Critically analysed “Budgeting, as most corporations practice it, should be abolished”

Companies today are looking forward to decentralizing which is flexible to take budgetary decisions but still subject to the endless budget. Millions of dollars have been spending by companies to re-engineering their process, attempting to trace costs in terms of activity based costing and emphasizing the ideas of just-in-time. Hope and Frazer (2003a) claimed these things can lead to change in foundation but till budgets preventing companies from developing a new system. Abandon budget target does not say abandon high expectations of companies. But giving more attention on budgets can bring problems. There could some ethical breakdown when companies are trying performance to match with the budget. Abolishing budget will encourage employees of companies to nimble their creativity willingness and self-motivation to share information those are fundamental elements for any company’s swiftness.

Past several years, it had seen that many enterprises collapse and many others were attempting to overcome to meet their budget meet. One of the core reasons was using traditional budgeting methods that are unresponsive to external and internal changes and too time-consuming (Goode and Malik, 2011). In addition, at previous the size of firms was small and relationship between staffs was built on trust where trust worked to the interest of the firms. But, the flourish of multinational firms destructs the trust staffs. To contest this, budgets were practiced as system of control. But, this control is creating barriers to the progress of modern forward thinking firms. Sharing information is a big problem in the budget development because lack of trust between employees discouraged sharing information. Firms that depend upon mostly on budgets are failed to react quickly according to the change of market.   

However, budget is simply a tool working out to management plan and control resources so there has much scope that any tool can be misused (Carreras, Mujtaba and Cavico, 2011). Typically, corporations commence budgeting process by developing a team of top managers those are responsible for planning, monitor and control the budget process. They get a big authoritative power to the entire budgeting process. So, unethical behavior by staffs and team members can prevent the effectiveness of the budget system.

However, it is really tough to ignore these realities; firms are breaking free of the budgeting vise to get some benefits. Hope and Frazer (2007b) mentioned some ideas in practice when corporations might abolish the budget practice. When corporations abolish budget should develop some alternative measures. For instance; Svenska Handelsbanken, a Sweden based international bank had decided to close using budget in the early 1970s. Another Sweden based wholesale company named Ahlsell had also decided to abandon budgeting in 1995. These companies were adopted decentralized approach where unit managers have the power to adjust resource levels based on the market in opposed to budget cycle. The companies were used key performance indicators and became able to measure their performance in terms of customer satisfaction, cost reductions and increasing sales (Meister, 2003). After abandoning budget, Svenska Handelsbanken defeated all its Scandinavian rivals of banking in the 1970s on almost every measure e.g. customer satisfaction, total shareholder return and return on equity. 

In addition, many enterprises have canceled detailed budgets in favor of key performance indicators also use rolling forecasts. Companies have developed rolling forecast after every few months (Hope and Frazer, 2003b). These forecasts are conducted in every three months. Companies revised these forecasts regularly to adjust with continuous changing market condition which is the core advantage of the rolling forecasts technique. More importantly, rolling forecasts have not any fixed target or penalties for the employees that help to determine staffs to give more efforts. Overall, rolling forecasts assist managers and business units to foresee quick changes in the performance and improve their strategies.

Some finance experts treated budget is a bad yardstick to measure performance (Banham, 2012). Another practice in contrary to budget practice is raising the bar even higher. Abandoning budget does not mean rejecting high expectations. Companies set fixed target for business units and managers to accomplish. In raising the bar practice encourages business units and managers to do something much tougher. Under this circumstance, companies measure themselves against their competitors and try to do well much better than the rivals during the same period of time. But, before the end of the period, it is difficult to discern the success as a result companies are attempting to provide every ounce of endeavor and sincerity to do best in the competition. In this practice, companies are trying to enhance their long-term competitive position.   

Companies can practice these aforementioned techniques instead of extensive use of budget practice. It is to be noted that the necessity of budget cannot be ignored completely but depending fully on budget is not fruitful to improve the performance and success of companies. So, corporations should abolish budget in certain situations. 

References 

Banham, R. (2012) Freed from the budget: Many companies see budgeting as a time consuming exercise of limited value. CFO Magazine (September), pp. 41-46.

Carreras, A., Mujtaba, B. and Cavico, F. (2011) Don’t Blame the Budgeting Progress- An Exploration of Efficiency, Effectiveness and Ethics. Business and Management Review. Vol. 1, No. 3, pp.-05-13.

Goode, M. and Malik, A. (2011) Beyond Budgeting-The Way Forward. Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences. Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 207-214.

Hope, J. and Frazer, R (2007b) Budgeting as most corporations practice it should be abolished. [Online]. Available at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2007-11-13/who-needs-budgets-businessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice (Accessed: 8 May 2017).

