Six key functions that all businesses need to address

BA101 Week 1 Lecture Let's get started with week one. So again go into your course select the last lesson tab and then go into week one. Then once you're in week one go ahead and select the getting started this week activities folder. When you click on and you'll see that there is a learning objective and this makes learning objective is to understand the basics of business operations the activities that you'll see listed there include your reading, your lectures, your discussion questions, and your assignment for the week. It’s always a good idea to go ahead and print out the screen and keep it next to your computer. One of the things I like to do is as I'm completing my readings or going to the lecture or even completing my assignments for the week I will check off that listing to make sure that I have met all of the requirements for that particular week. Again, I'd like to remind you to participate often in your discussion forums and in fact a little later in this recording I'll talk to you about the requirements for the discussion questions and also it's always a good idea at the first day of your new week to go in and take a look at your assignment and be sure that you understand what the professor is asking of you if you have any questions to be sure to get with them early so that they can answer it. It's not a good idea to wait until the very last minute right before the assignment is due to start writing your work for that week. Go ahead and take a look at the week one lecture the basics of business operations. During this lecture you’ll learn a little bit about the basics of business operations I'm willing to bet that if you were to ask five people what business operations mean you'll probably get five different answers based on their personal experiences. Well for our purposes let's begin our discussion by defining what business operations really mean. Simply stated business operations are the fundamental activities and operations of a business on a day-to-day basis to generate revenue and profit while businesses operate for a number of different reasons generally speaking a business will operate with three primary goals or functions in mind. These goals or functions include generating income for the business to increase the value of the business assets and to make sure that income and profit for the business is continuously generated and maintained. Simply stated and I will use a made-up example let's say that cool kicks manufactures and distributes middle, high, and athletic shoes as the sole source of recurring income for its business operation. If cool kicks has only one occasional large contract that comes in and which provides periodic large bursts of its revenue from in individual project over time they will likely fail on the other hand if cool kicks operates by consistently having medium-sized contracts roll in for different projects bringing in revenue which are all generated at a steady rate it will probably do very well. While there will be fundamental differences in how businesses operate there are six key functions that all businesses need to address just as part of doing business. Let’s talk about them. First is financial records management which includes such things as bookkeeping insurance and record-keeping legal management this needs to be sure all operations of the business or legal such as business licenses contracts with suppliers and organized under the correct legal form of business. Operations management someone needs to be responsible for running the business on a day-to-day basis. Marketing and advertising someone needs to make sure customers know about the business products or services either by radio TV print etc. Office management companies have a space in order to operate the business and the right equipment to achieve its task. And production which needs to have a process in place to satisfy the customers’ needs. In addition to the lecture for the week you'll also need to take a look at the articles that are posted there for you one of the articles that I want you to take particular interest in is the 20 most important questions in business which was written by Brett Nelson in this article Brett says that companies fail for a host of reasons - bad luck plays a role but disaster usually strikes because of a more fundamental flaw in the original idea the strategy the execution or everything above. When it comes to building a business even Warren buffet would agree that no one can spot every opportunity or anticipate every threat there are simply too many variables and in an increasingly competitive global economy those variables are changing faster than ever before. What entrepreneurs can do is ask the core set of 20 questions that govern the fate of any enterprise armed with these answers they stand the best chance of beating some fairly dire odds studies estimate that just two thirds of all startups survived the first two years and less than half make it to the fourth.