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Old 04-16-2010, 03:09 PM   #41
roguebfl
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Default Re: Gaming and the Corporate World

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Originally Posted by ladyarcana55 View Post
Legal (For obvious reasons)
Admin: HR, Payroll, Financial tracking, making sure everyone is working well and smoothly
Marketing: Letting people know they are out there and to explain why they want to buy their products
R&D: Constant research is being done to improve how things are made and how they work.
Let's not forget Sales and Manufacturing.

and in the in fighting btw Marketing and Sales for prestige Who more important the people who prompt the demand, or the people who convince them to part with the cash. all the while making headache for R&D and Manufacturing to for fill their promises when the get on a roll...

and IT never forget IT, they will not let you ;)
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Old 04-16-2010, 03:41 PM   #42
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Default Re: Gaming and the Corporate World

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Originally Posted by roguebfl View Post
Let's not forget Sales and Manufacturing.

and in the in fighting btw Marketing and Sales for prestige Who more important the people who prompt the demand, or the people who convince them to part with the cash. all the while making headache for R&D and Manufacturing to for fill their promises when the get on a roll...

and IT never forget IT, they will not let you ;)

Oh god yeah! I was Marketing. I was one of the few Marketing folks R&D didn't hate. LOL

And you're right. IT is always important
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Old 04-16-2010, 08:53 PM   #43
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Default Re: Gaming and the Corporate World

Remember that each large organization generally has units that focus on something in particular. For a firearms manufacturer, there might be "Small Arms", "Missiles", and "Heavy Weapons". Skills that are highly specialized within one area may have little to no application in another -- if you ask a project manager who spent years working on making rifles more reliable to solve a problem with warhead fragmentation for a man-portable anti-aircraft missile, he might not be good at solving it. This often leads to people becoming experts at their own specialty, but not knowing much about the other branches of the company. They may have CONTACTS over there, and be able to go talk to someone if there's a problem, but they may not have the background to handle it on their own.

These areas are often called "divisions" or "departments", and they frequently function like smaller companies in their own right. Division heads will have staff that assists them, and while they won't have a lot of direct authority over functions that belong to the overarching organization, they will often have a significant amount of informal influence, especially if their division is doing well, or if they've been careful to have other folks owing them favors. Some organizations are organized functionally (divisions are made up of employees working on the same sort of job), or geographically (the Texas group), or even some combination. It's very possible to report to different people on different subjects -- you might be part of a group that reports to an R&D head in Munich, but is also working on a project for the Brazilian Navy that has a local project manager in Sao Paolo.

It's possible for employees to be working on multiple projects more or less at the same time, depending on the nature of the work. I work for a civil engineering firm, and our engineers are quite often covering three or four projects in a given week. They might come up with a design, submit it to the client for review, and then go work on something else while the client thinks about it for a while. The client might ask for a meeting next week, and in the meantime, they might be doing some research into subjects the client is interested in while also juggling some work for another client. They log their time spent on each job, and we bill according to that time, generally.

An executive usually has a passable grasp of at least one area within the corporation, and some vague familiarity with the others, but they're generally picked because they have a vision for where they'd like the organization to go. They may have just done a great job selling what someone else wants to hear, but that's beside the point. If you work closely with the broader operations of a large firm for a long time, and you demonstrate useful skills, you may very well be seen as a candidate for a higher position. The CEO will not generally be replaced by an outsider (although it's not impossible), but usually by someone from within; after all, boards want to choose from a known quantity if they decide to replace an executive, and who do they know better than the people who have been there for years?

