Management functions in the course of starting of a company

To be successful in life one should set goals early so that one can embark on a career once out of the college. The career can start with a job in a company or an enterprise of one’s own. The size of the business depends up on the capital the entrepreneur can mobilize which is the determining factor for all his further actions in pursuit of the goal of starting a company. Yes, the entrepreneur is the person who takes risk in putting his capital and mobilizes all the resources to give shape to his proposed enterprise. My goal setting process started early in my college days and was part of the curriculum.

This has motivated me sufficiently to be steadfast on my determination to start a company of my own. In contemplating to do so, I would like to share with the readers how my goal setting took place and how it is like to start a company. My starting the company has not been a hunch or extempore. It is the culmination of my having taken up the graduation course in management education with the aim of starting my own enterprise and further theoretical learning and practical exposure through various visits to several business establishments.

As I am a first generation entrepreneur having no particular family business to continue with or starting a new company in the same line, after a lot of deliberations and market study, I have chosen to start an enterprise in Catering Sector. Though Independent Franchisee opportunities are available from great names like McDonalds, they come with a cost and at a lesser margin of profit though results are guaranteed. Running an enterprise involves the basic four functions of Management.

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They are Planning, Organizing, motivating/leading and Controlling or coordinating.

Planning

Any action should be preceded by a plan. By planning we identify the nature or kind of business to be started justifying why it should be started and how it can be achieved. Thus a business plan should aim at the following. They are Description of the venture which stipulates products to be dealt, their features, advantages and benefits. Secondly Marketing plans which includes research results about how the products will be marketed by identifying the type of customers, how the customers will be benefited by the venture and how the venture and its products will be advertised.

Thirdly staffing plans which spells out the expertise needed for the enterprise. Fourthly Management plans as to how the expertise will be organized, coordinated and led/controlled. Lastly Financial plans which will include cost to build up the venture, cost of operations the venture, expected income out of sales, budgets for the first formative years and for subsequent periods, estimating when the venture will break-even.

Identifying opportunities

Putting the above into practice, on reviewing business prospects in my area, services sector offers excellent opportunities. Read also how can business owners attract qualified laborers

The current trend in the ever expanding

Information Technology

Industry has led to lopsided development of other concomitant infrastructure for the smooth functioning of the I. T. Sector. Among several tertiary opportunities, catering and event management is found to be the most suitable for my present level of education and capital contribution I can make. What products and type of customers As described above, among the venues of catering sector Restaurant Business in my area seems an immediate need for the place where I. T. Software firms have been setting up shops continuously for the past one year after the Local Government formed a new Town Ship. There has been steady flow of migrant workers from Asian Countries who are highly educated software engineers for employment and business visitors from Asian countries for grabbing outsourcing orders from the local software companies. As these people do not have permanent homes they simply depend on some outside source for their daily food requirements. Usually such migrant workers elsewhere manage to find residents who entertain them as paying guests.

But because mine is a far flung area under development, there are no significant households. There are complaints that migrant workers shy away from taking jobs owing to absence of such restaurant services in the area. The business visitors also find it very difficult without proper food availability as they generally stay for a minimum one week to finalize their deals. This state of affairs truly offers a challenge to the entrepreneur in me to create the need for food services in the area and cash in on them. Staffing Plans

As indicated above, on the technical side, qualified and experienced Catering graduates have to be recruited and also for marketing and other finance and accounting and logistics personnel with appropriate qualifications. As per Scientific management advocated by Frederic Taylor, the principles of Management are developing a science for each element of an individual’s work, scientifically selecting, training and developing the worker, heartily cooperating with the workers, Dividing work and responsibility between managers and workers and improve production efficiencies through work studies, tools and economic incentives. (Taylor 1911. Principles of Scientific Management)

Organizational plans

This involves how the organizations structure is to be evolved Finance plans This part of the planning involves estimation of funds required for the project and how to procure them. And to find out what capital is required as own funds and how much can be borrowed for working capital and Fixed capital. Break- even point can be achieved on the 3rd month of commencement of commercial operations.