Hope, J. and Frazer, R. (2003) Who Needs Budgets? Harvard Business Review. Vol. 81 No. 2, pp. 108-115.

Meister, L. (2003) Who needs budget-Harvard Business Review. [Online]. Available at: http://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/ArtSumHopeFrazer2003.htm (Accessed: 8 May 2017). 

Advantages and disadvantages of traditional budgeting

Planning and budgeting are pillars of management of an enterprise. In this quality lays its importance for organizations in general and enterprises in particular and therefore the society in which they act. The results of the management of the companies have a high impact on the lives of its customers, employees, communities, owners, government and the society as a whole. Budget is the key to making a plan and control for an organization and supports to implement organizational strategies (Rickards, 2006). The disadvantages of traditional budgeting are forced business practitioners and researchers developing new approaches that would be helpful to improve the managerial performance. As a result, the idea of beyond budgeting has emerged as an alternative to traditional budgeting that helps managerial contribution of management accounting. 

Traditional budgeting definition

Budgeting is a management control tool that is used widely that incorporated with the organization’s budgeting practices. Traditional budgeting refers to a futuristic financial plan that gives a basis for regularizing, controlling and evaluating the performance of business units along with the coordinating organization’s internal responsibilities (Moller and Chaudhry, 2012). In other words, traditional budgeting notifies the necessary amount of fund that is required for a specific period of time to perform specific organizational obligations. Traditional budgeting is annual and incremental that means it is marginally departing from the year before (Wildavsky, 2001). The major characteristics of traditional budgeting are as follows:

·         Organization first set their income and then makes plan for expenses.

·         Command and control management style are used.

·         Centralize authority and responsibility is exercised.

·          Performance measurement is conducted for fixed targets.

Advantages of traditional budgeting

A number of factors combine to make traditional budgeting decisions that perhaps the most advantageous for an enterprise:

• ·     Traditional budgeting gives a detailed framework of control as a result organization becomes capable of managing activities with stability (Yvanovich, 2012).
• ·        Traditional budgeting provides manager freedom to manage the operational activities as long as the organizational set parameters will achieve.
• ·    Traditional budgeting is involved in the organizational culture in most of the firms. So that abolishment of the traditional budgeting system is completely is risky.

Disadvantages of traditional budgeting

Traditional budgeting has some disadvantages those are discussed in below:

• ·     Traditional budgeting is time consuming, costly and numerous resources are required to conduct it. The use of spreadsheet in traditional budgeting is a big reason behind the time consumption.
• ·     It is low responsive and inflexible as result companies cannot able to success to implement the budget in real time that means it takes a longer time to review the budget than standard.
• ·   Traditional budgeting strategy focusing on cost reduction rather than value creation and often contradictory with the organizational goals (Gardner and Qamar, 2017).
• ·    Traditional budgeting is centralized as a result discourages creativity and high bureaucracy has been seen. 

      

      References

 Moller, C. and Chaudhry, S. (2012). Advances in Enterprise Information System II. Leiden: CRC Press.

Riskards, R. (2006). Beyond budgeting: boon or boondoggle. Investment Management and Financial Innovations. Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 62-76

Wildavsky, A. (2001). Budgeting and Governing. Transaction Publishers.

Yvanovich, R. (2012). Traditional budgeting approach; advantages and disadvantages. [Online]. Available at: http://blog.trginternational.com/bid/162036/traditional-budgeting-approach-advantages-and-disadvantages (Accessed: 19 May 2017).

Gardner, E. and Qamar, A. (2017) Dissident Voices in Europe-Past, Present and Future. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 

            

An Assignment on Marketing Essentials

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Introduction

Business organisations are facing dynamic challenges from the various external sources. Globalisation increases the scope of doing business all over the world and at the same time brings huge competition in the business environment. Organisations are conducting several functions among which marketing function is very crucial for an organisation to stay in the competition. The success of the business organisation is depending on the effective application of the marketing functions. Parcelforce Worldwide is the UK based leading express parcel delivery service provider which is part of the Royal Mail Group. The company has done a partnership with GLS, EPG, and EMS to cover the population all worldwide in the courier and parcel delivery service industry. This report will explain marketing functions, their roles and responsibilities, marketing mix and its comparison between organisations, and a basic marketing plan.

P1: Explain the key roles and responsibilities of the marketing function

Definition of marketing

Marketing is a professional discipline which is consistently developed and become diffusive in the business activities and society at large. Marketing refers the set of activities, processes for making, exchanging of information, delivering and communicating with the partners, clients, and customers (Shankar and Carpenter, 2012). In other words, marketing is the process of determining and meeting the requirements of customers and achieve the profitability of the business organisations. Edward (2011) claimed marketing is the way of thinking and interacting with the target audiences of the business to the long-term success. In the current business environment, marketing is a very powerful business function to achieve the business objectives of increasing brand image, sales, and profitability.

