Assignment Sample on Integrations of Business Functions
1. Introduction
Aim of the study is to analyze business integration functions of multinational pharmaceutical organisation AstraZeneca. The organisation has been improving its business functioning as well as its operations in order to increase its sales and profitability. According to reports of leading business journals, the organisation has been evolving in the pharmaceutical industry from past few years. It has been expanding its business in different parts of the world which has helped the company to increase its market share. The company is one of the leading organisations in the field of pharmaceutics. In this study its operation management along with its human resources management and finances will be discussed broadly.
2. Main body
Organisational overview
AstraZeneca is a multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnological company and headquarter of this company is in Cambridge, England. As per the suggestion of Asadi and Stenbom (2020), This Company majorly works with oncology, cardiovascular disease, gastrointestinal disease, infectious disease and others. In recent years, AstraZeneca has worked with the innovation of the COVID-19 vaccine. This company is a very popular company along with a well-established marketing strategy. The net income of this company is 3.144 US dollars according to the year 2020 with revenue of 29.214 US dollars (Ansari and Freiberg, 2017).
Changes in marketing strategy
The marketing strategy is changed many times in order to improve the sales and growth of the company. The company has adopted medico-marketing by raising the pharmacy skills of company in order to improve its sales worldwide. In addition, the company has recruited qualifying doctors that have helped the company to make useful and updated drugs. As mentioned by Mazzetti et al. (2018), increasing production and the quality of the product are key factors that promote the growth and sales of the company. In addition, the company has recruited well-established as well as qualified employees in the therapy segment such as maternal healthcare, cardiovascular disease segment and others. Evidence suggests that this plan of the company has gotten success in the fiscal year 2010 and 2011.
The customer number, as well as the growth of the company, is improved by implementing medico marketing. The company had made full-fledged teams in order to improve the marketing strategy of the company. As opined by Bouchu et al. (2020), cost leadership strategy plays an important role in order to lower the operation cost of the company by reducing developing and production cost. Therefore, the company has implemented a cost leadership strategy that helps in selling with cost-utility. On the contrary, this strategy helps in business planning as much as possible. In order to increase the number of drugs in the market, this company has started clinical trials. Clinical trials have improved the experience and skills of the company named AstraZeneca. In the words of Lindenmeyer Asadi and Stenbom (2020), one of the most important planning of a company is that the company has to strengthen its legal policies and IPR legal capabilities before starting clinical trials. This has assisted the company to overcome as well as reduce all types of issues. The sales and revenues of this company are increased gradually by all of these marketing strategies.
The cost-leadership strategy provides improved profitability and revenues for all healthcare teams of AstraZeneca. As suggested by Ansari and Freiberg (2017), the market share of AstraZeneca has been increased by a cost-leadership strategy. Besides that, the sustainability of a company is considered as a greater advantage for all companies. The cost leadership strategy has aided to improve company sustainability by improving the economy and finance of the company. As narrated by Lynch et al. (2019), the capital of AstraZeneca has been created with the help of a cost leadership strategy. One of the most important parts is that the cost-leadership strategy provides future advantages to the company as well as the company has been provided with a superior pricing model for customers by cost-leadership strategy. Usually, it is said that the medico marketing planning and cost leadership strategy has assisted to change its marketing strategy as easy as possible.
In recent days, evidence suggests that the sales of AstraZeneca increased by 10% in the year 2020 due to work as drug maker in order to make the coronavirus vaccine. As mentioned by Ahmed and Schippert (2020), the company has focused on innovation and the delivery of life-changing drugs that have been provided value to society as well as their marketing position has been changed by this. On the contrary, the company focused on three therapy areas such as oncology area, cardiovascular, renal areas, and respiratory diseases areas. As opposed by Cooke et al. (2020), the company has a huge range of product such as anaesthetics drugs, cardiovascular drugs, diabetes drugs, gastrointestinal drugs, drugs for infectious disease and others. All of these areas are improved by cost leadership strategy and medico marketing strategy that helps to improve the market and growth of AstraZeneca.
