TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1 - Pages 4-8

Chapter 2 - Pages 9-13

Chapter 3 - Pages 14-19

Chapter 4 - Pages 20-24

Chapter 5 - Pages 25-29

Chapter 6 - Pages 30-34

Chapter 7 - Pages 35-39

Chapter 1

Communication skills and customer relations

If I were to give a summary of the pretest  and what I have learned so far I would emphasize three main points. Customer service and customer relations. Customer service and customer relations have everything to do with a growing business and they are necessary to succeed. However, both are very different but I can see how people can mistake them as the same thing. The other point is different but they are all connected. Communication skills are also necessary to allow your business to succeed. There are four different types of communication and they are all different.  

All four of these are connected. In order to have good customer service and customer relations, then you must have good communication skills. If you speak to the customer through passive communication, then the customer will feel important and want to respond and feel at home with your business. The four different types of communication are verbal, non-verbal, written, and visual. Each have different significance when it comes to talking with customers. You would use the written form of communication when you want to write a memo to the customer or notify them of a late payment. That would be a form of customer relations because you are being proactive as opposed to reactive which would then become customer service.

This information is pretty easy to read and take in  but applying it in real life is a different story. You must communicate effectively when talking with a customer to get your point across and allow the customer to understand what you need from them and what the customer can get. By effectively utilizing verbal communication, you can make big sales and gain customers trust. When you gain customer’s trust then they will invite others to your business and that’s how your business grows and expands. As a business owner, ou just have to keep in mund that without customers, there is no business so make them the priority of your business and only hire sales reps or people who would talk with customers on a daily basis who have good customer service and relations. 

Chapter 2

Information management

This unit was all about information management and how to deal with information presented to you. If I were writing an overview of this unit, which I am, I would include how computers help advance businesses, and how information is managed well in a good business environment. I would include the 3 steps to properly managing information, the 5 keys to information management, and a description about why information management is important. I would also include the specific details regarding the parts or components of a computer that help a business persons manage information properly.

If I were to reflect upon what I have read, which I am, I would reflect on information management and what I already know about it and what I have learned. I already knew about how computers are vital to manage information and that not a lot of people knew about it in the first. I learned that there are different kinds of information management such as requiring security for your important client files and keeping them safe so to ensure the clients personal data are secure. Also I realized that spreadsheets and other document related items are used to keep information secure and make it accessible. 

This can definitely be applied in the real world in many instances. Like if you have a job where you are assigned jobs, you have to manage your information and organize it in an orderly fashion so that you can access it easily. Another example is if you are a receptionist at an office and you are receiving calls and client emails, you have to have somewhat of a system that you can write things down and enter them into a computer and eventually transmit it. One last way is that if you work as a cashier, you have to record all of the payments of customers and enter them into the computer which will eventually go into a permanent record.

Chapter 3

Professional development

This unit was about increasing your worth and the organizations worth by creating value in the staff. Professional development is a formal process involving a wide variety of specialized training, formal education, or advanced professional learning intended to help employees improve their professional knowledge, competence, skill and effectiveness. Through Professional development there are opportunities that you have to take advantage of and use to your benefit. The goal of professional development is to build and maintain morale of staff members, to help professionally improve the staff members both individually and collectively, and to attract higher quality staff to an organization.

Professional development is about increasing the value and quality of your organization through the staff. Some examples of professional development are conferences, seminars, workshops, collaborative learning among members of a work team and taking a course at a college or university. I connect with this unit because I understand how important and beneficial it is for a company to have good staff members that can represent the company well. Professional development adds value because it makes the organization's quality better and more value brings in more profit. In my opinion it is an asset but if you are trying to grow your company I would view it as a liability.

This can easily be used in the real world. There are many examples of how people use professional development in the real world, such as teachers will stay after school or when there is a teacher work day, the teachers get together with the other teachers that teach the same subject as them, and they talk about how they can grow and develop as a professional. People in businesses also practice this from time to time, they will sometimes bring in a professional who has a wide understanding of the business, and have them give a lecture or inform them on where they can grow. 

Chapter 4

business operations management

This unit is about business operations management. Business operations management is defined as, the work of managing the inner workings of your business so it runs as efficiently as possible. It involves 5 main steps. These five steps are equipment and technology, policies and procedures, human resources, customer relations, and location. All 5 of these items contribute to business operations management which in turn, will eventually contribute to your business growing and becoming a successful company in the long run. Business operations management also consists of both management and business operations which are two different things but come together to create business operations management.

If I were to reflect upon business operations management and write an SRA about it, which I am, I would start off with saying that business operations management is one of the core aspects to building a business. I would say how if it weren't for some system like business operations management, businesses wouldn’t be half as organized as they are today, also, business wouldn’t be anywhere near as developed or profitable as they are today. Business operations is a lot more important than people give it credit for. It is crucial to the organization of businesses worldwide.  

And now for the application part of the SRA. Business operations management can easily be applied to the real world. There are so many examples of it throughout business today such as the organization of one of the world’s biggest companies, Amazon, owned by Jeff Bazos. His style of organization is very good which is why he’s one of the biggest companies in the world. He makes his products very accessible and allows people to log onto and purchase from his website very easily which I think helps attract customers. If you were to go through the 5 components of business operations management, you could easily find all five f them within Amazon.       

Chapter 5

economics