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Marketing and Sales Business Functions and Business Processes
9
As shown in Figure 1-4, the Marketing and Sales (M/S) area needs information from all other
functional areas to effectively complete the business activities for which it is responsible.

Legal requirements
and job information
Customer
Sales orders HR

Hiring needs and
Order status
personnel information

Sales forecasts M/S Sales order
and sales orders
data

Product
availability data Cost/profit
and order status analysis
SCM A/F
Source Line: Course Technology/Cengage Learning.

FIGURE 1-4 The Marketing and Sales functional area exchanges data with customers and with
the Human Resources, Accounting and Finance, and Supply Chain Management
functional areas

Customers communicate their orders to sales staff in person or by telephone, email,
fax, the Web, and so on. In the case of Web-based systems, customer and order data are
stored automatically in the information system; otherwise, data must be entered manually,
by typing data into a computer keyboard or point-of-sale system, or by using a bar-code
reader or similar device. Sales orders must be passed to Supply Chain Management for
planning purposes and to Accounting and Finance for billing. Sales order data are also
valuable for analyzing sales trends for business decision making. For example, Marketing
and Sales management might use a report showing the trend of a product’s sales to
evaluate marketing efforts and to determine strategies for the sales force.
Marketing and Sales also has a role in determining product prices, which requires an
understanding of the market competition and the costs of manufacturing the product.
Pricing might be determined based on a product’s unit cost, plus some percentage markup.
For example, if a product costs $5 per unit to make, and management wants a 40 percent
markup, the selling price must be $7 per unit. Where does the per-unit cost data come
from? Determining the cost of manufacturing a product requires information from
Accounting and Finance, which, in turn, relies on Supply Chain Management data.
People are a valuable asset to the firm, and Marketing and Sales needs to interact with
Human Resources to exchange information on hiring needs, legal requirements, and other
matters. For example, when Marketing and Sales has an opening for a junior salesperson,
Human Resources will do the advertising for the job vacancy. Human Resources might also

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