The importance of marketing for the Parcelforce Worldwide

In the current competitive business environment, marketing plays importance in achieving the organisational objectives. Similarly, marketing is important for Parcelforce Worldwide in various aspects those are explained below:

Identify the consumer needs: Every organisation has certain products or services which are offered to the target customers to meet their satisfaction. It is very necessary for an organisation to know the needs of the customer and in this context marketing are important because it collects feedback from the customers, perform market research so that management of Parcelforce Worldwide can determine the ‘urgent i.e. very fast’ and ‘deferred i.e. medium-speed’ service needs of customers.

Determine the market trends: The business environment is rapidly shifting from one context to another context. It makes doing business difficult for an organisation so that it is essential to know about the current and future trend of the market (Gillespie, 2011). As a result, the organisation can develop suitable marketing strategies to meet the needs of the market and gain competitiveness. For example, Parcelforce Worldwide wants to dominate in the courier and parcel delivery industry in the world so that the company has done partnership with GLS, EPG, and EMS to adjust with the market trends.

Product development: The competitiveness of a business organisation is depending on the number of products or services it offers to the customers. Marketing is helpful for product development of the organisation because marketing identifies the market demand for various products and inform the management of the organisations. For example, Parcelforce Worldwide develops various services such as business-to-business parcel delivery, business-to-consumer parcel delivery, and consumer-to-consumer parcel delivery to attract all people.

Increase the brand image: Marketing is important to increase the brand image of an organisation. In the current business environment, brand reputation is very vital to capture the market share. Marketing is important to create a brand image in the market and customer’s mind so that the sales and profitability are increased (Kumar, 2010). For example, Parcelforce Worldwide has a global brand reputation of fastest and affordable parcel delivery service all over the world so that the company is dominating in the mail service industry.

Definition of the marketing function

The marketing function is a vital part of an organisation that plays the role of identifying and sourcing appropriate products for the market the organisation is operating (Geetanjali, 2012). Marketing functions are supporting to achieve the objectives of marketing and overall business objectives. Marketing functions include market analysis, pricing, segmentation, distribution, after sales service etc. The business organisation will succeed to meet the marketing objectives when the effective implication of marketing functions is performed by the firm.

Key marketing functions

The key marketing functions are market analysis, pricing, segmentation, distribution, after sales service etc. these are described below:

Market analysis: Market analysis is the primary function of marketing that refers collecting necessary information within the industry (Dlabay and Scott, 2010). A market analysis helps Parcelforce Worldwide to identify trends in the mail industry, major competitors, market competition, customers’ needs, industry attractiveness and others.

Market segmentation: It refers the way of dividing a target market of an organisation into a different group on the basis of the potential customers’ characteristics (McDonald, 2010). An organization can divide the target market into one segment or multiple segments. For example, Parcelforce Worldwide segment its market into B2B, B2C, and C2C.

Pricing: A very crucial function of marketing is pricing the products or services. Appropriate pricing strategy is essential to capture and dominate the industry. For example, Parcelforce Worldwide is using differential pricing for B2B and B2C market and penetration pricing for its new Express service.

Distribution: Another marketing function is a distribution that means delivering the products or services to the customers (Newman, 2014). The distribution needs to be easy and simple so that customers can easily reach to the services of the organisations. For example, Parcelforce Worldwide has 53 depots in the UK and post office branches so that all customers of the company can easily send parcels all over the world.

After sales services: To gain customer loyalty to the organisation, after sales service function of marketing is necessary. For example, when Parcelforce Worldwide does not found the receiver of the parcel in the given address, the company send back the parcel to the sender of the parcel.

M1: Analyse the roles and responsibilities of marking

The roles and responsibilities of market analysis

Market analysis function of Parcelforce Worldwide performs several roles and responsibilities, for example, survey the market to get knowledge about the needs of services in the UK market and international market to attract more customers. In addition, the market analysis determines the needs and wants of customers of the Parcelforce Worldwide so that suitable services can be introduced. Moreover, market analysis helps to identify the potential market for the company in the long-term business.

The roles and responsibilities of pricing

The mail service industry is very competitive so that pricing plays various roles and responsibilities to support the business of Parcelforce Worldwide. Pricing determines the various services of the company and determines the services based on the urgent market and non-urgent market (Kumar, 2010). In addition, pricing plays the roles and responsibilities to determine the suitable pricing strategy for different service of the company to meet the organizational objectives.

The roles and responsibilities of market segment

There are many roles and responsibilities are conducting by market segment. For instance, market segment determines the potential customers of Parcelforce Worldwide such as B2B, B2C, and C2C both the UK and other countries. In addition, market segment plays the role and responsibility of identifying the potential market for expands the business operations of Parcelforce Worldwide.