Changes in operation management
AstraZeneca has been introducing several changes in the operational management of the organisation in order to support its goal of continued scientific innovations and commercial success of the organisation. The company has introduced significant changes in its main therapy areas and has entered a new phase in the strategic development of the organisation. New therapy areas of the organisation are focused on units of Research & Development which is responsible for discoveries through a late-staged development procedure (Hitka et al. 2018). R&D is done for Biopharmaceuticals as well as for Oncology. It has dynamic allocation of resources throughout the pipeline of the organisation. Besides that, the organisation has developed its mirrored commercial units for both Bio Pharmaceutical and Oncology. The Bio Pharmaceuticals mirrored commercial unit has been created in order to align strategies of products and to check commercial delivery across Respiratory and CVRM.
The units of Research and development as well as commercial units are represented by the senior executive team of AstraZeneca. The units share common biology and other science platforms along with supply of products as well as manufacturing and IT related infrastructure which improves efficiency of its operation management system (Noe et al. 2017). All these resources have been allocated throughout the company on the basis of overall consideration of therapy areas as well as strategies. The Bio Pharmaceuticals Research & Development units of the company have been led by Mened Pangalos who was earlier responsible for developing innovative medicines for the company. He was also responsible for early development of the BioTech unit of AstraZeneca. However AstraZeneca felt the need of a solution in order to deal with issues in its supply chain. It heeded an effective solution which could manage and create a cost effective supply chain for the organisation.
AstraZeneca has improved its flexibility and responsiveness in order to decrease wastage of its products and meet the demand of its customers. The company has implemented a system named TrackSYSTM to improve its business operation management (Bombiak, 2019). In a period of one year after implementation of TrackSYSTM system, the company was able to add one million extra bottles of vaccines to its capacity without any additional capital investment. The system is now used every day in the majority of plants of AstraZeneca which helps its operation managers to understand its productivity in a better way.
The operation management team of AstraZeneca has focused on attempting research and development in cancer therapies. The senior doctor of the organization has been a well-known oncologist who has a huge experience on cancer therapies. Goal of the senior medical officer is to innovate proper treatment for cancer patients that can recover the cancer patients permanently. This medical officer has shared his vast experience in haematology in which he has done research on its permanent treatment (Papa et al. 2018). He has decided to experiment on this treatment but it has not achieved its goal yet. This medical person has been associate director in Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Centre. Besides that, this medical officer has been a professor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dream job of the organization and its senior operation managers is to develop such medicine that will remove the trauma of cancer from the world.
Commercial operation management team of AstraZeneca has been led by a senior medical executive in the organization. Operation management of the commercial department in AstraZeneca has represented the present oncology department in North America. An innovation in the research and development team has been applied to initiate commercial operations in the organization. AstraZeneca is an international health organization that has attempted many researches on various medicines such as cancer (Kaneta, 2019). A new structure has been decided by the senior management team of the organization to introduce innovative medicines and therapies for critical patients in the world. Mission of this organization is to introduce innovative treatments to the patients that are suffering from critical diseases in the world. The senior medical executive has evaluated a profound research in oncology and haematology that has brought hope of light among the global population.
AstraZeneca improves supply chain management framework in order to improve operation strategy. It has also helped to improve the relationship with partners as well as help to sustain the annual performance of the company. As mentioned by Tarafdar et al. (2019), this company also improves the product supply chain along with active pharmaceutical ingredients. Besides that, the company has improved packaging and formulating strategy in order to improve the entire production process. The company has focused on transparency and resilient of business in order to improve the production of the company.
Changes in human resource management
AstraZeneca has changed its human resource strategy and they can move from the site and functionally based human resource management to another one team human resource management approach. As mentioned by Nguyen et al. (2019), the business of AstraZeneca has focused on its core activities such as researching, making, developing, and selling pharmaceutical products. The changes in human resource management have helped to improve customer service as well, real cost-saving has been done by this.
“One team” approach
It is indicated by extensive external benchmarking that AstraZeneca needed a major step in border increase the focusing power of the company. The previous human resource management delivered incompatible levels of service from one site to another site. The one team approach is based on the human service centre that acts as a single point of contact which helps to deal with human resource enquiries. As narrated by Tang et al. (2018), the core activities of the new human resource model are transactional activities. The one team approach has assisted in the communication activities of HR facilities.
The changes in management approach improved customer’s experience, requirements as well as mapping. Besides that, the changes in human resource management designed new 150 HR activities. As suggested by Tarafdar et al. (2019), the previous human resource management team cannot provide training to all employees, new HR management recruited qualified and skilled employees that improve product quality as well as, business revenues and profits are improved. New human resource management improved organizational design along with operational procedures, HR processes. On the contrary, the “one team” approach helped to establish new job roles as well as, the new service centred technology was developed.