One thing I haven't seen emphasized very much is the degree to which an executive will need to be in touch with the clients. He'll have to know them, and be able to convince them that his company can help them out with their perceived need. For H&K, they will certainly be tied into the military branches of most major nations, and looking for every opportunity to pitch their products. Performance is key, and you've got to keep those orders coming -- if sales are flat, then there's no added value, and the stock price starts dropping. That's also where the drive for enhanced cost control comes from; if you can't increase sales, you can cut costs to get improved profits.
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Old 04-17-2010, 03:43 PM   #44
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Default Re: Gaming and the Corporate World

So, in an attempt to create a "company profile" [misused term?] of Heckler & Koch, the divisions (or departments) might look something like this:

Marketing - Responsible for advertising the product through any form of media they can get their hands on. These are the people that design everything from the corporate website to the television commercials. As a gun company, they probably have numerous journalist contacts to arrange magazines articles.

Sales - These are the people that close the deals with major distributors and appeal to law enforcement and military when attempting to present new standards of firearms. I've done some research on this and I didn't have to look far to find that most major military operations will hold contests to determine the best firearm in order to determine standard military issue.

Here's a question: who sets the price of these transactions? Do the salespeople follow a static formula, shaving off retail percentages as the volume of the product increases, or is there generally a great deal of haggling done between clients?

Human Resources - These people deal with the public. They design customer support centers, establish the orientation (and sometimes the hiring) process, and work on maintaining a positive public image.

Finance - These people do everything from validate (or in some cases manage entirely) the payroll process. If the company has payroll software (in Corrections, we use a system called Kronos which identifies employees by laminates, six-digit identification and fingerprints. The employees review a web-based "timecard," which is then approved and reviewed again by a supervisor and finally is submitted to payroll) their job becomes easier. I'm guessing that employee payroll is a small part of what they do, while the larger part of their function would be to review and calculate expenses, conduct inventories, file taxes, determine the company budget and calculate the annual profit margin. These are the people who would operate under the CFO that was previously mentioned, who constantly look for ways to make more and more money.

Research and Development - These are the people that make better, more powerful, more accurate guns. They are the proverbial architects, creating blueprints for manufacturing to follow. If my research is correct, H&K was responsible for carbine format, which can probably be attributed to their research and development team.

Manufacturing - IIRC, the only manufacturing plants owned by Heckler and Koch are in Columbus, Georgia and Orsmurfenburf [or something at least as difficult to spell as it is to pronounce], Germany. They may also have a plant in the UK, but I can't remember where and don't care to look. I'll probably edit this later because I'm obsessive-compulsive like that. As Captain Midnight described, the manufacturing plants may be divided by category -- rifles, shotguns, pistols, machine guns, anti-aircraft, etc.

Legal Division - As ladyarcana mentioned, being a gun company, H&K probably has a HUGE (or just a powerful) team of lawyers that cover their collective butts.

Security Operations - This is something that recently came to mind, as (at the orange county jail), we put a high priority on safety and security. I imagine that a gun company would do the same. A security operations department might be responsible for any number of tasks, but I'd see them as primarily responsible for transporting software, protecting corporate executives, and securing the perimeter of any compound where weapons are stored. I can't be sure whether or not H&K would have its own department, or if this is something that would be outsourced to other companies.

IT - Information and Technology? What do they do?

If I'm missing anything, or I'm wrong about something, please correct me.

As a side-note, while I don't want to overdo it, I think the right Celestials (or the wrong ones, in the case of Demons) in the right places could make things very interesting. Any Celestial might be at any level in any company, with the possible exceptions of Seraphim and Cherubim -- and exceptions can be made.

Given the direction that this thread is taking, I wouldn't find it unreasonable if it were moved toward the "Role-Playing in General" section, in spite of the In Nomine-based content.
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Old 04-17-2010, 04:08 PM   #45
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Default Re: Gaming and the Corporate World

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IT - Information and Technology? What do they do?
The mak sure Marking's Web site runs, The make sure Finances tracking software runs, the make sure R&D can get the research material. That make sure Sales can talk with the clients. The make sure the internal email works, the makes sure the Boss fun gadget work too. the they ones that take the worry from Security about Electronic espionage.

they are the ones you have to explain to how you ended up on the porn site from your cubical, and Why you need to have that game on your workstation.

They make things go ;)
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