P2: Explanation of how roles and responsibilities of marketing relate to the wider organizational context

Importance of marketing for Parcelforce

a)      Identifying customer needs: Marketing helps to identify what the customers demand to satisfy their needs. Thus, it helps to create products and services that meet the demand of the customers. For example, Parcelforce categorizes its products in two types on the basis of customer needs. First, Global Express- a service for the customers who need urgent delivery and Global Priority- a service for the customers who need deferred or medium speed delivery. Thus, it enables customers to pick products that suite their needs.

b)      Helps to defend competition: Marketing helps to identify the probable threat of competition and helps to defend such competition (Blythe, 2010). For example, Parcelforce customer research by marketing department showed that it had to improve its services because of increased competition and other external forces. Thus, it provides a competitive advantage that defends increased competition and makes the company as a market leader.

c)      Good pricing: Marketing helps Parcelforce to adapt and identify appropriate pricing strategies and set reasonable pricing on the basis of customer perceived value (Baines, 2017). By doing this, Parcelforce is able to apply the appropriate strategy on the basis of the market condition. As a result, customer perceives that the service is worth of money. It helps Parcelforce to match or undercut its competitors’ prices. Thus, it helps to increase the market share of the company.

d)     Efficient distribution: Marketing helps Parcelforce to establish distribution channel efficiently for its different markets and customers based on the customer needs. For example, Parcelforce has 53 deports to satisfy all of the customers such as B2B, B2C, and C2C. The C2C customers can send and collect parcels through the post office and all the local and international customers can access services from the company’s website.

Structure of Parcelforce:  Organizational structures refer to how the organization performs and operates (Cravens and Piercy, 2013). From the context of Parcelforce, the company has functional structure. Functional structure refers to the units that are identified by specialties such as engineering, finance, accounting, marketing and customer service (Jain and Haley, 2009). This type of organizational structure is best suited for service organizations like Parcelforce. The units are interrelated to each other and work together when a difficult situation arises.         

Operations of Parcelforce: Within the functional structure, there are many departments that perform some specific operations or activities. The operations that different departments perform in the organization are discussed below;                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

1.      Finance: Actually the finance department deals with the financing activities of Parcelforce. The activities include investment decision in the new deport, authorizing finance to advertisement and promotion, providing finance to marketing department research and development, and financing in other activities (Edward, 2011).

2.      Human resource: The primary activity of the human resource department is to hire right persons for the right job for Parcelforce. The operations that HR departments perform are an advertisement for recruiting, selecting, training and development, promoting, performance appraisal etc.

3.      Marketing: Marketing is considered as the front door of Parcelforce. Marketing department performs activities to create demand for the services of Parcelforce. The activities of marketing department are market research, advertising and promotional activities, and creation of new products that fulfill the demand of the customers (Newman, 2014).

4.      Customer service: customer service departments perform the activities of after-sales service issues. The department collects feedback from the customers, tries to solve the problem of customers and answer the queries.

Structure and operations of marketing department:

In Parcelforce, there are many types of personnel that perform different tasks of the marketing department e.g. marketing managers, consumer marketing communication manager, Brand and public relation manager, marketing data intelligence manager, and their teams. The customer marketing communication manager performs activities such as evaluating customer needs and preferences, perform marketing research and identify what customers want (Albaum, 2011). Brand and public relation manager deals with how to create the brand value of the product and maintain a relationship with customers to build brand value. And, marketing data intelligence manager collects and save data for the use of other managers. All of the managers work together in marketing Parcelforce services to reach the customers at the root level.

Marketing process:

Mission: The mission of Parcelforce marketing is to pursue its customers with new and unique products so that the company can remain the market leader in the market as well as ensuring the survival of older products. To keep its promise, the marketing department is always ready to take challenges.

 Situation analysis: Brand and public relation manager and marketing data intelligence manager are always ready to accept any situations. The brand and public relation manager perform research whether the customers are accepting their products. He/she collects data from the data intelligence manager and sometimes he conducts primary research to collect data. He /she also look for secondary data such as journal, books, and newspapers to understand the behavior of the customer. When the overall situations are understood marketing manager builds a marketing strategy.

Marketing strategy: As Parcelforce conduct its business activities throughout the world, it does not adopt same marketing and pricing strategy for all of the markets. Where there is an increased competition it chooses cost leadership in the non-urgent market and differentiation strategy in the urgent market. As a result, the company is the price leader in the non-urgent sector.

Marketing Mix: Marketing mix includes product, price, promotion, and place. Proper evaluation and analysis of these ensure company’s success (McDonald, 2010). The marketing department of Parcelforce put close attention to the four Ps. They consider these four P’s from the perspective of customers.

