Functions Of Management

Functions of Management

Companies depend upon a manager's ability to keep the company stable. SBC, formally known as Southwestern Bell Communications, is a large telecommunications company. SBC employs over 100,000 people, and the managers in this company play an important part of keeping the company operative. Managers are the force behind the workers. They must be able to plan, organize, lead and control their employees. This is known as the management process.

First, a manager must be able to plan. A plan is defined as knowing the goals of the company and deciding what action to take to obtain these goals. The managers at SBC plan rigorously to remain the worlds largest telecommunications company. They come up with several plans of action each month. They are constantly coming up with new bundle package plans to beat the competitor's prices. The bundle packages are geared towards the customers need for long distance, DSL, or other local services and features. The manager's plan of action also includes motivating the inside customer service reps to introduce the product to the customer over the phone in an attempt to sell or get the customers interest in the product. Then the managers set objectives for the outside technicians to achieve while working. This may include re-introducing the product to a new or existing customer on a daily basis. Another plan is to 'WOW' the customers with excellent customer service. Plans are also created to maintain safety for the outside technicians as well as for the customers while working. The managers also set specific plans of action for each individual work type, for example, the outside technician is expected to do an average of five or more jobs in a day. With this plan the managers can set an average amount of work for each technician to complete in an eight-hour workday. This helps them to predict what the workload for the week will be like based on the amount of trouble

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tickets they have received and the amount of technicians they have to work them. This will also help the managers forecast a need for overtime as well as help the managers plan ahead to see what other steps they will need to take to meet their end of the month goals.

The second function of a manager is to organize. Organization means to gather the people, money, tools, or anything that is needed to achieve the company's set goals. An outside technician's manager must be able to organize how each member of his team will go about their workday. The manager must be able to delegate which technicians will work on instillation work and which technicians will work on repair work. By organizing where his people will go, he will ensure all the work for the day is done in a timely fashion. The manager must also decide who in his team may go out to another area to help out other teams who may be behind in their work. By organizing with other managers, they can ensure all their customers are taken care of by their individual deadlines.

A third function of managing would be leading. This is defined as a manager's efforts to stimulate high performance in their employees. An SBC manager motivates us to achieve our goals twice a week by meeting with the team in the morning to go over the