Business Functions

• Functional departments


  Departments with clearly defined roles and responsibilities
• Functional departments


  • Help with communication as people know who to speak to if a problem arises
  • Help workers understand their roles and how the business works, setting out the responsibilities of each part of the business
• Functional areas in most large companies


  • Marketing (sales and marketing)
  • Human resources (personnel)
  • Finance (accounts)
  • Operations (production)
• Functional departments are separate from each other


  Their roles are connected
• Human resources department


  Responsible for making sure that the other departments have enough workers with the right skills
• Finance department


  Ensures that there is money available to carry out activities across all departments
• Marketing


  Works with production by providing information about the products that customers want
• Purchasing


  Has the job of making sure that there are enough materials for production to manufacture
• Cross-functional social media team


  • Pre-purchasing research
  • Find new sales leads
  • Monitor campaigns
  • Market research
  • Efficient customer support
  • Reputation management
• Functional objectives


  The goals of each of the functional departments
• If a business is to be successful, functional objectives must be closely tied to the corporate objectives
• Goals must be carefully coordinated to ensure that they are consistent with the corporate objectives - in other words, all departments are working together to achieve the same overall objectives of the organisation
• No matter how efficiently the production line is run, there is no point in producing thousands of cars per week if the sales and marketing department have not persuaded enough potential customers to purchase them
• All functional departments must work in conjunction with one another in order to achieve a common set of objectives set out in the corporate plan
• Functional departments in Microsoft Corporation


  • Production and Operations
  • Finance and Accounting
  • Research and Development
  • Marketing and Sales
  • Human Resources
  • IT Support
  • Administrative Support