Implementation and control: When the appropriate strategy is decided and marketing mix is evaluated after the situational analysis, the marketing department now goes for implementation of marketing and business strategy. After implementation, the marketing manager observes whether the strategy working or not. The re-evaluate and redesign the strategy if needed.

M2: Analyse the significance of interrelation of marketing unit with other functional units 

There is no doubt that marketing department is the heart of an organization. So it is interrelated with the all another functional department of Parcelforce. For example, marketing department analyze the market and develop new service of Parcelforce. When the marketing department assures that the product will be successful, the finance department will arrange necessary funds to finance the product. When marketing department observes frequent complaints from the customers, it will report to the human resource department that customer relation department employees are not performing well. Then, the HR department will take necessary steps to train and develop customer relation employees. Thus, it can be said that marketing department is interlinked with other departments.

P3: Compare the ways in which Parcelforce Worldwide and DHL express apply the marketing mix to the marketing planning process to achieve business objectives

Business objectives

Business objectives are the results that a manager wants to achieve and maintain when he runs and grows his business (Barney and Hesterly, 2016). A business objective is also called short-term goal that the company wants to achieve. The business objective is important to Ben Sherman to clarify the target to the management and employees’ what actually the company wants to achieve. For example, the business objective of Ben Sherman is providing quality and fashionable clothes at an affordable price to the customers.

Marketing Mix

The marketing mix is a set of tools and techniques that a firm uses to implement its marketing objectives (Armstrong et al., 2014). It includes product, place people, process, price, promotion and physical evidence.

Product: A product is an item that satisfies the needs of consumers. The product may be tangible and intangible in nature. Tangible products are those that can be seen and touched

Price: Price is the amount of money that a consumer is ready to pay for a product to acquire it (Raju, 2010). Management uses different strategies to set a price for its products such as price-cutting, discount, allowance and different payment terms, and conditions.

Place: Place in the area where the products will be placed for the convenience of the customers. Customers consider place as a convenience.

Promotion: Promotions are the activities that are performed by a marketing department to communicate reach to its potential customer. Different promotional activities are used by a company, for example, advertising, public relation, direct marketing and sales promotion.

Process: It refers where the delivery of the service is performed within the presence of the customers (Brassington and Pettitt, 2015).). It includes customer focus, information technology, design features etc.

People: Every organisation requires a human resource to complete the given tasks. Talent workforce is always created by the organisations.

Physical evidence: It indicates the existence of the organisation in the market. Physical presence includes a logo, store, sales people etc.

The application of marketing mix to the marketing planning process Ben Sherman

Product: The products of Ben Sherman are men’s products such as suits, shirts, footwear and casual clothing.

Pricing: The Company uses differentiate pricing policy where the company keeps price different for different products. It helps Ben Sherman to keep more customers to purchase the products.

Promotion: It promotes through television, newspaper, and magazine advertising. It also uses social media for its promotional activities. It also sponsors different national and international event to attract the visibility of the company’s product.

Place: Ben Sherman has over 200 stores across the UK and online shopping service from there customer can purchase products (Mackay, 2012).

People: The Company has over 5,000 employees all over the world who are rendering service to the customers.

Process: Ben Sherman uses modern technologies in the process such as online shopping process, online money collection etc.

Physical presence: The logo, salespeople, retail stores, vehicles are proving the physical presence of the Ben Sherman

Marketing mix application to marketing planning process of Parcelforce Worldwide

Product: A product is an item that satisfies the needs of consumers. The product may be tangible and intangible in nature. The product of the Parcelforce Worldwide is mail delivery service.

Price: Price is the amount of money that a consumer is ready to pay for a product to acquire it. Parcelforce Worldwide uses differentiate pricing, market penetration pricing for different services and different markets.

Place: The customers of Parcelforce Worldwide can reach the services of the company through the direct collection, post office branches, depots collection and international partner networks. 

Promotion: Parcelforce uses above-the-line e.g. print and electronic media promotion and below-the-line e.g. sales promotions, public relations and e-mail marketing.

Process: The Parcelforce Worldwide uses modern technologies in the process to receive and code the parcels so that the scope of delivery the parcel in the right address is hundred percent accurate.

People: Every organisation requires a human resource to complete the given tasks. Parcelforce Worldwide has over forty thousand employees all over the world to complete the tasks.

Physical presence: It indicates the existence of the organisation in the market. The depots, post office branches, logo etc. provides the evidence of the physical presence of the Parcelforce Worldwide.

M3: Evaluate different tactics applied by the organisation to achieve business objectives

There are similarities and differences in different tactics applied by the companies to attain business objectives these are mentioned below:

Similarities in the applied tactics: There are similarities in the pricing tactics between Parcelforce Worldwide and Ben Sherman because both companies use different pricing strategy for different services. The tactics of the promotion are similar for both Ben Sherman and Parcelforce Worldwide because both companies use below-the-line and above-the-line promotion. The people of both companies are skilled, talented and committed to the company. And, the own logo, office, vehicles, salespeople are used by both companies for the physical presence in the market.  

