Understanding Business Operations Through Reflective Assignment Sample

Introduction to Business Operations and Management Assignment

The operations that are necessary to run a business are known to be amalgamated with the factors of management. These operations are the ones that aid in the process of harvesting valuable commodities from different sources in the business. The operation derives valuable products from commodities that are tangible and non-tangible by nature.

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Therefore, an operation which is able to incur a large amount of profit for the owner of the enterprise is considered to be a business operation. The activities generated by the operations of a specific business can make a proper learning report which will supply revenues for the business cycle to keep on going.

The relevance I have with my topic is going to provide a proper synopsis of all the knowledge I hold on business operations and management. The operational and managerial activities that I was able to learn to include the methods employed for conducting HR strategies. On further notice, the properties of operating a business are going to prove the rate of efficiency followed by this firm. Apart from a few of these factors, I understood the significance of supply chain logistics and the basic nuances of controlling the quality of products.

Operational Efficiencies of this Organisation

The business activity conducted by an organisation after facilitating the result and factors catering to these results is known as operational efficiency. The organisation is able to gain a certain amount of efficiency in a time of a booming economy (Korauš et al. 2019). In this current state, the business starts to remove all the unnecessary expenses from its books to increase the margin of profit every year.

The knowledge I have obtained on the basis of operational efficiency is that a firm cuts expenses to save more profits. These are the methods applied by a company to survive a recessive economy by sacking employees from the job. The efficiency of an organisation can be maintained with rather nominal policies where the firm does not decide to sack its employees. Hence, they invest in innovative technologies and hire cheap labour from the market to improve the amount of revenue inflow in their treasury (Di Vaio et al. 2020). This is the knowledge I have gained from the company.

HR Strategies

A company runs on the power of human resources where the source of energy is maintained by a manager of the company. The power of this resource is managed with a keen sense of strategies which provides fruitful and well-accepted solutions to some large issues plaguing the company (Laguna and Marklund, 2018). These solutions are provided in a way that is able to remove the problem without harming the interest of an employee working for the business firm.

Figure 1: Human resource stratgeies

(Source: Inspired by Ragsdale, 2021)

The strategies framed by HR are usually present in different forms of human resource activities. These are the activities that start with the recruitment of a candidate and go on until the employee leaves the office (Ragsdale, 2021). The human resource manager has the duty to utilise the talent of their company and compensate the workers for their talents. I learnt that the employees are assigned the duties of planning the promotion of an employee and maintaining a culture in the corporate community.

Quality Control Policies

An organisation that is set out to produce some goods or cater to some services look for proper quality in their results. A policy set to control the quality of these results is important to deliver the set of exact needs as stated by the clients. By locking on to a specific quality the business firm is able to retain customers from the time of its inception in the market.

I learnt that the methods of controlling the quality of all the products produced in the company are revised by a set of policies. The policies are written down after a chart of this organisation is produced by the quality control officer (Stupnytska et al. 2019). The composed policies must be having some methods that are able to define the roles and responsibilities of all the employees associated with the manufacturing factors.

Supply chain logistics

The logistic service that acts upon the factors of supply and storage of varied products is known as supply chain logistics. The practice starts with the procurement of these products which are further manufactured and distributed by the company among the consumers.

Figure 2: Supply chain

(Source: Inspired by Singh and Hong, 2020)

I have learned that the supply chain and the association of logistical properties are important for the process of incurring revenues by a business firm. The supply chain is a commodity which is responsible for the entire production process (Singh and Hong, 2020). All of us are aware of the fact that a supply chain starts from the stage of procuring raw materials and comes to an end when a customer purchases them.

Importance of Operational Efficiencies of an Organisation

Operational efficiency provides organisational values to the employees. The methods that are used to maintain the rate of efficiency of a company can be unconstitutional at times. These are the factors that surprised me when I finally learned about them. Management of the company can sack employees if they feel that the employee is providing poor performance (Trung et al. 2021). According to my knowledge, the brand may consider training the staff which helps to improve their performance. Thus, it was a surprising act for me even when the company have a proper alternative to arbitrary termination.

