These eight original questions cover the functional areas chapter of SPM Business. Write your answer first, then compare.
Practice questions
Question 1. Match each to a function: (a) recording supplier bills, (b) designing a flyer, (c) packing orders, (d) writing a job advertisement.
Answer
(a) Finance. (b) Marketing. (c) Operations. (d) Human resources.
Question 2. Roti Pagi bakes 200 buns each morning. Explain why this is an operations activity.
Answer
“Baking and packing the buns is producing the product that customers buy, which is the work of operations. Roti Pagi cannot sell without it.”
Question 3. State one activity and one role from the finance function of a print shop.
Answer
Activity: preparing invoices. Role: accounts clerk.
Question 4. A question says, “State two activities of human resources.” A student writes, “Manager and supervisor.” What has gone wrong?
Answer
The student wrote roles. Activities are tasks, such as recruiting part-time staff and training new staff.
Question 5. Katering Mawar’s school order rises from 200 to 260 lunches two days before the event. Explain one effect on operations.
Answer
“Operations must buy and cook 60 more lunches with little notice, which may raise ingredient costs or require extra cooks.”
Question 6. Trace the link: marketing confirms an order, then finance issues an invoice. What does finance need from marketing?
Answer
Finance needs the confirmed quantity, the price and the date. Without them it cannot invoice correctly.
Question 7. A gym advertises a free trial week. The front desk is overwhelmed and members complain. Diagnose in two sentences.
Answer
“Marketing advertised the free week without telling operations how many visitors to expect. Human resources did not schedule extra front-desk staff, so service suffered.”
Question 8. Suggest a specific fix for question 7.
Answer
“Before advertising, marketing should give operations and human resources the start date and an estimate of visitors, so extra staff can be scheduled for the trial week.”
If you got some wrong
Questions 1 and 2 point to explaining the four business functions. Questions 3 and 4 connect to distinguishing roles from activities.
Questions 5 and 6 use connecting departments in a business process, and questions 7 and 8 use diagnosing a fictional coordination problem.
Plan wording with the Business case-answer planner. A teacher can also work through your answers in online one-to-one Business tuition.