Can you think of any departments that I forgot on my list?

[Grindstone1]

Hey Folks!

You guys have always been helpful so Im asking here, not getting anything in management area! Im doing a company wide analysis and am trying to departmentalize everything we do, we are in the services industry - we work with children with autism. I came up with these so far and the internet really has not been a useful source.

Can ANYONE think of anymore departments in a typical company:

Services
Marketing
Human Resources ( hiring, benefits etc..)
Financial (includes AP, AR etc)
Purchasing
Sales
IT
Inventory
Quality Asurance
Insurance
Licenses
Operational
Customers
Staff
Customer Service
Organizational

Thanks !!

[jamesray50]

That seems like an awful lot of departments to me unless you are a huge organization. Are you a new or existing business. If existing, how long have you been in business? If you are a service industry, what is your inventory? What do you have quality assurance on?

[Evan]

I don't think I've ever seen so many departments, even in some multi-million dollar companies. Some of your items are also "main" categories, and the others "sub-categories". Purchasing relates to "Financial". "Organizational" is probably the same as "Operational". "Customers" could be related to retention, which could be part of marketing. QA is part of Inventory. Licenses I've never heard as a department. Sales is part of operations, or marketing.

Staff is everyone.

[jdhopkins]

That's a very thorough list. I'm assuming you are using the list of departments to help you define individual job descriptions and responsibilities knowing that one staff person may handle duties in more than one department?

[KristineS]

Staff seems like it should be under human resources, unless you're not talking managing staff, just staff as a resource on it's own. Marketing and Sales are often lumped together, although each department may have its own director.

I guess I'm not really sure what it is you're trying to do. In a typical company, it rarely is as cut and dried as your list. Responsibilities will leak over department lines, departments will be combined, etc.