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Business itself consists of the production of goods and commodities, and of their transportation and exchange. To study these things is to study business itself. We cannot study any one of these processes without gradually working off into other sciences. But there are certain features of business, which taken together, we may call the functions of business. In a rough way, these functions may be divided into four parts called production, marketing, financing and accounting.

Production includes the study of the organization and management of the processes required to transform raw material into useful commodities and simple energy into useful services. Marketing includes the study of all the means whereby goods are exchanged and transported from one owner to another.

Financing, in a sense, is not a true function of business, since it merely facilitates production and marketing; and the same may be said of accounting. Financing, however, may be defined as that function of business which facilitates production and marketing through the use of funds.

And accounting may be said to be that function of business which analyzes the other functions and properly records the results of the analysis to the end that those other functions may be intelligently carried on.

There may be elements of the science of business which are generally recognized as parts of the science of business but which cannot easily be fitted into any one of these four functions. We shall find little difficulty, however, if we stick close to our definitions as given above.

It is common knowledge that Business Analysis involves a clear understanding of the business one operates in and then help in executing the projects involved in the working of the company. Right from the word go, a Business Analyst ( BA ) has to take care of the client requirements, end user specifications, likely problems involved in development and execution, existing and proposed system modalities, and the functional processes involved in the project to be able to execute it to the client’s satisfaction. This is a requirement of the very profession of a BA. This becomes the general description of the nature of work of a Business Analyst.

How does it differ or rather specify differently for the Finance domain?

The most important requirement for a BA is to understand the intricacies of the domain, he is working in. So, in case of the finance domain, a BA should know the functioning of the general way of working of finance industry and of course, the specific way of working of the particular sub domain under the finance domain, that he is working in. examples of these particular sub domains could be Asset Management, Capital Markets, Equity Markets, Wealth Management, Portfolio Management, Banking, Accounting, Taxation, Treasury, Audits, Insurance, Risk, Valuation, Mergers and Acquisitions, Mutual funds, Debt Markets, Foreign Exchange, Advisory, Research, Corporate Finance etc.

Since these sub domains have different sets of rules and regulations, coupled with specific terminologies for each sub sector, a good grasp and understanding of the various terms used in the day to day functioning of these sub domains will hold a Business Analyst in good stead. Knowledge of performance metrics in the sub domains is always advantageous to a good BA and that shows he knows how the goals are set and performance is measured in the sub domains.

Besides having basic knowledge of the front office and back office operations, the Business Analyst should also have good communication skills and great management skills to work well. As is known, a Business Analyst is a bridge between the technical team which comprises of software developers and software engineers, and the end user, which is the client of the project. If the bridge is not well-oiled and is rusty and shaky because of lack of knowledge on part of the Business Analyst, the project shall fall apart. Hence the business analyst must ensure he is up to date with the latest developments in the field that he is working in, and the specific requirements of the project.

Good management skills will enable the Business Analyst to understand the requirements of the end user as well the problems faced by the technical developers in achieving the requirements desired. The technical skills of programming and coding and knowledge of latest software must be also be known to the Business Analyst so that he can understand the working of the technical team and be able to guide them appropriately to execute the project to success.

See you want to buy a property, you must be looking for a suitable loan that is less burdensome for you. Well, business financing and commercial loans are exactly meant for the purpose of providing a timely finance for commercial utilization. Through business financing and commercial loan you can buy any property for its commercial utilization.

Business financing and commercial loans are easier to avail as there are lenders who offer you services of their experts in helping you decide over the type of loan and interest rate on it etc. after applying for the loan a commercial real estate finance specialist contacts you shortly and discusses your objective and goal of taking the loan and buying a property. These specialists are of course trained professionals who are well versed in various types of commercial loans and repayment options. So you are well advised in taking a business finance and commercial loan. This clearly leads you to a suitable loan deal and makes decision taking instant for the lender as well.

For availing business financing and commercial loan, you are required to provide a valuable property as security to the lender. Any residential or commercial property functions well as collateral but it should be of high value as the loan amount is based on it. For having a lower interest rate deal on business financing and commercial loan, you should first ask for loan quotes for comparing rates of different lenders. The comparison is all the more crucial in case you are a bad credit borrower. You should also be choosing repayment duration. Note that shorter repayment duration increases monthly payment for the loan installments while larger duration reduces the payments substantially but you end up paying high amount on interest. You should the repayment duration as per your requirements.

The most important aspect of building a small business is in finding the capital that will be used for your business. However, in this time of day when the economic recession has still left us suffering and it has been too hard to obtain financial help. If you are planning to run a small business, don’t ever fall prey into the hands of the people who will only offer help for their own profit and not yours.

