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Purpose of business

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California Privacy Rights | Ad Choices Houston Chronicle

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The terms "consumer" and "customer" are often used interchangeably, but a consumer and customer are not always the same entity. In essence, consumers use products while customers ...

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Primary Business Functio

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Small business can combine primary business functions for streamlined operations.

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Small business owners often make the mistake of creating jobs for the people they have, rather than putting employees into positions the business needs. To properly staff and run your business, create an organization chart that includes the primary business functions any company must have to maximize its success. You can call these departments by different names and combine them, but your organization should include sales, administration, marketing, finance, operations, human resources and IT, or information technology.

Administration

The administration function of a business is a macro function that oversees all other functions. The administrative staff usually includes the CEO or president, COO -- chief operating officer -- and secretarial staff. This is the function through which corporate policies are made and communicated. The administrative staff oversee tasks that relate to the company, but not any specific department, such as negotiating and paying rent, ordering office supplies and handling business licenses, permits and zoning. Depending on the size of the business and amount of customer care needed, the administrative staff might manage customer service, too.

Sales and Marketing

Sales and marketing are often combined, although they are very different functions. Your marketing department determines what type of product or service you'll offer, sets your pricing strategy, creates your brand, determines where you'll sell your product and creates and executes your advertising, public relations and promotions campaigns. A sales department sells your product or service. Sales personnel work hand in hand with the marketing department to provide vital information on customer needs, competition and market trends. At smaller companies, sales representatives service and support their customers after the sale. Because of its involvement with product development, the marketing department handles research and development at small businesses, often working with the administrative executives who are founders or experts in the industry or profession.

Finance and Human Resources

Many small businesses combine their finance and human resources departments. Bookkeeping might not require a staff member's full time, allowing that person to handle employee hiring, benefits management, corporate policies and other employee-related tasks.

Information Technology

Even small businesses need a dedicated IT person these days, based on the amount of technology in today's offices. This person must be able to network the company's computers, keep them running and safe and ensure employee email functions smoothly. The IT function might include maintenance of the company's website and phone system. Many small businesses combine administrative and IT functions, hiring a part-time IT manager.

Operations and Manufacturing

Depending on your product or service, you might need a manufacturing or operations department. This function oversees the physical plant of a manufacturing facility and its materials needs, work schedule and production processes. At a restaurant, this function might be the kitchen, managed by the executive chef. At some small companies, the administrative executives take the role of the operations team.

About the Author

Sam Ashe-Edmunds has been writing and lecturing for decades. He has worked in the corporate and nonprofit arenas as a C-Suite executive, serving on several nonprofit boards. He is an internationally traveled sport science writer and lecturer. He has been published in print publications such as Entrepreneur, Tennis, SI for Kids, Chicago Tribune, Sacramento Bee, and on websites such Smart-Healthy-Living.net, SmartyCents and Youthletic. Edmunds has a bachelor's degree in journalism.

Photo Credits

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Small business owners often make the mistake of creating jobs for the people they have, rather than putting employees into positions the business needs. To properly staff and run your business, create an organization chart that includes the primary business functions any company must have to maximize its success. You ...

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Needs are things we need for survival , they are vital for us to live

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Wants are pleasure items. They are things that we don't really need but area nice to have

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Wants and needs are very different. Here is an article explaning the differen

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Budgeting is a balancing act. The secret to sustaining yourself from day to day while also reaching financial goals is building a budget that balances your needs with your wants. Pinpointing the difference between the two is a subjective proposition.

In 2005, Senator Elizabeth Warren and her daughter Amelia Warren Tyagi penned a book titled "All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan" that proposes a viable way to distinguish between wants and needs. In the book, the pair introduced the 50/30/20 budgeting rule. This method of budgeting, which calls for devoting half of your net income to your needs and then splitting the difference on the remainder between wants (30%) and savings (20%), is often cited as a reliable way of managing expenses.﻿﻿

Before you can gauge how practical this approach might be for you, however, you have to determine how to divide everything up. Although the process of distinguishing between your wants and needs may seem fairly straightforward, these distinctions can be hard to discern.

Understanding Needs vs. Wants

Some needs are easier to nail down. You need a place to live, clothes to wear, and enough food and water to maintain your health-these are the elemental things that you need to survive. They're indispensable. You can argue that everything else is not imperative, but this is where the lines start to blur. The reality is, we make many of our purchasing decisions subjectively rather than objectively.

For instance, some people consider health care to be a necessity. For others, benefits are a luxury. When the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed in 2010, people began facing stiff fines for going without coverage. Despite this federal mandate, millions of working Americans remained uninsured because they're simply unable to afford the premiums.

Other purchases can technically be categorized as a need, even though most would consider them a want. Does eating an expensive meal at a high-end restaurant qualify as a need? Or what about clothes? Do you have to stick with generic sneakers or can you splurge on a pair of expensive Adidas? Ultimately, it's all about perspective and how you choose to manage your money.

Deciding Between Wants and Needs

Figuring out how to divide your income and prioritize your expenses can be as simple as putting everything down on paper. Prateek Vasisht, editor of TotalFootball and the Business Design Rover, wrote about this exact topic.