Dissimilarities in the applied tactics: There have differences in products between Parcelforce and Ben Sherman. Parcelforce provides mail services and Ben Sherman products are clothes and accessories. There is also a difference in the place between the companies because Parcelforce uses a branch, depots, and a third party to collect parcel whereas Ben Sherman uses retail stores, online shopping for selling products. The process is different for two companies because both companies develop own process to make an ease in their operations.

Conclusion

Marketing is a vital function of an organisation. Effective and appropriate applications of marketing functions will bring desired outcomes to the organisation. The organisations require develop a suitable marketing plan and carefully perform the marketing functions roles and responsibilities to meet the business objectives.

References

Albaum, G. (2011). Fundamentals of marketing research. London: SAGE Publishing.

Armstrong, G., Adam, S., Denize, S. and Kotler, P. (2014). Principles of marketing. Melbourne: Pearson Australia.

Baines, P. (2017). Fundamentals of marketing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Barney, J.B. and Hesterly, W.S. (2016). Strategic management and competitive advantage. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Blythe, J. (2010). Marketing essentials. Burlington: Routledge.

Brassington, F. and Pettitt, S. (2015). Principles of marketing. London, NY: FT Prentice Hall.

Cravens, D.W. and Piercy, N. (2013). Strategic marketing. 8^th edition. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Irwin.

Dlabay, L. and Scott, J. (2010). International Business.  4^th Edition. Mason: Cengage Learning.

Edward, R. (2011). The Fundamentals of Marketing. London: AVA Publishing.

Geetanjali, S. (2012). International marketing. Jaipur: Oxford Book Co.

Gillespie, A. (2011). Advanced business studies through diagrams. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jain, S.C. and Haley, G.T. (2011). Marketing planning and strategy. South-Western Publishing Company.

Kumar, P. (2010). Marketing of hospitality and tourism service. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill Education.

Lilien, G. and Grewal, R. (2012). Handbook on business to business marketing. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing

Mackay, A. (2012). Fundamentals and practice of marketing. New York: Routledge.

McDonald, M. (2010). Marketing Plans. 6^th Edition. Burlington: Elsevier.

Newman, A. (2014). Business Communication. 9^th Edition. Stamford: Cengage Learning.

Plank, R. (2014). Fundamentals of business marketing research. London: Psychology Press.

Raju, M. (2010). Fundamentals of marketing. New Delhi: Excel Books India.

Reid, R. And Bojanic, D. (2010) Hospitality Marketing. 5^th Edition. New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons.

Shajahan, S. (2011) Relationship Marketing. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill Education.

Smith, P. (2013) Great Answers to Tough Marketing Questions. 2^nd Edition. London: Kogan Page Publishers. 

Communicating in Health and Social Care Organisations

Introduction

Communication is a crucial component both for an organization and our everyday life. It is a demonstration through which individuals exchange data with one then onto the next and one place to another. communication procedure could be possible through verbal, talked, composed, non-verbal, for example, utilizing sign, non-verbal communication, motions thus on and visualization such graphs and charts (Fielding, 2006). The most imperative matter of communication is that it must be justifiable to others. In health and social care understanding needs of service, the receiver is very important. If the needs of individuals cannot communicate properly, they are deprived of proper service. So, it is very important for healthcare staffs understanding the ways of communication with service receiver. In other words, removing communication barriers will facilitate better communication with individuals in health and social care service. This report will discuss various theories of communication-related to health and social care contexts and mention inappropriate methods in interpersonal communication in health and social care.  And, describe the appropriate process of communication to meet individual specific needs. In addition, this report will briefly describe the ways that communication process is influenced by values and cultural factors. Moreover, this report will analyze the benefits of using ICT in health and social care with various stakeholders.

                                      

Task One: Demonstration the skills of communication are used and various factors of communication process in health and social care

It is not possible to provide good service to individual, if health and social care staffs are not aware about communication skills and process of communication with individuals. And, there has arisen conflict between individual and health and social care specialist when inappropriate communication processes are used. This section will discuss about communication skills and process of communication in health and social care.

