Type of Business

P1 – Describe the type of business, purpose and ownership of two contrasting business Help for heroes is a charitable company that was founded by Byrn and Emma Parry in 2007, they started Help for Heroes. They raise money for the servicemen returning from war, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Help for heroes have 5 different campaigns that have been done , these are; swimming pool complex at Headley court, Relative’s houses at Headly Court and Selly Oak hospital, battle back, troop aid, combat stress and the patients welfare fund. They are a national company based in England only. The Help for Heroes Company are a registered UK charity, but also have a profitable gain, they do exactly what is stated and all donations are given to the charity. But they also sell Help for Heroes merchandise such as wristbands etc. these go towards the running cost of the company and to the owners. The donation that Help for Heroes have received since October 2007 is ? 105. 377M. Help for Heroes have about 250 employees worldwide Help for Heroes is a tertiary business and the purpose of the business is to help wounded service men and women through donations and fundraising, the ownership of Help for Heroes is a partnership, owned by Bryn Parry and Emma Parry. The mission statement for Help for Heroes is ‘Help for Heroes supports any serviceman or woman who has been either wounded in conflict or injured in training since 2001. We are raising millions of pounds to create facilities to help their rehabilitation and support existing service charities to deliver the expertise needed. Help for Heroes have an unlimited liability, this mean if they were to go into debt, they could lose more money than was put into the business. Topshop is a British clothes retailer, it is known worldwide. Topshop is a part of the Arcadia group which is a group that owns a lot of different retail outlets. Topshop was founded in 1964 by ‘Peter Robinson’s Ltd. â€℠¢ Topshop has physical and online stores in over 20 countries. They employ over 200+ employees each year. They are an International company with flagship stores in Europe, the Americas and the Middle East. The Topshop in Oxford Street is the world’s largest fashion store it is roughly about 90,000 square feet and covers five floors, it attracts 30,000 customers a day. Topshop is a tertiary company; the purpose of the business is to sell fashionable clothes and accessories to the younger age group (15-25). Topshop is a company owned by the Arcadia group so it’s a PLC. As Topshop is a PLC, they have limited liability, and they would only lose the money that they put into the company. P2 – Describe the different stakeholders who influence the purpose of two contrasting businesses A stakeholder is an individual that has a direct or indirect stake in an organisation because it can affect or be affected by the organisation’s policies, actions or objectives. All stakeholders are entitled to different considerations, and have different rights. Stakeholders can range from customers, to government. I will be describing the impact that key stakeholders have on my two selected organisations, Topshop and Help for Heroes. Customers: Customers have an impact on Topshop as they buy the products; they are entitled to a fair price on products and high quality goods. The influence they have on Topshop is that they are expecting them to keep high-quality goods, which last for an extended period of time so they get their value for money on these products. Help for Heroes customers influence the company by expecting them to make good use of their donations, in products brought and to achieve projects that are promised to be made. Employees: Employees have an internal impact on Topshop as they are part of the company; employees expect security of their job, opportunities to progress in the business as they gain more work experience and a fair pay. As employees are so vital to Topshop, the employee’s expectations must be met by Topshop. Help for Heroes have two set of employees they have volunteers and regular set staff. They both have the similar employees but the volunteers do not expect pay, and expect projects to be achieved. Suppliers: Suppliers have an external impact on Topshop as they are not part of the company; suppliers expect a fair price for goods or services that they are offering to the company. They would also expect a fast if not instant payment and some suppliers would expect to feel valued by the company. This influences Topshop to get payments done quickly, and for prices to be fair to the suppliers, suppliers will also influence the company to prosper as they will want to feel proud of the company. The Help for Heroes suppliers will also have an external impact on them. They will expect them to pay them a reasonable price for the goods they are providing them, and they will expect regular orders to be made. Owners: The Owners of Topshop will have an internal impact on Topshop as they are part of the company and will some decisions for the company; owners are regarded as the principal risk takers. Owners would expect to see profits increase, and see values of the business to rise. Owners will influence the organisation to maintain high standards of work and to try and keep employees for a long period of time, and to maximise profits of the company. The Owners of Help for Heroes also have an internal impact of the company; they would also like to see the business increase in size, but not necessarily value. They would also expect to sell products and bring in a reasonable amount of donations. Trade Unions: Trade unions represent the interests of groups or employees. In Topshop and Help for Heroes they would expect fair wages based on experience and qualifications, fair working hours and acceptable working conditions for their members. This will influence both businesses to maintain high quality working facilities, making sure all staff is given a fair pay and are given reasonable hours. Employer Associations: Employer associations are the governing body of organisations. They have an external impact on Topshop as they are not