Importance Of Business Functions And Their Collaboration For Effective Organizational Performance

MG408 Graduate Challenge

Role of Marketing, Finance, Operations/Production and Human Resources

Marketing plays an essential role in the establishment of relationships between the organization offering the market and customer. Furthermore, marketing gives an organization a confidence of launching a new product in the market as opposed to the circumstance that causes the product to venture into the market without publicity.

Finance plays a significant role in strategic planning and budgeting, cash and capital management, profit planning and cost control. The organization uses strategic planning to come up with plans that form a basis of marketing campaigns, raising capital, hiring employees and capital spending (Kim, Kumar & Kumar, 2012 p.302). In cash and capital management, the finance monitors how the funds are being used. In planning and controlling the costs, finance finds a way of generating profits. This includes determining the profitability of individual products and eliminate any underperformances or losses.

Human resource management plays a significant role in suggesting to team management on how to manage people as an important asset of the business. The management of people includes the hiring and recruitment of employees, coordinating employee’s benefits, and suggesting the suitable strategies for training and developing employees. Furthermore, the Human resource is professional consultants and therefore they advise departmental managers on many concerns relating to employees and ways in which they can assist the organization to achieve it.

According to Kumar and Suresh (2008 p.11) operations or production plays a significant role in the management of activities that are considered as part of goods and service production. Other roles of operations and production include aggregate planning, scheduling, maintenance control and planning of materials required for the production of goods and services.

Human Resources, Operations/Production, Finance and Marketing functions should collaborate effectively for the organization to be feasible and for the achievement of the organization’s vision and mission of producing valuable services and goods. For example, a collaboration between the various organizational functions in the Coca-Cola Company ensures that every stakeholder in the organization stays motivated in their contribution to the company towards the set goals and objectives. In addition, a collaboration between the various functions results in the valuation of the organization through effective running of organizational operations (DeClercq, Thongpapanl & Dimov, 2011 p.686). When the various functions work together, customer satisfaction is achieved which in turn improves sales thus increasing company revenue.

The increased company revenue ensures that shareholders receive increased returns from the company, which ensures that the organization is viable and working appropriately. Furthermore, internal relations are improved. The collaboration of all business functions results in the organization achieving optimal profit through maximum efficiency. Operations/production function of Nestlé works closely with the finance function for the estimation of costs of materials. In addition, the marketing function should work closely with the production/operations function to ensure that the products being marketed to customers are available and that any special orders by the customers have been produced according to the specifications of the customer. According to Cuijpers, Guenter and Hussinger (2011 p.569) understanding the goals and objectives of the various functions including marketing, research, development and sales helps in the improvement of the efficiency, effectiveness and processes to ensure that organizational goals are met.  

References

Cuijpers, M., Guenter, H. and Hussinger, K., 2011. Costs and benefits of inter-departmental innovation collaboration. Research Policy. 4^th ed., pp.565-575. Netherlands: Elsevier

De Clercq, D., Thongpapanl, N. and Dimov, D., 2011. A closer look at cross?functional collaboration and product innovativeness: Contingency effects of structural and relational context. Journal of Product Innovation Management. 5^th ed. United States: John Wiley & Sons, pp.680-697.

Kim, D.Y., Kumar, V. and Kumar, U., 2012. Relationship between quality management practices and innovation. Journal of operations management, 4^th ed. Netherlands: Elsevier, pp.295-315.

Kumar, S. and Suresh, N. (2008). Production and operations management. New Delhi: New Age International (P) Ltd., Publishers.