Some HR event along with a new human resource model has been launched by the company in order to manage the entire business organization. As opined by Kiseleva et al. (2017), the new human resource model includes HR to connect and HR consult. Hr connect helps the HR service centre to deal with HR queries and transactional activities. Besides that, the problems and queries of any employees can be contacted with hr connect by telephone, email and letter. As suggested by Popovič et al. (2020), this helps to solve the problems of all employees as much as possible. On the contrary, the HR consult of AstraZeneca consists of HR specialists and HR managers who support the company to improve products, policies, reward, staffing, employment and others. Usually, it is said that the transformation of HR practice to a “one team” approach helps to change the entire business strategy of AstraZeneca.
Some benefits of changing the HR management of AstraZeneca are described in this study.
The number of HR staff was reduced in the year of 2010, and the company has faced delivery issues. As per the opinion of Nandy and Sussan (2020), the new management team has helped to improve Hr staff as well as, the company can invest 5 million after modifying human resource strategy. The company can achieve targets as well as understand the target market by transformation of new human resource management. The use of HR metrics has assisted to demonstrate business value as well as the productivity of the company; the number of customers is improved by new human resource management.
One of the most important advantages is more than 80% of external stakeholders can get answer from the company through the HR service centre within 10 seconds. Besides that, 80% of the queries of customers are solved by this HR service centre. One team approach has initiated HR delivery in order to deliver products to customers within a short period of time. In the word of Kaneta (2019), it has helped to improve communication with both internal and external customers. Usually, human resource management has helped to improve overall organization strategy with communication strategy and productivity of the company.
Changes in accounting and finance
The revenues and profits of AstraZeneca are improved day by day. As mentioned by Bombiak (2019), reserves and surplus are increased by 57% in the year 2020 rather than in 2016. The reserves in 2016 were 151.01 cores and it was increased to 359.44 in the year 2020. It is a huge increment for the company. In addition, the net worth of the company was 156.01 in the year 2016 and in 2017 and 2018, it is hugely increased. In 2019, the net worth is 300.80 cores and in 2020, the net worth is 364.44 cores.
The net worth is increased by 21.15% in 2020 rather than in 2019. As mentioned by Hitka et al. (2018), the total current assets of AstraZeneca in 2016 was 302.05 cores in the year 2016 and in 2020 it will increase by almost 50%. The total current assets in 2020 are 610.59 cores and this is a huge development of the company. Besides that, one of the major important factors is that the net current assets of AstraZeneca were 52.35 in the year 2016 and within one year, it is almost doubled. The net current assets of AstraZeneca in 2017 were 131.25. Evidence suggests that the net current assets of AstraZeneca according to the year 2020 are 268.67. All of these help to improve the sustainability and growth of the company as much as possible. Furthermore, the company can expand its business all over the world by increasing the revenues and profits of the company.
Evidence suggests that the annual net income in the year 2018 was 2.155 billion dollars and the net income was decreased this year by 28.19 from the previous year. The net income was decreased by 38.05% also in the year 2019 rather than in 2018. A mentioned by Mazzetti et al. (2018), in the span of 2018 to 2019, the competition level had increased too much and this affects the company’s growth and profits adversely. However, in 2020, the company has tried to innovate vaccine for COVID-19 pandemics.
The net income of this company is increased by 139.4% till the middle of 2020 than the previous year. As opined by Bouchu et al. (2020), the net income of AstraZeneca till the middle month of 2020 is 3.196 billion dollars. Evidence suggests that the net income of this company is increased by 223.32% from the previous year. This is a huge profit for the company and this helps to increase the popularity of the company as much as possible.
The annual revenues of the company have shown that the annual revenue of AstraZeneca according to the year 2018 was 22.09 billion dollars and it is decreased by 1.67% than the previous year. On the contrary, the evidence suggests that the annual revenue of AstraZeneca is increased both the year 2019 and 2019. As opined by Lindenmeyer Asadi and Stenbom (2020), it is increased by 10.38% in 2019 than the previous year and this revenue becomes 24.384 billion dollars in the year 2019. In 2020, the annual revenue is hugely increased which is 11.16% from the last year.
