Cadbury's Business Functions

Within every company there are organisational functions. I am going to investigate the main functions of the famous chocolate company Cadbury. Cadbury is a very successful business and have over 70,000 employees working for them. For Cadbury to remain a successful business it has to maintain some structure and business functions to be able to meet their aims and objectives. Throughout my findings of Cadbury the main activities of the following areas are what help and maintain the objectives that have been set by the business and allow Cadbury to continue to have a success an reach their aims.

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The production department is the department that produce the products. The department has to be in control of the turnaround of the production. When producing a product, materials and labour values are added so that the products can meet customer’s needs. The production team need to have a high maintained system to be able to provide, produce and reduce the amount of food waste within Cadbury.

You would find that the production team in Cadbury would be concerned with the following issues:

• Cost of production
• The condition of the means of production
• Keeping production going
• Health and safety
• Keeping employees motivated
• Keeping up to date with technology
• Satisfying the requirements of customers
• Maximising the use of plant
• Minimising the waste of materials

Finance:

The finance department is the department that controls and deals with the money. The finance department are responsible for keeping all financial records and documentations of money that comes in and out of the business. The finance team are responsible for submitting tax reports and company registration. Once HR have agreed the salaries and bonuses that the staff at Cadbury are entitled to they then would issue all wages and preform the relevant tax reductions or national insurance contributions. The finance department control all giving budgets to each department, this is set in place so each department can achieve their objectives and do not waste money. Managers see these budgets and compare the sales and targets that had been met and the finance department then make plans for the future that will help the business to achieve its objectives.

Human Resources

One of the key roles of this department is the ability to keep everyone happy; they are concerned with the welfare of the staff, people whom come in contact with the company and welfare of the business by following employment laws and ensuring health and safety. When you have happy staff you have motivated staff and this helps to achieve the objectives. HR is also responsible for all training that has to be taken to ensure the company are up to date with the way the company functions and that all health and safety is being met. HR department employ and deploy staff as they would be fully trained in ethical issues and again the employment laws and ensure the equal opportunity procedures are in place and being followed, this avoids any law suits and trade union issues.

Administration and IT

The administration department within Cadbury are the department that provide support to all other departments within the organisation, they create a working order, which provides routine and functions smoothly. This support could be invoicing, photocopying, letter writing, posting the mail, collecting the post and distributing it correctly throughout the departments, attending meetings and taking minutes and then typing them up, keeping records of relevant information on the business, maintaining the computer systems, software, the security of the systems and the building and security and cleaning.

Marketing and sales

Marketing is the department that identifies the customers’ needs by carrying out marketing research alongside the research and development department, they develop the right products and promotions that need to be focused on within the needs and requirements of products requested by the company’s customers and this helps to increase profit and keep the sales teams achieving their targets and objectives.

To achieve the company’s objectives the marketing team must get 4 main areas right:

Products – they must identify what is suitable for the target market, what brings total satisfaction to the customers, what customers would like them to produce, what is selling the most or what could do with some extra support due to low sales.

Price- They must investigate the going rates or other suppliers to assure they don’t overprice or under-price a product.

Place- To identify where and what areas are selling certain product this would benefit the production team as they could work a system out to avoid waste and additional losses.

Promotion-To identify where and when to promote a product, for example if a Christmas limited addition product became available, it would be irrelevant to advertise or promote this product in February.

The above 4 areas help Cadbury to achieve at least 2 of their objectives:

“to be the number one product in a given market”

“maximising profit”

Research and development

Within the research and development department is where the staff at Cadbury investigates new products and try and improve the sales of existing products, this would involve going out and using different research mythologies, the staff in this area would perform surveys, experimental research and even observational research. They would examining competitors and try and find a gap in the market for any new product. The research and development department have to work very closely to marketing and productions to be able to achieve the right results to turn the findings of the research into useful products that will help Cadbury to achieve their objectives.

Customer services

The customer services department is to assure the customers are 100% happy with the products and services that Cadbury provide; within in this department they deal with customer’s questions and concerns. This department will help to gain a customer’s trust back if an unfortunate error has occurred. Having un-happy customers can affect Cadbury objectives, and having well trained professional staff to assist in certain areas of customer services can help promote and regain customers trust, to be able to meet the objectives.

The managers

This would be the people who wants order, control they love structure and high performance they like everything to be out into its place, unlike the technician who strives off of detail and knowledge and how to perform the task, the manager loves the order and they want everything to be done in a manner that gives consistency.

The Entrepreneur

This would be the person inside of you that strives for the business, dreams and focuses on the business becoming bigger and more known to the world. Sometimes you would find that the technicians and the manager seem to take over and forget about the person striving to make the business more of a success, to provide them with more jobs that can resolved or more jobs to organise, going out there to market the business, to make a business a really great business, you have to allow the dreamer to dream, you have to be able to work on your business not just in your business.

As you can see from my examples above the manager and the technician work in the business and the entrepreneur works for the business. Each person has relevant tasks so that the objectives can be solved so the aims can be achieved

Business Objectives of Cadbury and how they relate to the stakeholders

Cadbury aims and Objectives

Cadbury aims are what they want to achieve in the long run, and objectives are used to high light how those aims are going to be achieved. Objectives can be in a form of targets and challenges for the business to achieve the aims.

Cadbury aims are to:

• Maximise profit
• To be the number one product in a given market
• To maximise sales
• To grow
• To operate in a wide range of markets
• Have a good reputation
• To provide freedom for workers to express themselves and suggest ideas to help the business
• Achieve best possible financial return on capital
• Boost or maintain share market values

Cadbury use aims and objectives as they are the foundation for decision making within the company. It provides long term thinking it’s measurable and controlling and it motivates and inspires workers and employees, its direct, it focuses on efforts and unifies the company and most importantly it communicates with shareholders and employers regarding the businesses future.