You cannot operate your business without any capital or some sort of financing. If you want to run your own business, you should have already planned that out before especially on where you will get financing. It shouldn’t be a problem if you are planning to use your personal money to run the business but it would become a problem if you don’t have the kind of money that your business needs.

The capital needed to run and operate a fully functional business can change over time and therefore it is important that you, as the business owner, must have some sort of strategy in obtaining financing for your business early on. This is usually most business owners overlook as they lack in the financial strategy that will make their businesses flourish the way it is supposed to be.

Strategies for business financing are usually the weakness of most business owners instead of utilizing it as their strength. This is why there are so many small businesses that are struggling or worst go into bankruptcy. Running a small business is not only about profits but in learning how to maneuver your system in such a way that you will become successful later on.

The methods for business financing are tricky but not that hard and if you are not careful enough your business will end up failing. You are the one who should plan, organize and implement the strategy even before you are putting up your establishment. Make sure that you have backup plans in any case that your initial plan did not work out.

Furthermore, you need to dig well your business financing and this means looking at it on the long term scenario not just for the short term needs. You need a good foundation by which your business can stand tall, flourishing and growing so that you can earn the profits of whatever it is you sow.

Standard costs serve as benchmarks that represent expected future costs required to achieve an objective or goal. In business, these costs are mainly used for decision management and decision control. The same control applications can be employed for family finances. The related concepts that are exercised in business prove beneficial to several areas of family finance described below.

Families operate very similarly to businesses, working together to reach common family-related objectives through setting goals. Similar to businesses maintaining mission statements, families develop unofficial, unwritten family standards and themes. Within the overall family objective are many smaller objectives that change with time, economic demands and other internal or external factors. Standard costs provide businesses with a mean for decision management and control in order to assist them in reaching their objectives, and thus, the principles can be applied to family finance in the same manner to achieve common objectives.

Family Savings

The application of standard cost systems provides businesses with the incentive effect to achieve costs less than or equal to the standard costs required to achieve the business objectives. When these costs are used as a basis for performance evaluation, incentives are created for management to control their costs. With this incentive comes the possibility of discouraging cooperation when individuals are not rewarded in the same manner as the whole unit.

Let us examine a family of four attempting to save money to reach a family objective: going on vacation to California next summer. This objective is set when the parents have a discussion on how to spend more time bonding as a family, equivalent to a board of directors setting a top-down objective. In order to reach the objective, the family realizes that they must save $5,000 in the next year and that they must achieve this through decreasing their family spending since there are no anticipated increases in family income. In order to achieve the objective, the family must work together to achieve increased savings. In a business, if an individual is rewarded based only on what they produce then they may not be motivated to work with the other individuals in the department to ensure they are also attaining the same levels of productivity. However, if the same individual was rewarded at multiple levels, both individual and departmentally driven, then there would be more incentive for cooperation. The same must occur for the family in the example. In a case where the vacation itself is the only reward, if the children are not as excited with the family vacation destination then they may not be as motivated to work towards the family’s savings. If other individual level rewards are set (i.e. stickers, one on one time with the parents, or an hour extended curfew for teenagers) then the unit would be working together more cooperatively to reach the overall objective of the family vacation.

Family Budget

Family budgets have a direct impact on the savings available for the family. In discussing the same family of four with the objective to save $5,000 to acquire enough funds for a family vacation, cost concepts can be applied to the family’s budgeting function. The family should use the basic concepts of a standard cost system to set an overall budget for the year. The budget should then be drilled down further to set costs that must be met in each budgeted category. For example, if the family calculates that it can only spend $300 on groceries bi-weekly then they should apply standard costs to each grocery item to ensure that overspending does not occur. If the family sets a standard cost for cereal at $2 then the concepts should be applied so that cereal is not purchased if it is above $2. If purchasing were to occur above the $2 cost then the vacation may be sacrificed.

Another incentive effect can be applied to this situation; building inventories when price discounts occur. The recently popular occurrence of extreme couponing illustrates this incentive effect. Extreme couponing is a pop culture hobby with the goal of stocking up on items when they are below the standard cost. This strategy involves meticulous planning and monitoring of standard costs for household items, clothes, groceries and even vacation packages. Utilizing this strategy to stock up on goods or build inventories when prices vary below their set standard cost range can assist the family in reaching its end objective. Prices and costs can change because of inflation, demand, resources and many other economic factors. Therefore, it is important to mention, especially in the case of long term objectives, that standard costs should be constantly examined and updated.