Business Administration Interview Questions and Answers Page 5

What are the functionalities performed by lower-level managers?

Lower level is also known as supervisory/operative level of management. Their activities include

• Assigning jobs and tasks to various workers
• Guiding and instructing workers about the day to day activities
• They are responsible for the quality as well as the quantity of production
• They have to maintain good relations within the organization
• They need to tackle the workers' problems and act as a link between the higher authority and higher level goals and objectives, and the workers
• They solve the grievances of the workers
• They supervise and guide the sub-ordinates
• They are responsible for providing training to the workers
• They prepare periodical reports about the performance of the workers
• They ensure discipline in the enterprise and also act as a source of motivation for the workers
• They are the image builders of the enterprise because they are in direct contact with the workers

What is a BPM life-cycle?

BPM stands for Business Process Management. BPM life-cycle is for continuous business process improvement. In this they capture the process in a structured way, then monitor and optimize the process. This cycle of process improvement repeats continuously throughout the life of the process.

This introduces a culture of continual process improvement into the organization in a structured but easy-to-use way.

What are the different steps involved in the life-cycle?

Here the common steps that are involved in the life-cycle are listed out.

Model- Acquiring the business processes at the top level, making sure that the top level detail is correct without being distracted by the details of how it is going to be implemented.

Execute- Instances of the process are launched and interacted with by the end users.

Monitor- Measure the key performance indicators and process performances to understand where the inefficiencies in the process are.

Optimize- Improve the business process and performance by reducing the inefficiencies identified during monitoring. Determine which changes will deliver the maximum benefit.

What are the different lenses that are given in a BPM suite?

There are three lenses that are given in a BPM suite:

• Human-centric BPM
• Integration-centric BPM (Enterprise Service Bus)
• Document-centric BPM (Dynamic Case Management)

However, standalone integration-centric and document-centric offerings have matured into separate, standalone markets.

What is the difference between BPM and SOA?

• BPM stands for Business Process Management and SOA stands for Service Oriented Architecture
• BPM is related to business process and SOA is technical.
• BPM provides managerial road map for the integration of human-driven process with IT business solution
• SOA provides a flexible set of design principles for developers which are used during the systems development and integration phases.
• BPM defines processes and sets goals whereas SOA provides technological means to achieve those goals

Why is departmentalization needed in an organization? What are the different bases for departmentalization?

Departmentalization is important for every organization as it helps in specialization, growth and expansion, fixing responsibility, bettering the customer service, Performance appraisal, Management development optimizing the utilization of resources and facilitating better control.

The bases for departmentalization are:

Functional- It is commonly used as it offers certain advantages such as specialization, performance of activities, elimination of unnecessary activities, organization and control of important functional activities.

Product- Product departmentalization is important for product expansion and diversification when the manufacturing and marketing characteristics of each product are of primary concern.

Geographical- Territorial or geographical departmentalization is especially useful for large organizations such as banking, insurance, transportation, etc. as these are geographically spread.

Process- In process departmentalization, processes involved in production or various types of equipments used are taken as the basis for departmentalization.

Customer- The basic idea of this departmentalization is to provide services to clearly identified groups of customers.