Cadbury use the S.M.A.R.T objective method to set their short term objectives. These objectives have to be set for the business, products or services.

Specific The objectives should specify what Cadbury want to achieve, for example they may want to achieve a 3% market share in 12 months.

Measurable The objectives should specify how you are going to measure whether you are achieving the objective. For Example a 3% market share over 12 months means that each month market share targets can be measured.

Achievable The Objective must be achievable and attainable. For example Is the 3% objective for the 12 months achievable? Does Cadbury have the resources, man power and finances to achieve it?

Realistic Can the objectives realistically be achieved with the resources you have? For example: Is the 3% objective over a 12 month period realistic or does the company need longer? Does the company have the skills and resources to achieve this over the time period set.

Timely When do you want to achieve the set objectives? Without a timescale it is difficult to set dates for the achievement of key tasks and milestones.

For Example: In our company have set themselves a period of 12 moths to achieve the 3% market share.

Stakeholders

A stakeholder is a person or an organisation that takes interest into a business and are there for effected by the way that it may be run; this would be in the areas of success and failure. Stakeholders can be people within the business or outside of the business; the different types of stakeholders can hold different views and can affect the way the owner wants to conduct the business which can affect the aims and objectives.

I am going to give some examples on stakeholders and how they can affect the aims and objectives of Cadbury.

Workers/employees

To be able to give the workers/employees a sense of ownership the company must keep them up to date with what is going on with the business; this helps to improve performances and motivates the employees. The workers/employees are main stakeholders in the business because their motivation and happiness keeps the performance of the business running smooth and relies on them for the business to survive. Employees at Cadbury are called internal stakeholders; Cadbury have meetings to inform colleges about any changes and hear their views on the running of the company. Cadbury use research skills to find out if the employees are 100% satisfied or to enquire how they feel within the company. They provide the employees with newsletters and access to forums and account information to keep them informed with what is going on. This helps Cadbury to achieve their aims and objectives as it keeps the staff motivated and satisfied that they know what is happening within the company, if this did not happen then employees would feel confused and this would affect their skills to perform the tasks.

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For example: if Cadbury was to introduce a new machine to make the work more efficient and faster, then the employees will require training as soon as possible to ensure that the production will run smoothly and effectively. If this was not done you would find that the employees would be stresses from trying to learn the machine themselves, errors could lead to faulty equipment and the company could lose profit due to the fact the employee was either slow or made an error as he was never given training. This would also make the employee feel very disappointed and could lead them to feel they were not doing their job correctly. In a worse situation the employee could have an accident on that machine, which could lead to a law suit. An employee to a Cadbury would want to achieve the best possible results, to gain profit and ensure the Cadbury is a success so it could continue to provide an income, if Cadbury was to collapse then the employee would then be affected as they would have to seek further employment.

Customers

A customer who is interested or purchases a product that Cadbury provided, also become stakeholders. Customers are external stakeholders of Cadbury which does not directly link them with the company, but have a major part of helping Cadbury meet their aims and objectives, without customers none of the aims could be met and Cadbury SMART objective method could not possibly be met and the business would just collapse. Cadbury customers are mainly interested in the price of the product and the hygiene of the factories and the machinery.

Managers

Managers have a key part in Cadbury as a stakeholder as they are interested how the business is run and how the employees are being motivated, to achieve the targets set by the company; they are interested in the control of the company, salaries and bonuses that could help them to influence the staff to perform the relevant objectives. The managers have a fear of loss profit as they want job security as it would be hard for them to find another job especially if the company have to re-locate or stop producing.

Owners

Owners are also stakeholders and these are the people who can control what Cadbury achieve and how they run their business, an area of interest for the owners of Cadbury is to maintain a good relationship with the suppliers and keeping financiers happy as Cadbury are always marketing and researching new ideas for chocolate products that having a well-established and not in debt with suppliers or other financiers ie: banks, taxman or employees, with provide them with bigger opportunities and the flexibility to produce the products when and when they can, so owners of Cadbury must make sure they use their money wisely.

Local Community

The local community can play a major part in Cadbury business objectives as they are stakeholders, who live in or work in the area where the factories are producing the products, this could have interests in the pollution or the traffic that the factory is creating, leading to complaints. The owners could decide they want to work all night and this could affect the residents who wish to sleep but cannot due to the noise that the factory works are making. Yet on the other hand Cadbury could open up a new factory in a new area, and this could create jobs and provide them people with an income lower the employability statistics in the area of job seekers and improve their quality of life.

Government

The Government are also stakeholders and take interest in the laws and legislation of Cadbury, the government’s decisions can have an impact on the aims and objectives as the laws they enforce can actually shut the company down, they have to ensure the factory is following the health and safety and that the hygiene levels are met as they are producing a food product. The government also have a interest to see Cadbury achieve there aims and objectives as if the company stops producing products, staff would then be made redundant and then the employment rates will drop and no contributions will be made to the gross national product. Another interest that the government would have is that the company achieve their aims and objectives as they employ a lot of staff and each staff member would have to pay tax that would then be used for healthcare and education.

Suppliers

Suppliers are stakeholder within Cadbury. Cadbury are currently buying products from over 40,000 suppliers around the world; Cadbury strive to work with their suppliers giving them the opportunity to give suggestions on how they would improve quality of efficiency, this gives the supplier the ability to be flexible and feel appreciated and allows room for a very solid business relationship. Cadbury undertakes an evaluation on all potential suppliers to ensure that they are a fair trade company, such as standards that have to be met by the environmental protection and ethical labour practices. Suppliers would take interest into Cadbury as they supply the materials to Cadbury to produce their products, they want to see the business succeed, so that their orders don’t stop coming and they still receive a regular income.