Business Studies Influences on Operations Function

During these times of change business may have to change its orgainsation, operation and its nature to deal with the challenges of each stage in the business life cycle. For business to be successful they must constantly develop and change strategies to deal with the growth of the business or the life of the business may be cut short.

For any business to grow and prosper, managers of the business must be able to anticipate, recognize and deal with change in the internal and

When manipulating a business’s strategy, it is important to focus on the external factors in the environment. An external analysis is where a business conducts environmental scanning that present a company with the key external forces influencing the organization. The facets of external forces examined are the business environment, remote environment, or the competitive environment. A business environment is all of the external factors in the general environment that a firm cannot control, but can affect their strategy. The remote environment is the forces that affect most firms. Lastly, a competitive environment is the firm’s specific industry and its entirety. The external analysis is pertinent to a company called Dick’s Drive- In; without it, Dick’s would not be a thriving popular business today.

Qantas is Australia’s largest domestic and international airline. Although Qantas is primarily a passenger airline, air freight is also an integral part of its core business. Other Qantas operations include catering, tourism and E-commerce devoted to transport and travel. In order to have an effective business and operations process, a company, like Qantas must be aware of the influences that can affect it. By being aware of the influences it enables the business to make decision and choices that can get the most out of each influence, by doing this it can assist the business in its endeavours for success.

This research paper will compare and contrast two organizations in the same industry. There will be analysis on the two organizations’ elements of business. This includes the basic legal, social, and economic environment, the managerial, operational, and financial issues impacting the organizations, and an analysis on the impact of potential change factors.

At the time of development of globalization there were many concerns about its benefits. However, it has brought significant changes in all segments of human life and International business is one area in which it contributed heavily (Reich, 1998). Companies all over the world are currently formulating their business strategies mainly after considering the trends in global market instead of domestic market. Outsourcing and offshoring are some of the new business principles emerged in this world after the implementation of globalization (Samimi and Jentabad, 2014). The core of these new business concepts is to exploit the business opportunities in overseas countries as much as possible (Samimi and Jentabad, 2014).

All businesses are affected by a series of external forces or influences. These influences may also change over time and hence the way they interreact with an organisation can also change. Operations Management will use a variery of measurements to monitor external influences to help them respond to these changes, for example, at times of slow hire rates for employees in time of high employment, operation Management may re-train other internal staff to make up shortfalls [Kydos, P29].

Operations management (OM) is that phase of an organization where inputs are put into operations to acquire required output (services) without compromising on quality. In other words operations management is also described as combining and transforming various resources in the operations sub-system into value added services in line with formulated policies of the organization. (Kumar and Suresh, 2009)

The success of the economic agents depends on a multitude of forces, such as the managerial ability to combine and exploit the resources in an efficient manner, the ability to manage the labor force or the ability to develop positive relationships with the external stakeholder, such as the customers, the business partners, the public and so on. Still, while all these factors are crucial, they are merely adjacent to the core operational function which builds towards organizational success, namely the organizational operations.

While preparing for success, business should also be equipped to counter things that have the potential to adversely affect operations.

The process of globalization has numerous significant effects on countries, organizations, and individuals. These effects can be observed in the quality of products, in their prices, but also in their availability. Because of globalization, numerous companies prefer to expand their business on international level. Some of them outsource some of their processes and activities to cheaper destinations that allow them to reduce their investments.

Operations processes refers to the acquisition of inputs which are transformed in a business through the addition of value into outputs of goods and services. Businesses use operational processes involving inputs and transformation processes to increase efficiency and output. The operations management focuses on carefully and managing processes to produce and distribute products and services based on the nature of the business. To achieve objectives in a business, the quality of products are monitored regularly using customer services and warranties. Both Qantas and McDonalds, utilise operation process in order to gain maximum efficiency and productivity.

As I seek to enter the workforce/company, one of the first things that I wish to remember is the importance the company has placed on their strategic planning and goals. How decisions made by this team will directly affect the operations, finance, accounting, purchasing and administrative departments. The things that help to make any organization successful, are the value the organization places on their strategic, and operational goals. Therefore, before taking a position with a company I hope to learn as much as I can about the various functions of the company, and how each department works with the next in order to achieve these goals. Thus, I hope to use the knowledge I have gained in this class in operations management to access the company’s operational strategies. This should be reflective in their mission and vision statements as well as their financial reports. I would also look for the value they place on ethics, corporate responsibility and giving back to the community. I feel a company’s success will be directly tied to how effective they are in meeting the daily challenges of processes/production/service, operations, and sales. The value placed on these specific areas will be evident by their success and reflective in both their short and long term goals, in their financial statements.

In today's world, no business operates in isolation without interacting with the environment where it operates. Irrespective of the nature of business whether public or private organization; manufacturing; service industry; local or international firm, its operations are inhibited by the environment in which it operates.

Many factors shape and form the operations strategy of a corporation, for example, the ever increasing need for globalizing products and operations and thus reducing the unit cost, creating a technology leadership position, introducing new inventions, taking advantage of mass customization, using supplier partnering, and looking for strategic sourcing solutions. All of these factors require an external or market-based orientation; these are the changes that take place in the external environment of the company.