part of the organisation. They would expect Topshop to abide by rules that they have set; they will also encourage them to give producers of their products to receive a fair wage. This will influence them to offer fair prices to suppliers and to abide by the set rules they have given. Help for Heroes will also be impacted by the employer associations. They will be influenced in making sure they pay their suppliers a fair price. Government: The government have an external impact on Topshop as they are not part of the business. They expect businesses to provide jobs for the public, and pay taxes; they will also expect Topshop to be successful. This will influence Topshop to maintain healthy sales figures and employ a suitable amount of people based on the business size. The government will have less of an impact on the business; they will expect them to provide jobs, but it is not vital as only some are paid. They will expect them to be successful. Local Communities: Local Communities have an external impact on Topshop as they are not part of the business. They would expect them to respect the local customers and area, to keep their waste to a minimum and to give back to the community. This would influence Topshop to try and recycle more often and offer excellent customer service. Local communities would also influence Help for Heroes as they build many buildings and the local community would expect them to keep their waste to a minimum and offer events for the local community. P3 – Describe how their style of organisation helps them to fulfil their purposes The purpose of an organisational structure is to keep control of a group of people and to keep communication between different employees quick and smooth as possible. An organisational structure also distinguishes a clear line between different types of jobs in certain departments. Topshop is a large organisation with a tall hierarchical structure. It needs this because it has over 100 international destinations. Topshop has chosen this structure because it needs to keep different employees in different departments of the business; this keeps the organisation together but also divides work between departments. Topshop also this structure for communication, they are such a large business, so they need to make sure that if problems or queries need addressing employees know who their superiors are and who exactly to report to. Topshop would not want a shop floor employee speaking to the CEO for a simple query as that would take too long for the problem to be addressed. The span of control in Topshop would be fairly small; a manager would normally be in charge of about 15 employees, this is a good figure as it allows communication between employees and managers to be efficient. Example of a Tall Hierarchal Structure Topshop have many different functional areas these are; Finance, Marketing, Production, Sales and Human Resources. Finance keep all records of any type of financial activity, they also work with other managers of different departments to give them any sort of financial information that they need e. g. working with Sales to give them predictions of stock turnover. Marketing are responsible for monitoring competitors such as River Island and Zara. Identifying, anticipating and satisfying any requirements that a customer or potential customer may have and to create new ideas within the business. They do this in Topshop by making sure they know what are the latest trends are and send out when new stock is available to subscribing customers. Production is in charge of how the stock is made, how much stock is made and when it is made. Production keep under Topshop ‘code of conduct’ this states that goods must not be made through any forms of child labour or forced labour. Production work closely with finance in keeping sure they have the most cost effective production, Production also works closely with Marketing as they decide when stock is made and Marketing tells them how much stock they will need for new seasons. Sales are responsible for getting customers to buy whatever Topshop produce. Sales work with the Marketing department. Marketing will find out what the customer want and Sales will normally find potential customers to ‘open’ from here marketing will keep them interested and hope for Sales to ‘close’ the deal. Human Resources managers are responsible for people management in Topshop; this is for mainly customers and employees. They will advertise, hire, train and fire employees. They will also take any sort of customer complaints. They will also make various policies for people in the organisation, administrative roles and supportive roles. Topshop make strategic plans by getting the CEO of Topshop to write up a set of aims with other senior partners. These are then dissected by the second in charge and presented in a department meeting from here they will then decide on how will they meet these aims with strategic plans and different plans are given to different managers. P4 – Explain how their style of organisation helps them to fulfil their purpose For this task I have been asked to explain how organisational structures and strategic planning helps Topshop to achieve its aims. Organisation structures help a business reach their aims by how dividing the company into smaller units, where companies have specialists in their specialised areas such as having a financial clerk in the finance department and not in the marketing department. The organisational structure will also establish clear communication routes making it communication efficient by having it only when necessary. Strategic planning is an organisations process of defining the direction that the company is going in; this involves making decision and providing the relevant resources to pursue the strategy that will be taken. Performance measures are established early on to measure the success of the plan. Heads of organisations need to do strategic planning so they can check at any investments are worth the time and money. Strategic planning helps a business to achieve its aim in various methods; * Helps organisations prepare for the future – This helps businesses to achieve aims by allowing them enough time to plan in the present so they can analyse for the future, giving the business enough time to run trial and error through different ideas and methods, this is so they can decide on what will bring profit and what will bring a loss of profits of the business. * Bring clarity and agreement on a mission statement – This helps businesses to achieve aims by letting everyone know what the ultimate goal of the business is and to reinforce this goal in everyone’s heads. It is also helpful for the staff and board members to have a ‘path’ to follow; this puts everyone on the same page. * Educate participants on changes to be made – This helps businesses to achieve aims by giving everyone that is in the business the suitable information and resources to allow them to understand how changes will be made so that they can accommodate the business aims. If employees also understand the business history and be able to see what has worked in previous year and what hasn’t, they will be able to identify successful methods to move the business forward. Gives opportunity to analyse the organisations systems and processes – This helps the business to achieve aims by giving board members the opportunity to be able to analyse the processes that and systems that have been used, and then they can identify the strengths and weaknesses, and eventually be able to improve these where necessary. M1 – Explain the points of view of d ifferent stakeholders seeking to influence the aims and objectives of two contrasting organisations A stakeholder will always influence a business. This depends on the amount of power that they have the larger power that a stakeholder has the more interest that an organisation will have on that certain stakeholder. The interest that organisations take on stakeholders can influence the decisions that they take and ultimately this will affect their aims and objectives. I will be covering 5 different stakeholders that may influence my two selected organisations; Topshop and Help for Heroes, the stakeholders I will discussing will be customers, employees, owners, trade unions and local communities. Customers: Customers will have a large amount of power towards the business as they will be expecting Topshop to keep competitive prices with other businesses that sell similar products; customers will also be expecting to receive seasonal deals from Topshop. This will change their aims in certain seasons such as Christmas as they will aim to sell much more, but for cheaper prices. Help for heroes on the other hand will have customers who will be buying stock because they want to make an impact and make sure the company is getting income so that they can continue to execute projects. Help for Heroes will have their aims changed depending on many donations they receive per month, because if a suitable amount of projects aren’t complete in a suitable time then donations can be stopped from customers. Employees: Employees also will have a great amount of power towards the business. Both companies Topshop and Help for Heroes will aim to keep them happy as they will need them in the business so tasks can be completed. The Employees will fair wages and reasonable hours, they will also expect performance evaluations, and this will influence the company to keep a sustainable amount of employees as they will have to provide them with training from the HR department, this could influence their aims as they might want to expand but may not be able to due to not being able to afford to staff new staff and train them to expectations. Employees in Help for Heroes are voluntary so will expect a good environment to work in, flexible hours and necessary training. Owners: Owners are a key part of the company and their decisions will always influence the company and will normally impact in with other stakeholders. In Topshop the owner will expect to see the company increase and their share of the profit to increase, they would also hope to see the value of the business increase in case they decide to sell. His/hers views would influence the company greatly because if he decided to start trading with freetrade goods, the marketing team would have to increase the price and launch new adverts and would lose customers from their customer base and try and persuade new customers to shop at Topshop. In Help for Heroes, there are two people that control the business; they expect the company to increase in size and to launch a certain amount of projects every year. If the owners decided to launch an additional 3 projects in one year, this would change the organisations aims as they would have to sell more stock and hire more employees. Trade Unions: Trade unions are an external stakeholder to a company as they represent a certain party in the business. Trade unions expect that customers are treated fairly, wages are sufficient and working conditions are of a high quality. This will affect a business as they will want to keep employees happy so may have to spend more on facilities instead of on stock, changing their spending patterns. Topshop and Help for Heroes will have to make sure that they keep high standards of working conditions and that employees are paid fairly and are treated in an acceptable manner. Local Communities: Local communities are normally affected by organisations. Organisations try to keep local communities happy and will run various events or give back to them as they need their area. Topshop tend to keep their shops in cities, but have various factories in the countryside. The local communities will expect them to input money into the community and try and be as energy efficient as possible, this will influence Topshop’s aims as they may want to expand their factories but the local community may not want them too, so they may have to change locations. Help for Heroes build a lot of projects, the community expects them to use methods of building that cause less pollution. This influences the company’s aims by making them spend more and making them wait longer for completion of projects or for the prices of good to be raised.