How Functional Areas Link in Tesco Company?

In this assignment I will be discussing how functional areas link with each other within Tesco. The functional areas in any business can’t work alone; they must interact with other departments and have good communications within them. Most functional areas in Tesco deal with external people or organisations, these are called external links. For example, suppliers, which are usually contacted by the purchasing or production function to make orders; the R&D department then contacts specialist suppliers and research if the products they offer are of good quality; the finance department will check the suppliers invoices before they are paid to ensure there are no mistakes.

Tesco’s staff will be contacted by the customers if they have any queries relating to the products, services or payments. The functional areas that can be involved in this are customer service and finance. Banks are contacted by the finance function about any issues that are related to bank accounts, loans or overdraft facilities.

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Functional areas such as HR may also contact government agencies, for example Job Centre Plus about any job vacancies that might be available in Tesco; and the Finance function will have to communicate with the HMRC to give account of how Tesco is doing financially and about the payroll of the staff.

Finance

The sales function and the finance function link to each other in Tesco because sales is responsible for selling the products/services, and then it has to give all the information to the finance department to record all money earned from sales.

Based on the information that the sales function gives, the finance function can work out the profit Tesco is making, check if payments from customers are being made, and chase overdue payments. This is important for the success of Tesco because if the finance doesn’t know how the sales are doing it cannot draw up any conclusions on how good or bad the finance of the company is to inform the shareholders or to improve what needs to be improved.

The finance is also the function that determines whether the company is or isn’t liquid, so it has to keep in touch with sales (and other functions) to ensure that they are not spending more money than what they have or should.The distribution function relates to the finance function in Tesco because the finance must know when the deliveries are ready and dispatched so that the finance function can send out invoices to the customers. Finance also has to tell the delivery department whether a purchase has been paid or not, and if it hasn’t the delivery cannot happen before the customer has paid for the purchase.

It’s important that they work together because if they don’t communicate with each other the customers would be getting the invoices before their products arrived or they would be getting their products before they even paid for it, and if the person isn’t honest the result could be that the person would bother paying for the products as it already has them. Human resources links with the Finance function because HR is responsible for the payroll of staff, and decide whether they get bonuses or not, so they tell the finance department how much to pay each employee.

If they didn’t communicate with each other the finance department wouldn’t know how much each employee should be paid, or how to work out their payment without the HR giving information about how many hours each employee worked, and if the finance paid the wrong wage, or paid the wrong wage to the wrong person there would be lots of issues and complaints and they would have more work to do after all to sort out all the payments.

Customer Service

Sales function and Customer Service function link to each other in Tesco because the sales staff must be able to provide an excellent customer service to Tesco customers because this is what will encourage them to shop in Tesco and become loyal customers. Sales staff also must be able to respond to any questions and queries customers might have, for example, to do with sales, promotions, if a product is in stock, how a product works and to give technical advice.

If sales staff and customer service staff don’t work together to meet the needs and expectations of customers, then customers will start to think that Tesco isn’t a good place to shop and that the staff isn’t well trained and prepared to work there and provide help and information, so they will go to other supermarkets that provide better customer service Tesco will start to lose more and more customers and this will decrease their profit which in an extreme case can then lead for the closing down of the company.

The distribution function links with the Customer service function because if the deliveries are being made and the right time to the right customers, and if the delivery is very quick, then customers will be loyal to Tesco because they will see that it provides a quick and good customer service.

This is important for the reputation of Tesco because if customers are satisfied with the customer service provided during the delivery, for example, not taking too long to get the goods delivered, if the products are of good quality, if the employee who delivers the goods is very polite and helpful, the customer will always be shopping in Tesco, using the delivery service and will probably recommend this to friends and family, or even leave a feedback on Tesco’s website where lots of people all around the country can see, and Tesco’s’ reputation will be enhancing and more and more people will be shopping in Tesco and even using the delivery service and this will have positive impacts on Tesco’s as a company and financially.

Human Resources

Human Resources links with customer service because HR is responsible for training staff on how to provide a good customer service, so the HR has to prepare new employees to deliver excellent customer service in Tesco. If the HR doesn’t prepare/giver the appropriate training to new staff on customer service, the employees might not be able to deal will certain situations which can let customers down and this can lead to Tesco losing customers.

The HR also needs to make regular checks on senior staff to ensure that they are always providing a good customer service and give training if there are any new methods, new technology, or new ways of providing a better customer service. By ensuring these things all the employees will always be up to date on how to better meet customers needs and expectations and Tesco will be more and more successful.