Introduction

An organisation to work efficiently has different departments with different roles and responsibilities all working towards the same goal. This paper aims to discuss the Roles and importance of different departments. It highlights the how different departments interact among themselves in order to increase productivity and workplace environment in Tesco and Unilever. It shows the significance and purpose of reporting. It highlights how these companies are disclosing information in the given financial statements.

Discussion

Marketing is the way of communicating about the product and the business with the public. Marketing starts with advertisement of the product and ends with after sale service. It helps in creating a view in the customers mind about the business and the characteristics of the product.  For any size and type of business, it is advisable that the organisation has a marketing department that helps it to go far in the competition. This department is mainly concerned with the marketing and sales of the product (Feng, Morgan and Rego 2015). It helps in determining its targeted customers. Importance of this department are as follows:

1. Innovation: Marketing department is the most creative department. It is engaged in creating different strategies and tools to promote the business.
2. Create Awareness: Introduce the products and services to the public through proper advertisement strategies so that the public is familiarized with the product and its uses.
3. Improve Brand Value: It consistently works on improving the brand image of the company by providing improvising the quality and quantity of the product and services provided.

The next very important department in an organisation is the finance department. As the name suggests it is concerned with money and finances of the organisation. It starts with basic bookkeeping and ends at suggesting marketing department at making strategic decisions. The main role of this department is to cut down the overall cost and account the different expenses and revenues under relevant heads (Pyka and Burghof 2013). Major significances of this department are as follows:

1. Day-to-day accounting: This department at the base level is concerned with bookkeeping and recording the daily transactions of the organisation. This helps in keeping a record of all the spending that the organisation is doing and the revenue generated by it.   
2. Advising: In the intermediate level, this department is concerned with analysing the statements generated in the base level and advising the organisation if the entity should cut down costs or increase the investments.
3. Budgets and forecasts: This department is concerned with setting an annual budget for the organisation and allocation of funds to different departments. It estimates the profit and returns the organisation should make in a year considering the internal and external factors.

Human resource department is concerned with the employees and the efficiency of these employees. The main objective of this department is to maximise the productivity of the organisation. Human resource managers are concerned with implementing strategies that would reduce the stress and pressure among the employees. This department is important in an organisation due to following reasons:

1. Recruiting efficient employees: Human resource department is responsible for hiring employees that are skilful and should have enough knowledge in the role they are being hired for.
2. Motivated work force: The main issue that affects the productivity among the employees is the lack of motivation among them. This department is responsible for motivating employees by providing rewards and giving promotions to the deserved candidates.
3. Training and Development: The Human Resource department of any organisation is responsible for training the employees and developing skills to face and overcome the challenges that can be faced in the future.

Teamwork and Its Importance 

Teamwork is defined as the ability of different individuals working together in order to achieve a common goal. In an organisation, all the employees and all the different departments work together in order to maximise the profits earned and improving the brand value in the market. Profits are an organisation’s short-term goal, which it seeks to maximise. However, to remain in the long-term the organisation should focus on creating goodwill, an intangible asset that attracts the highest return (Gammack and Poon 2013). Teamwork is the most crucial factor in obtaining any objective.

Some major importance of teamwork in an organisation are as follows:

1. Teamwork helps in increasing the efficiency among the employees. It helps in finishing the tasks faster with a good quality of output. Different individuals are assigned with different portion of a task that they specialize in hence generating a quality outcome.
2. It improves relation among the employees. Teamwork initiates communication and understanding among employees with diversified culture hence improving the relations among them (Ghorbanhosseini 2013). This is important to create a healthy environment in the organisation.

Interaction among different departments

Tesco, a leading retail business, aims to serve millions of customers, comprises of 450,000 employees all working in different departments for achieving the same goal. A team of 450,000 employees distributed into different departments where all the departments and its employees seek to serve better and earn more. According to a well-published article, Tesco’s finance department of the company supports other departments in terms of funds and advices. It supports the commercial and corporate purchasing of the marketing department (Brannen et.al 2013).  This is a major example of how two different departments in an organisation, which work independently are dependent on each other.

Unilever, a consumer goods company, owns more than 400 brands. Alan Jope, the chief executive officer of the Unilever said that teamwork and unity is the key to all the success that the company have had so far. The article discloses how the human resource department of the organisation is helping the other departments by providing the company with skilled and loyal employees who are not just productive, but also make consider the team members as their family members. This promotes the culture and workplace environment in the organisation making it a better place to work.