1 (a) Various theories of communication to health and social care contexts

Communication gaps between team members will affect negatively in providing service to the individuals. Moreover, communication gaps between healthcare staffs and service users also deprive service users from getting good services. As a result, there has conflict arise among the parties which hampers in health and social care service. Health and social care staffs should follow humanistic approach when serving a client. Wagner (2014) mentioned that health care staffs should remember that each client possesses unique problems and they require psychological treatment for curing. Humanistic communication approach is psychologically motivated the audiences and collect respect from the audience. Working with a team often conflict arises between colleagues. In addition, often staffs are not cooperating properly with the client. As a result, proper service cannot possible to client and team performance will decrease. This conflict is arising when the perception of others does not match. Moreover, individual outlook to other people also influences in communication. Many people humiliate other because they feel fun by humiliating others. Many people undermine intentionally other person because of jealousy or enmity. This approach is taken place when individual has psychological problems because it is not normal that a person humiliate others. From overcoming this negative approach humanistic theory of communication works better.

John was criticized bone of his colleague and his team members often humiliate health and social care service user by calling them in derogatory names. This approach is not acceptable from health and social care staffs. Disable people come health and social care organization for treatment from curing the problems. So, the client always expects better behavior from health care specialist. John can apply the humanistic theory of communication to pursue his colleagues and the local community to increase a more positive behavior to people with learning disabilities. Pursuing colleagues is always challenging if he/she become someone. To get respect from that colleague's John should check the background of the colleague and need to find out why the person humiliating him. John should approach politely with the colleague though he behaves badly. This positive behaviour of John will impact psychologically on that person. If John reacts negatively the person will continue non-cooperation with John. So, John should have patience and communicate with the colleagues with a smile. With the passage of time psychologically he/she become weak and develop positive behaviour with John and clients of health and social care service.

Many people dislike disable people and neglect them. This approach is bad because any well-fitted people become disable any time through accident or illness. John should explain to the community that disables people are the part of society and they are our father, brother or son. So, we should treat them as a member of our family. Disable people does not need compassion rather they need cooperation. This humanistic communication practice will help John to resolve problems.

1 (b) Communication process influenced by values and cultural factors in health and social care context

The person-centered communication process is very effective in health and social care service. According to Fisher (2005) person-centered communication approach is communicating with individual’s considering personal wants, needs, goals, and desires so that individual become a central part of communication process. For health and social care employees, this person-centered communication approach helps both clients and health specialist in communication. There have different frameworks that are applied in person-centered communication. it is very important to listen to the opinion of client s carefully. When a client expresses his/her opinion then health care specialist can understand the reality of the clients. In addition, the client will feel comfort and satisfaction when health care specialist carefully listens to individual’s opinion. There have some advantages of listening techniques such as more information about clients can be possible to know and clients feel relax mentally by expressing his/her problems. It will help client psychologically because they are feeling inferiority for their disabilities.

Healthcare specialist should show empathy to the client and never humiliate them. Clients are coming health care specialist with hope for better service. They are not able to live freely like a capable person. This issue gives them pain mentally. Reid (2013) mentioned that client feels more mental strength and satisfaction when any person shows empathy towards them. It is important to get respect from the client because advice of healthcare specialist will be abided by the client.

Body language also helps to communicate with clients in the person-centered communication process. Adams (2007) argued that health care specialist should carefully use body language because service taker follows the body expression and try to reach a decision himself. Healthcare specialist never shows bad facial expression and body language that gives a negative message to the client which hurt the client.

Individual’s age, values, cultural belief, social culture, education levels influences in communication with others (Robb, 2004). People do not come in same background and culture. In the UK, there have various religion, race and countries people. The belief, cultures are not same of all. As a result, this influences in communication with others. Similarly, clients and health care specialist communication also influenced by these factors. To serving young disabilities, age, education of health care specialist helps for example; the age of John is 21 years and higher educated. Young disable learners can easily share information with John without feeling shy that will not be with adult health care specialist.

1 (c) Reviewing inappropriate interpersonal communication, analysing effectiveness of organizational system, policies and suggestions ways of improving communication 

Communicating with other is always challenging because there are many barriers such interpersonal, organizational, team effects in proper communication. Communicating with team members are very critical because all members are not holding same culture, belief or outlook towards a thing. So, conflict among team members and client is an inevitable scenario. Root (2015) has described some barriers in team communication such as:

Ø  Ego:  Many employees in team contain a high level of ego that’s why they undermine others. This ego problem creates barriers in teamwork.

Ø  Linguistic barrier: When different countries people work within team often it has seen linguistic problems affects in the communication process.

Ø  Poor role of team leader: The poor role of team leader also negatively affects team communication. If team leader neglects solving conflicting issues affects team communication.

Ø  Lack of respect: If team members do not respect each other then naturally team communication hampers.

Zaineb (2014) has explained some barriers that affect a carer-client relationship. These are as follows:

Ø  Neglect: Many healthcare assistant neglects lower class people and shows an unwillingness to communicate and giving proper healthcare advice.

Ø  Language barrier: Language barriers creates a problem in transferring information properly from both side. The client also failed to share his/her problem and health care consultant also failed to advise properly.

Ø  Gender barrier: Female client often feeling shy to communicate with male health care consultant and vice versa.