Challenges I faced during the first semester

The challenges I faced during the first semester were owed to the lack of knowledge of these terms. I had been facing severe issues with the concept of this assessment as I was not aware of several terminologies that are considered to be basic by nature. Therefore, I was having some serious trouble understanding the establishment of this module in the first assessment. The company I took was Tesco which is a major retail brand in the United Kingdom. This was a firm which was not able to provide me with some notable information that would have helped me finish my case study. These were the two significant issues I faced during my time with assessment one.

The third challenge of this assessment was the lack of proper guidance from peers. The issue was that my peers were not clear about the concept of this module (Farooq et al. 2021). Hence they were not able to help me find a solution or provide any kind of guidance to solve the questions from the first assessment.

Use of knowledge

Yes, I have used the pieces of knowledge that I gained from the first semester to write my second semester. These are the bits of knowledge that were used to produce some vital information for me in the company. These pieces of information were used to compose the meaning of supply chain logistics in a compact and composite manner (Rahim et al. 2019). Therefore, I gained a large amount of knowledge to produce the nuances that are going to be assessed during my second semester.

I improved on a bigger scale due to the wide source of information that I had retailed from the first assessment of this module. The definition found in the facets of these operational activities is usually redeemed with accuracy due to the understanding I have procured from the assessment prior to this one.

Improvement in overall understanding of the module

The assessment prior to this one gave me an opportunity to conduct a case study on the operational efficiency of a business. In this case, my chosen sample was Tesco I was able to show different properties that are helping in the operation of this retail company. The brand gave all the students limited knowledge of a few properties like supply chain logistics and framing strategies for managing human resources (Zurich and Documentation, 2018). The case study was exposing me to a wide spectrum of multiple situations that were affecting the attributes of business operations and management.

I would like to give an example to show the things that I have learned from the case study conducted in an assessment. I learnt that the efficiency of a business operation always depends on the supply chain laid out by the business establishment. The operation is going to come to a halt when the business operators fail to manage the chain supplying the products.

A topic I found to be the best

The topic which I think is supposed to be the best is the human resource strategies followed by the company. These are the strategies that are going to be helpful for a company in retaining valuable assets like loyalty, productivity and honesty. The reason I enjoy this topic of human resource strategies is very simple. The officers who are responsible for framing and implementing these strategies are creative in a way (Akpan et al. 2022). They tend to figure out a solution which is going to help the company and take care of the employee’s interests.

There is another factor which has been significantly noteworthy at various stages. All the human resource managers have the innate skill of assessing all the talented people in the company and giving them the exact amount of compensation they deserve (Wirtz, 2019). These are unique strategies that boost the morale of every employee which makes them work harder and be more productive.

Topic areas in need of further development and improvement

I think there is more than one area of the topic which needs heavy improvement for proper understanding. The area includes quality control policies and supply chain logistics of the company. These are the policies that are classified into different types with their own set of pros and cons (Iravani, 2021). I am not aware of these variants that are used to write the policies used to manage the qualities of the product.

There are proper terms that are used to identify every variant considered to be fit for a specific product’s quality control exam. I think there have to be more exams conducted on this particular section to help me understand the entire concept of these writing policies for controlling the quality of a product.

I would like to focus on engagement performance which is an important segment in writing the quality control policy. I believe a proper session of this class is going to help me get a significant bit of knowledge over the entire facet of organisational operation. Therefore, these are some of the areas where I believe to improve my style of learning and performance.

Explanation of learning and development of these topics

I am going to learn the basics of organisational business management in order to make a proper platform for the scope of further development. I prefer to understand my lessons from live classes organised by the professor at my university. Apart from the lessons in the class, constant practice and exposure to the practical scenario are supposed to help all the students get a proper concept of various parts (Young, 2020). The practical sessions can be organised by looking for internships at large corporate companies or small companies providing similar services.

