Four Key Business Functions

99% of businesses have four key business functions, these include; operations, marketing, finance and human resource management. Each of these specific areas has their own attributions towards their businesses success and failure and often has dedicated departments and staff for these four business functions. Despite this the functions are interdependent meaning they rely upon one another to achieve and exceed their goals and expectations set by themselves and management.

The function of finance affects and is affected by the other key business functions. The interdependence of the key business functions and finance solely depends on money. All operations activities rely on funds meaning the outcomes of the finance department affect the other

Operation decisions are influenced by marketing strategies while marketing strategies are affected by the outcomes of other KBF’s. Marketing is largely concerned with strategies to ensure the sale of product which include influencing consumers to buy product by altering, design, pricing, the image of the product in the market, promotion and the quantity produced. These can all be restricted by other KBF’s. Pricing strategies, for example, can’t be set lower than the costs of making the products (reaching break even point). Every key business function has affects on marketing and physical limits on the amount that can be produced and the sorts of marketing strategies that can be implemented. If operations becomes more efficient marketing teams may be able to set lower prices on products as a new break-even point will be applicable. Similarly, marketing decisions affect operation’s management as they determine the goals of products. Marketing may decide to apply a price skimming marketing strategy where prices are set relatively high in comparison to competitor’s products. Price skimming is implemented to give consumers the impression of high quality or social status. In this case operations are able to focus on quality and a higher amount of inputs that lead to quality such as

Most closely related to operations, the decisions can determine how staff are needed and what attributes they will need in order to execute their tasks. Adversely, HR management may generate limits to options available to operations. Perhaps the most important part of the transformation process is human labor. HR management ensures workers are correctly suited to their jobs and ensures all tasks are completed within the business. Communication of decisions made by operations on how to produce a product affects decisions made by HR management with regards recruiting, training and termination of employment contracts. An example of this is the use of a new peie of machinery by operations may require human resources to hire appropriately trained workers or train existing workers who are able to operate it. This may include having to terminate existing employment contracts in order to accommodate new workers. The performance of human resource management affects the performance of other KBF’s especially operations. It is the role of HR management to ensure that workers are skilled enough and have the motivation to complete tasks set by managerial staff. If this is completed to a high standard, the business will be able to operate at its highest efficiency rate therefore affecting the other KBF’s than operations. This ensures quality of product and “smooth” running of the