Business sector in the context of "Trade organisation"

A trade association, also known as an industry trade group, business association, sector association or industry body, is an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry. Through collaboration between companies within a sector, a trade association coordinates public relations activities such as advertising, education, publishing and, especially, lobbying and political action. Associations may offer other services, such as producing conferences, setting industry standards, holding networking or charitable events, or offering classes or educational materials. Many associations are non-profit organizations governed by bylaws and directed by officers who are also members.

Trade associations and other industry groups are politically influential in the United States, United Kingdom, and other countries, lobbying elected officials, regulators, and other policymakers. They also invest heavily in publishing, advertising, and other forms of issue advocacy.

Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command.

Big business involves large-scale corporate-controlled financial or business activities. As a term, it describes activities that run from "huge transactions" to the more general "doing big things". In corporate jargon, the concept is commonly known as enterprise, or activities involving enterprise customers.

The concept first rose in a symbolic sense after 1880 in connection with the combination movement that began in American business at that time. Some examples of American corporations that fall into the category of "big business" as of 2015 are ExxonMobil, Walmart, Google, Microsoft, Apple, General Electric, General Motors, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs; in the United States, big businesses in general are sometimes collectively pejoratively called "corporate America". The largest German corporations as of 2012 included Daimler AG, Deutsche Telekom, Siemens, and Deutsche Bank. SAP is Germany's largest software company. Among the largest companies in the United Kingdom as of 2012 are HSBC, Barclays, WPP plc, and BP. The latter half of the 19th century saw more technological advances and corporate growth in additional sectors, such as petroleum, machinery, chemicals, and electrical equipment (see Second Industrial Revolution).

Gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) is a component of the expenditure on gross domestic product (GDP) that indicates how much of the new value added in an economy is invested rather than consumed. It measures the value of acquisitions of new or existing fixed assets by the business sector, governments, and "pure" households (excluding their unincorporated enterprises) minus disposals of fixed assets.

GFCF is a macroeconomic concept used in official national accounts such as the United Nations System of National Accounts (UNSNA), National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA), and the European System of Accounts (ESA). The concept dates back to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) studies of Simon Kuznets of capital formation in the 1930s, and standard measures for it were adopted in the 1950s.

Business journalism is the part of journalism that tracks, records, analyzes, and interprets the business, economic and financial activities and changes that take place in societies. Topics widely cover the entire purview of all commercial activities related to the economy.

This area of journalism provides news and feature articles about people, places, and issues related to the business sector. Most newspapers, magazines, radio, and television-news shows include a business segment. Detailed and in-depth business journalism may appear in publications, radio, and television channels dedicated specifically to business and financial journalism.

A chamber of commerce, or board of trade, is a business network, a local organization of businesses whose goal is to further the interests of businesses. Business owners in towns and cities form these local societies to advocate for the business community. Local businesses are members, and they elect a board of directors or executive council to set policy for the chamber.

A chamber of commerce may be a voluntary or a mandatory association of business firms belonging to different trades and industries. They serve as spokespeople and representatives of a business community. They differ from country to country.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is the integrated management of main business processes, often in real time and mediated by software and technology. ERP is usually referred to as a category of business management software—typically a suite of integrated applications—that an organization can use to collect, store, manage and interpret data from many business activities. ERP systems can be local-based or cloud-based. Cloud-based applications have grown rapidly since the early 2010s due to the increased efficiencies arising from information being readily available from any location with Internet access. However, ERP differs from integrated business management systems by including planning all resources that are required in the future to meet business objectives. This includes plans for getting suitable staff and manufacturing capabilities for future needs.

ERP provides an integrated and continuously updated view of core business processes, typically using a shared database managed by a database management system. ERP systems track business resources—cash, raw materials, production capacity—and the status of business commitments: orders, purchase orders, and payroll. The applications that make up the system share data across various departments (manufacturing, purchasing, sales, accounting, etc.) that provide the data. ERP facilitates information flow between all business functions and manages connections to outside stakeholders.