Hey! Sure, I'd be happy to mark it.
Assess the relationship between operations and the other key business functions in THREE actual businesses. (8 marks)Commented
The interrelationship between operations and other key business function (you won't have long in the exam, so be specific; which key business functions are you going to introduce?) is crucial in the aim of efficiently and effectively achieving the business’s main goals and objectives. Operation is the main key business function which involves in the process of transforming inputs into outputs and has the responsibility in producing quality goods and services. (1) Therefore, there are needs for the operation function to be closely interrelated with the other functions. Marketing (1) is to provide the business with information about the changes in tastes and preferences of the customers, the supplies and demands in the market, identifying target markets, help in promoting and designing products to satisfy the customers need and wants-. These factors determine the operation function to produce goods and services to meet the fluctuate changes and demands, designing favourable products to look more appeal to the target market and the potential target market and collect information to develop strategies to create an effective marketing plan for a business. For example, QANTAS does market research about the times of the year that everyone loves to travel (awkward phrasing; revise) and therefore, promote their company with special discounted prices to specific destinations or specific times of the year especially in Christmas Season. (you've discussed how marketing strategies are used, but how does this relate back to the operations? Look into the relationships marketing research has with the services of operations) As a result, this promotion plan appeals to attract more customers in that time of the year every year. (revise wording) In relation to Finance, it needs to allocate adequate funds from different sources of finance in purchasing new equipment, budgeting funds into different operation activities, invest into more technological equipment to sophisticate the transformation process leading to an improvement in productivity and eliminating wastage of resources to achieve the objective of efficiency. (1) These will reduce the cost of production which will have impact on the prices of final goods or services, resulting in the operations management to achieve its role in cost leadership. For example, Google raised US $23 billion in equity funds to purchase the Android mobile operating system in 2005 and YouTube in 2006. Google was also significantly increase its Research and Development budget, resulting in the creation of products such as Google Maps and Gmaill. Therefore, this feature helps to differentiate google or gmail in particular from its competitor Yahoo. While relating the operations with human resources is necessarily focusing on the recruitment of relevant and skilful employees who has the potential to work in the transformation process of the business. They need to be trained with skills that are needed in the process and works towards to improve the worker productivity in the operations process. This increases will help in producing goods in a high volume which will allow the business to meet their customers needs and demands quickly. For example, Apple recruited people from China to reduce their cost of labour which is seen as an additional expense for the business. Also, the supply of employees with skills and relevant experience was huge which easily allow the business to produce their products in a high volume with quality. As a result, this has allowed Apple to sustain its competitive advantage against the competitors through cost leadership that derives from reduction of expenses and products differentiation in terms of quality, flexibility and availability of the products in the market. Therefore, the understanding of the relationship between operations and the other key business functions are highly effective in the aim of helping the business to sustain its competitive advantage and improve in business performance.
Mark: 6/8
- Conceptually, I think you have an extensive knowledge on the interactions between the four key business functions; you have relevant case studies, so that's a good place to start.
- What I think you're lacking is: clarity. A lot of the times you're a bit too generic with how you answer the question, which diminishes the extensive knowledge you have. Look into more depth with how each of the key business functions coexist.
For marketing,
how does the market research process relate with the services provided by the operations department? How is this information transformed from its input into an output? You've answered the Finance section well, but marketing and human resources required a more in depth knowledge -- in what way? Specifically, how does recruiting the right people increase productivity? Because just recruiting the right people with specific skills doesn't ascertain a more productive workplace -- other HR factors can contribute as well; so, make sure you go one step further and describe the specific processes of operations that are affected by the strategies undertaken by the HR department.
- Also look into how you can separate out your points. At first glance, this looks like a wall of text with no direction -- so be sure that when you're answering these questions that your indentation is clear with appropriate paragraphs.
If I was to answer this, and it was worth 8 marks, here would be my marking guidelines:
8 marks:
- 1 mark: Describe what the operations department does for a business (1/1)
- 3 marks: Outline how each of the kbf enable the operations department to succeed (1/3)
- 3 marks: Outline how the operations department is successful (with other kbf) in three actual businesses (3/3)
- 1 mark: Evaluate/Assessing the success of the operations department for the business, relating it back to the three kbf (1/1)
Hopefully, this helps with answering those longer response questions!
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