organization for decision

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making and for tracking the funds. Finance function includes activities related to selecting best
possible way of raising funds, checking cost of capital, and decision related to investment of
money in order to get higher return with minimum risk (Wood and Sangster, 2015).
The activities under this function include sources of finance, management of cash flow through
operating activities, financing activities and investing activities. Moreover, activities such as
managing payments and collecting debts and paying money to suppliers (Bratton and Gold,
2017).
Significance:
 Help in finding profitable investment opportunities so that money can be utilized in the
better way
 Ensures optimal use of resources that includes correct ratio of equity and debt in the
capital structure of the organization
 Accounting information supports decision making in the organization and with the help
of financial statements image of the organization can be built in the market.
Relation between functions
The four main business functions that are discussed above are operations, marketing, human
resource and finance. Business main motive is to earn profits by selling products and services in
order to do so there are various activities that need to be done. Due to that each and every
department or function are interconnected to each other and with that coordination an
organization can be successful in the market.

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Source: (Armstrong et.al,2018).
Firstly, human resource department ensure the availability of people in the company as each and
every work whether it’s related to production, sales or marketing are performed by people and
management of people is the core activity perform by human resource department. Hence,
human resource department is linked with all other functions.
Operation or production department deals with production activities and this is mainly related
with marketing and finance departments as in order to perform activities in production
department related to purchases or inventory or product development information from
marketing department about needs and wants of customer is required. On the other side,
purchases and salaries and wages and variable cost all are handled by finance and accounting
department and for that operation functions need to connect with finance department. Then the
finished products sell by marketing department (Kotler,2013). Hence, all these departments and
activities and functions are interlinked and interconnected. In order to ensure all activities are
efficiently performed and give higher results coordination and interrelation between these
functions are important otherwise no organization can compete and be successful in the market.

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Source: (Obrien
and
Marakas,2011)
Conclusion
It is concluded that
business functions
activities are
performed to achieve
the
organizational objectives. The four main functions that are identified and discussed are
marketing function, accounting and finance functions, human resources function and operation
function. Hence, all these functions are interrelated and in order to be successful and to perform
efficiently organizations ensure coordination and collaboration between departments. Further, it
is concluded that human resource department ensure management of people, operation function
ensures management of inventory and production, and marketing functions ensure selling of
those products and services to the target market and target customers. Hence, all business
functions are interconnected and relatable to each other.

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References
Armstrong, G.M., Kotler, P., Harker, M.J. and Brennan, R., 2018. Marketing: an introduction.
Pearson UK.
Bratton, J. and Gold, J., 2017. Human resource management: theory and practice. Palgrave.
Kotler, P., 2013. A framework for marketing management. Pearson Education India.
Anandarajan, M., Anandarajan, A. and Srinivasan, C.A. eds., 2012. Business intelligence
techniques: a perspective from accounting and finance. Springer Science & Business Media.
O'brien, J.A. and Marakas, G.M., 2011. Management information systems (Vol. 9). McGraw-
Hill/Irwin.
Stair, R. and Reynolds, G., 2012. Fundamentals of information systems. Cengage Learning.
Wood, F. and Sangster, A., 2015. Frank Wood's Business Accounting UK GAAP (Vol. 1).
Pearson Education.