In the piece, he recommends using a variation of the Growth-Share Matrix developed by the Boston Consulting Group in the early 1970s. The practice calls for listing your wants and needs individually in four different categories. The visualization technique allows you to see where your expenses fit clearly.﻿﻿

Categorizing your priorities, the chart allows you to list your wants in one column and your needs in the other and then divide the columns in half and designate the top choices as a high priority and the bottom as low priority. From there, you can make informed decisions.

You end up with the following four categories:

High-priority needs

High-priority wants

Low-priority needs

Low-priority wants

Vasisht also suggests trying out the MoSCoW method, which stands for Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, and Won't Have. Like the Growth-Share Matrix, the MoSCoW prioritization technique, conceived by Dai Clegg in his book, "Case Method Fast-Track: A RAD Approach," involves breaking things down in four different categories.﻿﻿ Both of these methods help you to clarify which things should be the highest-priority items in your budget.

Appreciate What You Have

Once you become better at differentiating between wants and needs, you'll probably see that you've been able to fulfill more of your desires over the years than you realized. And that can be a significant turning point.

When you find things that you want to buy or do that you currently can't afford, it becomes all too easy to focus on those things to the point of overlooking what you already have. Take time to reflect on all the ways that you've been fortunate and the needs you are able to meet every day.

When you get clarity about your wants and needs, you can determine what's most important and plan your budget to make those dreams a reality.

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Budgeting and the Difference Between Wants vs. Needs

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Budgeting is a balancing act. The secret to sustaining yourself from day to day while also reaching financial goals is building a budget that balances your needs with your wants. Pinpointing the difference between the two is a subjective proposition.

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Some reasons why people start business's

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It's easy to lump small-business owners together and make assumptions about the group as a whole. But new research shows several distinct motivations within this category.

If you're a small-business owner, these insights might help you better understand why you do what you do.

And if your customer base has a significant number of small businesses, knowing what drives these owners can help you better serve them.

We surveyed nearly 800 U.S.-based small businesses earlier this year, and participants were comprised only of true small businesses: Those with 25 or fewer employees. For the project, we partnered with Audience Audit to craft a series of questions that would give us deeper perspective on small-business owners and their experiences.

The results revealed four distinct types:

Passionate creators

The people in this group started their businesses out of love for what they do, and they believe wholeheartedly that passion is a crucial quality of success. Running their businesses gives them a sense of accomplishment and pride.

When compared with the other profiles, passionate creators operate at an arguably more successful level. They are also the most marketing-focused and tech-savvy owners of the bunch.

About half of this group spends $500 or more per month on marketing activities. In addition, 65 percent use social media, 70 percent email to a list and 48 percent use content marketing.

Freedom seekers

Freedom seekers started their small businesses because they value the ability to control their work experiences. They want to be in charge of their schedules, career paths and work environments.

This troop wants things simple and manageable. Close to half of them are the only employees in their business, and they are the least likely of the four profiles to have more than one other employee. Not surprisingly, they cite, "time to get everything done" as their biggest challenge.

In tackling the challenge of chasing daylight, they have adopted automation. Nearly 60 percent utilize automated software, and its usage spans across many elements of their business, including bookkeeping and email marketing.

Legacy builders

These owners started their businesses to bring something new to the marketplace. They are practical in their approaches to business ownership.

Business ownership provides them with a sense of stability for their futures and the futures of their families, and they have created businesses to help secure their retirements or legacies to their children. They take tremendous pride in the businesses they have created and are in it for the long haul.

However, they are less dependent on technology. Just slightly more than half of this group have websites, and 21 percent do not use any bookkeeping, email marketing or payment processing tools.

Struggling survivors

The struggling survivor profile represents the cold, hard-truth of business ownership: Sometimes running a small business is scarier than it is rewarding. Fear is deeply rooted in this group and they face the very real challenges of ownership every day. In fact, more than half said they've considered closing their businesses.

They are jacks-of-all-trades, and masters of none, as 51 percent run their business alone. They are spread too thin, wearing most of the hats within their businesses with a to-do list that includes managing everything from sales to administrative duties to customer service.

As you can see from the breakdown above, the motivations of small business owners can be as diverse as the businesses themselves.

When running a small business, it's very important to understand which category you fall into so that you can be aware of what your strengths and weaknesses are and act accordingly.

If you want to dive even deeper into our research, see Infusionsoft's Small Business Survey.

Clate Mask has been educating and inspiring entrepreneurs for more than a decade as CEO of Chandler, Ariz.-based Infusionsoft. Mask's passion for small businesses success stems from his personal experience taking Infusionsoft from a struggling startup to an eight-time Inc. 500/5000 winner.

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The 4 reasons why people start their own businesses - The Business Journals

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If you're a small-business owner, these insights might help you better understand why you do what you do. And if your customer base has a significant number of small businesses, knowing what drives these owners can help you better serve them.

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A Customer buys products from a business

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Consumers use a business's product

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Examples of other reasons of the purpose of business

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The primary purpose of a business is to make profits for its owners.