Question

Cross Functional Essay Individually, students will prepare a 3-5 page essay on the relationships ... Cross Functional Essay Individually, students will prepare a 3-5 page essay on the relationships and inter-dependencies between marketing and other functional areas. This essay is due Saturday (midnight) of week 3. Note: Functional Areas of Business Include: Human Resources Accounting Finance Marketing Production / Operations Administrative Support INSTRUCTIONS Students must use research from at least 3-5 academically reviewed journal articles (only). All journal articles must be in the range of 2015 to present. need answer atleast 3-5 pages and please note that there should not be plagarism

Answer 1

The Marketing function in an organization never exists in isolation. It connects with other functional areas in the organization including Human Resource, Accounting and Finance, Productions, Operations and other administrative support functions. It permeates all the functions in an organization. All functions including Marketing must be customer oriented as , customers will bring in sales , the ultimate result of all the functional areas.  

Let us understand the relationship of the given functional areas one by one:

Human Resources:

Human Resource Management (HRM) is the function within the organization which overlooks recruitment,selection, training, and the professional development of employees. Other related functional responsibilities include well-being, employee motivation, health and safety and  performance management.

A marketing manager you would use the HR department to help them recruit a marketing personnel. They would help with scoping of the job, a person profile, a job description, and advertising the job. Human Resources would help to score and assess application forms, and will organize the interviews.  

Human resources Department also have a strategic role. Moving away from traditional personnel management, human resources sees people as a valuable asset to the organization. They will assist with a global approach to managing people and help to develop a workplace culture and environment which focuses on mission and values, and as we all know culture plays an important part in international marketing and international business as a whole.

Productions and Operations:

The productions and Operations functions within business need to work in cooperation with the marketing department. Operations include many activities such as warehousing, packaging and distribution. To an extent, operations also includes production and manufacturing, as well as logistics. Production is where goods and services are generated and made. For example a ship is manufactured in a factory which is in effect how it is produced i.e. production.

Marketers need to sell products and services that are currently in stock or can be made within a reasonable time limit. An unworkable scenario for a business is where marketers are attempting to increase sales of a product whereby the product cannot be supplied. Perhaps there is a warehouse full of other products that our marketing campaign is ignoring. This is how vital the inter linkage between marketing and productions and operations is.

Accounting and Finance

Marketing goes hand in hand with the Accounting and Finance functions.  The first key take away is that we all know that without advertising and publicity the sales of company products will not improve and without sales there will no profits so without marketing there will be no need for finance as basic function of finance is to find ways to increase the profits and when there is no profit the whole finance function will become redundant. Similarly for successful marketing one need to have strong base of finance because it is finance through which company set goals for marketing like sales targets, sales price looking at cost of product, compensation for sales people, planning and seeing that everything is going according to plan or not and so on.

Therefore companies should nee see marketing and finance as different departments rather they both should be allowed to work together so as to help company in achieving its pre-defined goals.

Administrative Support

Marketing function is one of the many functions in an organization. Administrative support binds all the functions together and helps in running the functions in a smooth manner. Administrative support works as the vital link between all the functions and creates a congenial environment for all the departments to work together by acting as a problem solver. Marketing is one of the functions among them. Hence the role and dependence of both these functions are imperative.