I prefer to have a practical approach as compared to the one where books are involved. These are the kind of approaches that are sufficient enough to help any student understand the aspects of business operation in a short period of time (Yang et al. 2019). These are the ways I am going to take a proper opportunity for development and steady learning.

Conclusion

The reflective essay was able to give me a proper experience in learning the module called business operation and management. The module has been divided into two assessments where one was a case study. The study I was conducting on the retail company helped me gather some new pieces of information on this particular topic. The reports that I gathered from the case study were implemented in a better way in the second assessment. Therefore, a reflective essay was helping me summarise the learnings and reflect on the components that I have learned from these two assignments. Thus, my overall experience of learning these components was successful and credible.

The journey of reflecting on my learnings about the topic was productive and worthy of all the time. The factor of productivity is going to help me continue my endeavours associated with learning these aspects of management and business operations. The things that I have learnt are clear due to the essay I wrote for the purpose of reflection. The large spectrum of clarity is going to make me look for more in this module. Therefore, it is a way for me to keep on understanding my lessons with the help of self-reflective essays.

References

Journals

Akpan, I.J., Udoh, E.A.P. and Adebisi, B., 2022. Small business awareness and adoption of state-of-the-art technologies in emerging and developing markets, and lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Small Business & Entrepreneurship, 34(2), pp.123-140.

Di Vaio, A., Boccia, F., Landriani, L. and Palladino, R., 2020. Artificial intelligence in the agri-food system: Rethinking sustainable business models in the COVID-19 scenario. Sustainability, 12(12), p.4851.

Farooq, M.U., Hussain, A., Masood, T. and Habib, M.S., 2021. Supply chain operations management in pandemics: a state-of-the-art review inspired by COVID-19. Sustainability, 13(5), p.2504.

Iravani, S.M., 2021. Operations Engineering and Management: Concepts, Analytics, and Principles for Improvement. McGraw-Hill Education.

Korauš, A., Dobrovi?, J., Polák, J. and Kelemen, P., 2019. Security position and detection of unusual business operations from science and research perspective. Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues, 6(3), p.1270.

Laguna, M. and Marklund, J., 2018. Business process modeling, simulation and design. Chapman and Hall/CRC.

Ragsdale, C., 2021. Spreadsheet modeling and decision analysis: a practical introduction to business analytics. Cengage Learning.

Rahim, N.F.A., Ahmed, E.R., Sarkawi, M.N., Jaaffar, A.R. and Shamsuddin, J., 2019. Operational risk management and customer complaints: the role of product complexity as a moderator. Benchmarking: An International Journal.

Singh, N.P. and Hong, P.C., 2020. Impact of strategic and operational risk management practices on firm performance: An empirical investigation. European Management Journal, 38(5), pp.723-735.

Stupnytska, T., Kalaman, O. and Markova, T., 2019. Ensuring of the enterpris? operation effacacy: management aspect. Periodicals of Engineering and Natural Sciences (PEN), 7(2), pp.534-545.

Trung, N.D., Huy, D.T.N., Van Tuan, P. and Huong, D.T., 2021. Ict and digital tech effects on marketing strategies and choosing competitor affecting on business operation-A case in hotel and entertainment sector. Design engineering, 6, pp.8437-8449.

Wirtz, B.W., 2019. Digital business models (pp. 137-152). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Yang, D., Wang, Z. and Lu, F., 2019. The influence of corporate governance and operating characteristics on corporate environmental investment: Evidence from China. Sustainability, 11(10), p.2737.

Young, J., 2020. Determinants for a risk-based audit of an operational risk management framework: A South African perspective. Academy of Accounting and Financial Studies Journal, 24(2), pp.1-19.

Zurich, B.L.L. and Documentation, X., 2018. Service operations and management. Master of Science in Engineering, p.380.