Importance of Financial Management

Financial management is the act of managing the financial activities of an organisation it deals with planning and budgeting the required estimated finances, then, allocating these resources to different departments, monitoring and safeguarding these resources, and finally evaluating and reporting the analysis made (Peterson 2013). Major importance of financial management are as follows:

1. Acquiring funds: financial management includes procurement of funds from different sources in such a way that the rate of interest is minimised. This is the first step to the financial statement without which other activities and other departments cannot proceed.
2. Maximum utilisation of funds: This is the next significant factor why financial management is important for any organisation. An organisation to increase profitability should focus on zero wastage and maximum utilisation of the resources. This ensures improvement in operational efficiency of the organisation.
3.  Improving profitability: Profitability is purely dependent on the cost and effectiveness of the employees. The main concern of the firm is to ensure that resources and funds are properly utilised. Financial management make it easier for an organisation by using tools such as ratio analysis, budgetary control and cost benefit analysis.

 Purpose of reporting

A report is a document that is used to communicate information about the organisation to its stakeholders. Financial reporting consists of financial statements such as Income Statement, Cash Flow Statement, Balance Sheet and Statement of Shareholders’ Equity. Financial report is the sole document that is available to the public, this document is supposed to contain all authenticated data that can be trusted by any individual be it a stakeholder of the organisation or any general public. These documents are provided in front of the shareholders in order to gain their trusts and attract more investors. A company completely discloses all the information about the business.

Balance Sheet

Balance sheet of the Tesco PLC shows five major heads namely, non-current assets, current assets, non-current liabilities, current liabilities and equity of the firm. Current assets are those assets that are in liquid in form or would be converted in cash within a year. The group’s total current assets for the year 2019 amounts to £12,570 million. Non-current assets are long term assets; these cannot be converted in cash easily. These are Land, Plant, Property, Goodwill, Machinery and many more. The Group has invested £36,379 million in non-current assets in the year 2019. Liabilities are those investments, which the group makes and needs to pay off. Those liabilities that the group needs to pay within a year are termed as current liability and those with more than a year are termed as non-current liability. Current and non-current liabilities of the group are £13533million and £20680 respectively (Tesco PLC 2020).

Cash Flow Statement

This statement shows the inflow and outflow of cash relating to the entity. It shows the net fund flowed or used in operating activities, investing activities and financing activities. Net cash flow from operating activities in Unilever are € 6,753 million, net cash used in financial activities are € 11,548 million and investment made by the group in invested activity amounted to € 4,644 million in the year 2018 (Unilever.com 2020).

Conclusion:

From the above discussion, it can be concluded that an organisation has different departments, dealing in different roles and responsibilities to achieve a single goal that is profitability and wealth. It shows how different departments work together as a team to achieve these goals. This collaboration of work among the different departments is of material importance to the organisation as it endeavours it towards the desired success.

Referencing

Brannen, M., Moore, F.I.O.N.A. and Mughan, T.E.R.R.Y., 2013. Strategic ethnography and reinvigorating Tesco PLC: leveraging multicultural teams using ethnographic method. Ethnographic Praxis in Industry, 2013(1), pp.282-99.

Feng, H., Morgan, N.A. and Rego, L.L., 2015. Marketing department power and firm performance. Journal of Marketing, 79(5), pp.1-20.

Gammack, J. and Poon, S., 2013. Knowledge and teamwork in the virtual organization. E-Commerce and V-Business, p.213.

Ghorbanhosseini, M., 2013. The effect of organizational culture, teamwork and organizational development on organizational commitment: The mediating role of human capital. Tehnički vjesnik, 20(6), pp.1019-1025.

Körner, M., Wirtz, M.A., Bengel, J. and Göritz, A.S., 2015. Relationship of organizational culture, teamwork and job satisfaction in interprofessional teams. BMC health services research, 15(1), p.243.

Momin, W.Y.M. and Mishra, K., 2015. HR analytics as a strategic workforce planning. International Journal of Applied Research, 1(4), pp.258-260.

Peterson, S.J., 2013. Construction accounting and financial management (Vol. 2). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Pyka, A. and Burghof, H.P. eds., 2013. Innovation and Finance. Routledge.

Tesco PLC.  Annual Report 2019. [online] Available at: https://www.tescoplc.com/investors/reports-results-and-presentations/annual-report-2019/ [Accessed 20 Jan. 2020].

Tschopp, D. and Huefner, R.J., 2015. Comparing the evolution of CSR reporting to that of financial reporting. Journal of Business Ethics, 127(3), pp.565-577.

Unilever.com. [online] Available at: https://www.unilever.com/Images/unilever-annual-report-and-accounts-2018_tcm244-534881_en.pdf [Accessed 20 Jan. 2020].