Ø  Cultural barrier: Different ethnic people often avoid consulting with other ethnic health care specialist. This cultural barrier effects in the communication process.

There are many strategies that can be adopted by line manager to remove communication barriers and promote good practices within the team members. Pujari (2013) suggested some strategies for overcoming communication barriers.

Ø  Develop interpersonal communication: The line manager should carefully analyze the relationship among employees. He/she should individually sit down with both employees those do not cooperate each other. Line manager should sincerely listen to the speech of both employees. It is to be noted that, line manager should not state that he/she is observing the opinion of employees. Then line manager makes a small sub-team and select those conflicting employees for the team member and assigned them for a specific task for doing. When conflicting individuals work each other there will create an interpersonal relationship that removes the barriers to communication and the conflicting situation will resolve.

Ø  Motivating staffs: Motivation is an important to increase the enthusiasm of staffs. Line manager can motivate staffs those have lack of knowledge in English and insist them to learn English and practice the language within the groups. Line manager should sit down regularly in team meeting and encourage staffs sharing their opinion. Thus way communication barrier will be removed and effective social care service can be possible to provide.

1 (d) Analysing the use of strategies to support users of health and social care services with specific communication needs

Makaton is a language system utilizing signs and symbols to help individuals to communicate (Pollard, 2010). It is developed to support in spoken language and symbols and signs are used speech according to spoken word order. Children and adults can communicate through sign and symbols by using Makaton. It is very effective ways communication and Makaton vocabulary contains 450 words, symbols and signs. According to Zangari (2014) Taking Mats is communication tools uses three sets of picture symbols named top scale, topics and options. Talking mats and Makaton are modern tools of communication where people can share information through symbols, pictures and signs. Makaton and talking mats support person with unclear speech, no speech or those who are not interested to communicate. Some individuals use these for certain period of time whereas some take it as lifetime communication system. This modern information technology facilitates in improving communication between clients and caseworkers in numbers of ways. Client who not capable to verbal communication or has language barrier can communicate with caseworkers and remove communication barriers. On the hand, caseworkers also transfer information to those clients has language barriers or autistics. These modern communication systems removes barrier in proving proper health and social to clients.

1 (e) The impact of legislation, charts and codes of practices in communication process in health and social care

UK government establishes Equality Act-2010, Health and Social Care Act-2012 for proving better health and social care to the people. These acts clearly stated the roles and responsibilities of health and social care service providers. On the other hand, the rights of service users also clearly states. As a result, this legislation, codes removes the ambiguity about the right and responsibilities both clients and carer. It is essential to present six key points of social workers codes and practices outlined by General Social Care Council in training session named “Respect for Diversity”. These are mentioned below:

Ø  The rights and interest of service user and carers  must be protected

Ø   Should develop confidence and trust between service users and carers.

Ø  Encourage the independence of service users during protect them from harm and danger

Ø  Showing proper respect to the rights of service users and making sure that harmful behaviour does not happen

Ø  Increase confidence and public trust in social care services; finally

Ø  Accountability should be done for their quality of works and take responsibility for improving and maintain their skills and knowledge.

The social care workers must abide by these code of conducts in their service.

  

Conclusion

Communication process is an important operational function of every organization. Communication process plays a vital role at every level of organization’s operation. It cannot imagine that without communication process an organization can run. Developing organization communication process is not easy jobs for the management. Many issues such as language, organizational culture, employee’s perception, client’s nature and so on require considering in establishing communication strategies for health and social care organization. Health and social care service develop its communication process considering various types of client. It is important to understand the problems of clients. If carer does not understand the specific need of clients cannot give proper advice. Various communication technologies such as Makaton, Talking Mats successfully reduce communication gaps between carer and service users. it is important to provide training to care about these communication technologies for removing communication gaps. Moreover, for better performance of carer, line manager must be very careful to remove any kind of conflict within the team members.

References

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Fielding, M. (2006) Effective Communication in Organization, 3rd Edition, Cape Town: Juta and Company Ltd.

Fisher, A. (2005) Health and Social Care, Oxford: Heinemann Educational Publishers.

Pollard, T. (2010) My First Makaton Symbols and Signs, Yorkshire: Tipi Publishing Limited.

Pujari, S. (2013) Important Measures to Overcome the Barriers of Communication, www.yourarticlelibrary.com, [available at http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/business-communication/9-important-measures-to-overcome-the-barriers-of-communication/1006/], [accessed at April 20, 2015]

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Robb, M. (2004) Communication, Relationship and Care, New York: Psychological Press.

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Zangari, C. (2014) Talking Mats: A Practical Tool, praacticalaac.org, [available at http://praacticalaac.org/praactical/talking-mats-a-praactical-tool/], [accessed at April 20, 2015]