The annual revenue of AstraZeneca in the year 2020 is 29.214 billion dollars. The innovation of vaccine for COVID-19 pandemics has helped top increase the net revenues of the company. As suggested by Ansari and Freiberg (2017), the annual revenue of this company in 2012 was 7.282 billion dollars and it is increased by 301.1% within 10 years. Evidence suggests that implementation of a cost-leadership strategy and medico marketing strategy has helped to get success in its business. Furthermore, the company sustainability, profitability is improved by the improved financial position of the company.
3. Conclusion
It can be concluded from the study that AstraZeneca has improved their business management schemes as time passes by. Internal strategy of this business sector is developed in a potential manner by introducing technological innovation. Bursitis modification in HR management scheme can be beneficial for the organisation to enhance their productivity. In case of a pandemic situation, it becomes helpful for the organisation to deliver their products across the globe. Development in vaccine production can help the company to acquire more revenue under a stable operational management process. Accountable as well as finance related challenges for this company has been increased and it becomes responsible to make business more acceptable. Customer satisfaction level of AstraZeneca can be increased in a higher order that in turn can help the organisation to be more feasible. Moreover, growth of the organisation is potentially high and business development can be possible through modern technologies.
Forum 1
Operation managers of an organisation face many difficulties in managing the operations of an organisation. It is vital to deal with these challenges in order to ensure proper growth and development of an organisation. Operation managers are responsible to handle all the operations required for managing a successful business. Improper execution of operation can lead to downfall of an organisation (Stachová et al. 2019). Hence, it can be noted that operation management is an essential factor which needs to be closely looked upon by operation managers. There are various types of challenges that operation managers face in the business environment today such as business sustainability, globalization and so on. Operational sustainability of a business is a method that evaluates whether a business organisation can maintain the existing practices of the company without putting risk on its future resources or not.
Business sustainability is dependent on three main pillars such as economic, social and environmental. Considering all these factors are important in order to ensure proper functioning of a business organisation (Haseeb et al. 2019). It can be difficult for operation managers to manage all these factors properly. Improper management of these factors can have negative impacts on the business of an organisation. Another major challenge faced by operation managers in today’s business environment is globalization of business. Due to globalization business functions as well as global competitors of organisations around the world have increased which has made the management system difficult for operation managers.
Forum 2
Management of operations needs to be done properly in order to ensure proper functioning of an organisation which in turn increases its productivity and profitability. Operation management of an organisation involves planning, manufacturing process as well as provision of products and services (Haseeb et al. 2019). It focuses on the delivery and ensures that an organisation successfully turns its inputs and outputs in an efficient way in order to obtain maximum yield from their business functions. Therefore, it can be noted in this context, the role of operation managers is vital in an organisation. However, in today’s business environment, operation managers have to face various challenges. Some of the major challenges related to operation managers in the business environment of modern times are effective communication, ethical conduct and many others.
Effective communication: Managing effective and consistent communication throughout the organisation can be a difficult task for operation managers. An operation manager needs to communicate efficiently with internal as well as external stakeholders of an organisation in order to check its functions properly (Wright and Nyberg, 2017).
Ethical conduct: Proper maintenance of ethical conduct is essential for smooth running of a business organisation. In order to maintain ethical conduct an organisation needs to do proper research and ensure that its functions do not harm its consumers as well as the society in any way.
References
Ahmed, S. and Schippert, O., 2020. Improving Planning Stability: A case study of Planning at AstraZeneca.
Ansari, A. and Freiberg, E., 2017. Supporting Strategic Decisions for Operational Changes through the use of Discrete Event Simulation: A Case Study in Production Scheduling at AstraZeneca.
Bombiak, E., 2019. Green human resource management–the latest trend or strategic necessity?. Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues, 6(4), p.1647.
Bouchu, J., Cooke, E., Romanchikova, M., Bunch, J., Dexter, A., Steven, R., Thomas, S., Shaw, M., Pilling, J., Ling, S. and Strittmatter, N., 2020. Federation of Imaging Data for Life sciences: current status of metadata collection for high content screening, mass spectrometry imaging and light sheet microscopy of AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline and NPL.
Code, C.G.A., AstraZeneca–Call for Grant Applications (CGA CKD-SGLT2 2001).
Cooke, E., Hayes, M., Romanchikova, M., Dexter, A., Steven, R., Thomas, S., Shaw, M., Pilling, J., Ling, S., Strittmatter, N. and Ivanov, D., 2020. Acquisition and management of high content screening, light-sheet microscopy and mass spectrometry imaging data at AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline and NPL: a survey report.