Beside daily consumables, to set up a restaurant, equipments such as Bar Equipment, Beverage Equipment, Concession Equipments, Cooking equipment, Drop-in Dispensers, Faucets/Hardwires, accessories, Furniture, Ice Machines, Manual food preparation tools, Refrigeration, sinks/Tables/Stands, Small cooking appliances, Steam Tables, Warmers/food Bars and ware washing are required besides Small ware, Storage/ Transport items, Table tops, Consumables, Disposables, janitorial items and laundry items.

This is only to indicate the amount of fixed capital involved to set up restaurant which is not as simple as it appears to be. Organizing Organizing implies how the enterprise is to be organized in terms of managing the proposed activities or to achieving the Goals of the enterprise. Ultimate goal of any enterprise should be to earn a justifiable income for so much of efforts and resources put in. When an organization is set up, it consists of people and people only. Their positions in the company are to be structured so as to enable them to discharge their duties efficiently in pursuit of company’s goals.

When we make an organizational design, it should be designed in such a way that Division of Labor, Unity of command, Authority and Responsibility, Span of control and contingency factors are taken care of. Organizational structures shall be functional when the organization is small, geographically centralized, and providing few goods and services. It reduces duplication of activities and encourages technical expertise. If it experiences bottle necks in decision making, it is a symptom of having outgrown its functional structure.

Another kind of structure is Divisional Organization and it should be resorted only if the organization is large, geographically dispersed, and /or produces wide range of goods and services. It improves decision making, fixes accountability of performance and increases coordination of functions. However this kind of structure loses in economies of scale and encourages rivalry among divisions besides finding it difficult to allocate staff support. Besides these two, matrix structure and lateral relations can also be adopted according to the changes occurring in the organization over period.

To adopt a matrix structure, we have to modify traditional management practices resulting in reinforcement and broadening of technical excellence, efficient use of resources and balancing of conflicting objectives. But it does increase power conflicts, increases confusions and stress for 2-boss employee and impedes decision making. Lateral relations means in Dotted line supervision, Liaison roles, temporary task forces, permanent teams and integrating managers. This type is adopted to offset coordination problems in functional and divisional structures.

Having seen briefly the meaning of organizing, let us see how functional structure is organized in the Restaurant business now proposed. The enterprise will have food preparations (kitchen), Quality Control, Purchases, Sales, Stores and Finance departments. These departments are therefore function based. This departmentalization can be compressed or expanded according to the size of the business. For example Marketing and Advertisement Department can be added. And stores /purchases departments can be merged/compressed.

In the Kitchen, Chief Chef or the Production Manager is the Head under whom junior production managers are employed who in turn supervise floor level skilled laborers engaged in food preparations. The Kitchen which is the production department draws daily its requirements of the food ingredients from the stores and purchase department which obtains clearance from the quality control department before releasing to the kitchen. The quality control Department headed by a quality control manager qualified in Food and Nutrition actually supervises analytical chemists under him.

The analytical chemists draw samples from the stores department as soon as materials arrive and pass them for standard or not of standard quality. We are expected to take license from the local health authorities who make periodical and surprise visits to the restaurant and draw samples of food preparations. While purchases manager is engaged in sending enquiries and procuring materials of good quality and at the lowest possible prices and the sales manager is to set targets for annual and monthly sales and accordingly directs sales representatives for generating orders while at the same time processing the orders for execution.

Here an explanation is required. The restaurant business is not confined to serving food to the visiting customers alone. The plan is also to procure catering orders from nearby business establishments for supply of food during business conferences being held from time to time and for regular supply of lunch to the office executives at their offices besides supply of food for social functions in and around the town ship.

For all these activities, and to attract customers to the restaurant salesmen are engaged. The stores manager, who also looks after purchase functions in our case, receives materials purchased, issues materials for online preparations, arranges for dispatch of the orders generated by the sales departments and for being served to the visiting customers at the tables.

. Finally the Finance department who also looks after accounting functions to keep watch over the sales revenues and recurring expenditure apart from the main function of procurement of working capital usually from Commercial banks which grant credit facilities against stocks less owner’s contribution known as margin. As seen above each manager is specializing in his assigned function under one person who is the head of the organization i. e. me, the entrepreneur. Thus the organizing principles in a functional structure namely Division of Labor, Unity of command, Authority and Responsibility, Span of control are put in place.

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