Which of the following is a key area of financial management?

Budgeting and forecasting are essential components of financial management because they involve planning and controlling an organization's financial resources. This area allows businesses to estimate future revenues and expenditures, ensuring that they can allocate sufficient funds for operations, investments, and other activities.

By creating budgets, organizations set financial goals, track their performance against those goals, and make adjustments as necessary to optimize their financial health. Forecasting, on the other hand, involves analyzing historical financial data and market trends to predict future outcomes, helping businesses make informed strategic decisions.

In contrast, product development, employee relations, and market research, while important functions within a business, do not directly pertain to the core financial management processes. Product development focuses on creating new products or services, employee relations manage workforce dynamics, and market research analyzes consumer preferences and trends, none of which primarily involve the management of financial resources.