Haseeb, M., Hussain, H.I., Kot, S., Androniceanu, A. and Jermsittiparsert, K., 2019. Role of social and technological challenges in achieving a sustainable competitive advantage and sustainable business performance. Sustainability, 11(14), p.3811.
Haseeb, M., Hussain, H.I., Ślusarczyk, B. and Jermsittiparsert, K., 2019. Industry 4.0: A solution towards technology challenges of sustainable business performance. Social Sciences, 8(5), p.154.
Hitka, M., Lorincová, S., Bartáková, G.P., Ližbetinová, L., Štarchoň, P., Li, C., Zaborova, E., Markova, T., Schmidtová, J. and Mura, L., 2018. Strategic tool of human resource management for operation of SMEs in the wood-processing industry. BioResources, 13(2), pp.2759-2774.
Kaneta, K., 2019. Accounting for Intangible Assets: Widening Inconsistency in the Accounting Recognition between Acquired Intangible Assets and Internally-Generated Intangible Assets. Kurume University Business Research Review, 4, pp.3-25.
Kiseleva, E.M., Artemova, E.I., Litvinenko, I.L., Kirillova, T.V., Tupchienko, V.A. and Bing, W., 2017. Implementation of innovative management in the actions of the business enterprise. International Journal of Applied Business and Economic Research, 15(13), pp.231-242.
Lindenmeyer Asadi, A. and Stenbom, M., 2020. Development of KPIs for an Innovation Initiative between Big Pharma and SMEs. A case study of AstraZeneca’s BioVentureHub.
LYNCH, B.B.M., BANK, C.D., CAZENOVE, J.M. and STANLEY, M., 2019. AstraZeneca PLC (incorporated with limited liability in England) US $10,000,000,000.
Mazzetti, M., Hedwall, M., Crowther, M., Lennard, S., Richardson, M. and Taylor, L., 2018, January. AstraZeneca Creates a Culture of Agility and Innovation. Project Management Institute.
Michael, A., 2019. A handbook of human resource management practice.
Nandy, S. and Sussan, F., 2020. Did American Depository Receipts from Britain Show Aggregate Abnormal Return Different from Zero on the Brexit Referendum Announcement Day and on the Actual Brexit Referendum Day?. Review of Integrative Business and Economics Research, 9(4), pp.114-122.
Nguyen, K.D., Ning, M.S., Gomez, D.R., Ghafar, R., Tereffe, W., Kantor, M.E., Gunn, G.B., Herman, J.M., Martel, M.K., Balter, P. and Olivieri, N.D., 2019. Operations Management in Radiation Oncology: Standardizing Radiation Treatment Scheduling Timelines Using a Data-Driven Tier System. International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics, 105(1), p.E606.
Noe, R.A., Hollenbeck, J.R., Gerhart, B. and Wright, P.M., 2017. Human resource management: Gaining a competitive advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
Papa, A., Dezi, L., Gregori, G.L., Mueller, J. and Miglietta, N., 2018. Improving innovation performance through knowledge acquisition: the moderating role of employee retention and human resource management practices. Journal of Knowledge Management.
Popovič, A., Hackney, R., Tassabehji, R. and Castelli, M., 2018. The impact of big data analytics on firms’ high value business performance. Information Systems Frontiers, 20(2), pp.209-222.
Stachová, K., Papula, J., Stacho, Z. and Kohnová, L., 2019. External partnerships in employee education and development as the key to facing industry 4.0 challenges. Sustainability, 11(2), p.345.
Tang, G., Chen, Y., Jiang, Y., Paille, P. and Jia, J., 2018. Green human resource management practices: scale development and validity. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 56(1), pp.31-55.
World Health Organization, 2021. Background document on the AZD1222 vaccine against COVID-19 developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca: background document to the WHO Interim recommendations for use of the AZD1222 (ChAdOx1-S [recombinant]) vaccine against COVID19 developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca, 1 March 2021 (No. WHO/2019-nCoV/vaccines/SAGE_recommendation/AZD1222/background/2021.2). World Health Organization.
Wright, C. and Nyberg, D., 2017. An inconvenient truth: How organizations translate climate change into business as usual. Academy of management journal, 60(5), pp.1633-1661.
Know more about UniqueSubmission’s other writing services:
