intro to bm Flashcards
What is business?
A business is any organisation that uses resources to meet the needs of customers by providing a product or service that they demand.
Nature of business:
Businesses produce goods or services, which are categorized as consumer goods, consumer services and capital goods.
Business Inputs:
Are human, physical and financial resources needed by business’ to produce goods or services.
4 main inputs include:
- Land, natural resources such as coal, oil and timber
- Labour, people that make up a workforce
- Capital, finance needed to start up a business and pay for its continuing operations
- Entreprise, the driving force of the businesses, provided by risk-taking individuals
Human resources of a business:
The function that handles all the aspects relating to the workforce (staff). Examples include recruitment, induction, training, development, promotion and dismissal.
Finance and Accounts in business:
The responsibility for ensuring that the business has sufficient funds in order to conduct it’s daily operations by managing the organisation’s money and maintaining accounts of the firm’s funds.
What is Marketing?
Identifying the needs and wants of customers so that the business can provide goods and services to meet these requirements and desires.
Marketing activities include:
Market research to discover products and services that customers wants
Determining appropriate pricing methods
Promotions to inform and persuade customers about buying the products
What is Operations Management?
Operations is the process of making goods and providing services from the available resources of a business to ensure that they meet the production targets, deadlines and certain quality standards.
What does it mean to ‘add value’
The process of producing a particular good or service that is worth more than the cost of the resources used to produce it.
What are the four sectors in business?
Primary, Secondary, Tertiary and Quaternary sectors
What is the primary sector in business?
The primary sector refers to the business activity of extracting resources.
What is the Secondary sector in business?
The secondary sector refers to the business activity of manufacturing or construction of finished products, transforming primary sector outputs into goods and services for the customer.
What is the Tertiary sector in business?
The tertiary sector refers to the business activity that involves providing services to customers and business clients.
What is the Quaternary sector in business?
The Quaternary sector refers to business activity involving the creation or sharing of knowledge and information.
List challenges for starting up a business:
-Lack of finance
-Lack of market research
-Poor marketing strategy
-Limited human resources
-Long hours
-Lack of knowledge, skills and experience
List opportunities for starting up a business:
-Money
-Autonomy
-Challenges
What is a mission statement in business?
Mission statement is a succinct and motivating declaration of an organisations core purposes, identity, focus
What is a vision statement in business?
Vision statement is inspiring or aspirational declaration of what organisations ultimately strives to be.
What is the difference between a vision and mission statement?
A vision statement tends to be broad and abstract, a mission statement tends to be narrow and more specific
What is the point of vision and mission statements?
These statements give stakeholders of an organization a sense of purpose and direction, and give employees a sense of motivation, especially if those statements align with the workers personal values.
What are some common business objectives?
include profit maximization, which focuses on increasing revenue and minimizing costs. Growth and expansion, often achieved by entering new markets, or diversifying products, shareholders value.
What does STEEPLE refer to?
Socio-cultural, Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political, Legal, Ethical
What is a STEEPLE analysis?
A useful way to assess the impact of the external environment (which business’ have little control over) on an organisation’s future activities is to conduct a STEEPLE analysis.
