MARKETING STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION AND CONTROL

The effectiveness of strategy implementation determines the outcome of marketing planning. The management of the planning process may enhance implementation effectiveness by building commitment and ownership of the plan and its execution .For example actively managing the participation of different functions and executives from different specializations may improve the fit between the plan and the company’s real capabilities and resources and avoid implementation barriers. Planning and execution are interdependent parts of strategic change.

Marketing managers increasingly function as boundary spanners both internally between functional areas and externally with suppliers, organizational partners and customers. Additional efforts to make the strategy implementation process more effective are a high priority in many companies.

Estimates suggest as many as 70% of new strategic initiatives in companies fail at the implementation stage. Many companies now recognize that implementation capabilities are an important corporate capability that requires detailed management attention.

Implementation process

A good implementation process spell out the

1. Activities to be implemented - ,
2. Who  is responsible for implementation,
3. The time and location of  implementation  and
4. How implementation will be achieved.

Barriers to successful implementation of marketing strategy

There are many barriers that stand in the way of successful implementation of marketing strategy, some evident, some not . The barriers fall broadly into three separate categories

1. External pressures of the organization – These are pressures emanating from the firm’s external environmental i.e social, legal, economic, political, technological etc.
2. Internal pressures on the marketing function – These are pressures from within the firm. These are :

                    i.            Leadership – The ultimate success and implementation of any strategic plan will depend on the degree to which top management buys into the process. This is especially evident where strategic thrust of the plan involves any form of significant change. The organizations leadership may be opposed to objectives of the marketing plan for a number of reasons i.e they may be from non marketing disciplines, may feel that the need for change is not yet apparent or simply be more comfortable with steady slate management style. Whatever reasons, unless strong leaders are brought in to the vision and strategy completely, little progress is likely to be made.

                 ii.            Organization culture – There are many forms of organization culture and in truth, few of these are customer or market focused. In organization with non market oriented culture, the chances of successfully implementing a true marketing strategy must be limited.

Marketing in this type of firm tends to be all about marketing services often linked or even subservient to all important sales functions. In product or production oriented organization, the marketers role is to provide sales materials , product information and market analysis to support the sales and production functions of the firm. The market or customer oriented organization is the only one that sees the marketers role as the catalyst and change agent  to focus the rest of the organization activities or the one activity that really matters – the customers.

               iii.            Organizational processes – In many organizations, the existing organization processes are simply not designed to be able to deliver the proposed marketing strategy as is intended. Too many processes are designed for the convenience and administrative ease of those that work in them rather than being designed in order to deliver satisfaction to customers. It is unrealistic to design customer focused marketing strategy without spending sometime looking at the organizations processes and ability to deliver on the promise that may be made to the customers. When dealing with organizations, it is important to consider the ‘soft ‘ cultural elements such as style , skills, staffing and shared values as well as the traditional ‘hard ‘ values.

                iv.            Functional policies – Functional policies and procedures determine how the organizations’ staff manage day to day business activities. The intended marketing strategy may fall short of these best practice functional processes and encounter a blockage on path of implementation.

                  v.            Resources - The proposed marketing strategy may require either the allocation of significant additional resources to certain functions or even the appropriation of resources into different areas of the organization. Successful implementation will depend on these resources being available. The potential barrier here is likely to be either the resources simply not being available or that senior management considers that other causes are more deserving.

Implementation takes place in an environment that is prone to changes hence it is important to be flexible and build in an acceptable degree of contingency (additional resource to be called on) within any implementation strategy.

                vi.            Evaluation and control procedures –  lack of appropriate monitoring and evaluation procedures in an organization will be a significant block to the successful implementation of any strategy – What gets measured gets done.

Control ensures that what is supposed to be done is actually done. Astute management should develop effective control systems.   

3. Pressures within the marketing function itself – These are a number of aspects of the marketing department or function which can also act as potential blockage to the development and implementation of marketing strategy.

                                i.            Marketing interface with other functions – How marketing interacts with other functions will determine the successful implementation of the strategy.

                             ii.            The role of marketers – The role played by marketers in their organization determines the level of implementation of strategy. In a market/ customer oriented organization, the role of marketer is to identify, anticipate and satisfy customer needs profitably. Doing this needs much more than an in depth knowledge of advertising and promotional methodology and techniques, the marketers key area of responsibility is to understand the organizations customers and to feed this information back to the organization and other functions so that people are able to act upon it profitably.

                           iii.            Marketing feedback – Successful implementation of marketing strategy depends on how much, how relevant and how good information is and how well it is interpretated and acted upon. Information (not lots of data) is critical, information and feedback on a plans progress is never 100% accurate but it does act to both reduce certainty in planning and improve the quality of action. Customer’s information is the marketing powerbase, although too few marketing professionals use it as such.

Building Implementation Effectiveness

Managers are important facilitators in the implementation process and some are better implementers than others. Planners and implementers often have different strengths and weaknesses. An effective planner may not be good at implementing plans. Desirable implementation skills include:

• The ability to understand how others feel and good bargaining skills
• The strength to be tough and fair in putting people and resources where they will be most effective.
• Effectiveness in focusing on the critical aspects of performance in managing marketing activities
• The ability to create a necessary informal organization or network to match each problem with which they are confronted.

In additional to skillful implementers, several factors facilitate the implementation process. These include:

• Organizational structure – Certain types of organizational structure aid implementation. Product managers or multifunctional coordination teams are useful implementation methods. Management may create implementation teams consisting of representatives from the business functions and /or marketing activities involved. Flat, flexible organization structures offer several advantages in implementation, since they encourage inter functional cooperation and communication .These designs are responsive to changing conditions.
• Incentives – Various rewards may help achieve successful implementation. Special incentives such as contests,recognition and extra compensation are used to encourage salespeople to push new products. Since implementation often involves teams of people, creation of team incentives may be necessary. Performance standards must be fair and incentives should encourage something more than normal performance. Focusing incentives on the achievement of overall plan goals rather than individual efforts is particularly relevant.
• Communications – Rapid and accurate movement of information through the organization is essential in implementation. Both vertical and horizontal communications are needed in linking together the people and activities involved in implementation. Meetings, status reports and informal discussions help to transmit information throughout the organization. Computerized information and decision support systems like corporate intranets help to improve communication  speed and effectiveness.

Problems often occur during implementation and may affect how fast and how well plans are put into action. Examples include competitor’s actions, internal resistance between departments, loss of key personnel, supply chain delays affecting product availability (e.g supply, production and distribution problems) and changes in the business environment. Corrective actions may require appointing a person or team for trouble shooting the problem, increasing or shifting resources or changing the original plan.

STRATEGY CONTROL

Control can be defined as attempting to guarantee behavior and systems conform to, and support, predetermined corporate objectives and policies.

The basis of control is ability to measure. It compares what should happen with what actually happened or is likely to happen. Given the importance of measurement, a tendency exists to measure what is easy to quantify rather than what is important.  Project managers must guard against this and focus on the key areas. Good control systems often detect and rectify problems before they become significant and managers should remember that prevention is better than cure. It is important to be proactive rather than reactive.

The control process entails the following steps:

1. Set targets – ideally these is integrated into overall marketing planning.
2. Predetermining the method of measurement- performance appraisal
3. Measured results are compared with the predetermined targets and corrective action if required is undertaken

Control should be carried out in both the inputs and the outputs. This helps management to optimize the process and take strategic view. Typical inputs include:

• Finance: investments, working capital and cash.
• Operatives: capacity, usage, efficiency and application of machines, systems and other assets.
• People: Numbers, quality and skills of staff.

Output is measured in terms of overall system performance. Performance is derived from combination of efficiency and effectiveness.

• Efficiency: How well utilized are the inputs? Do we make maximum use of finances, minimize cost and operate at optimal levels of capacity.
• Effectiveness: Are we doing the right things? This relates to actual performance and will include sales revenue, profit, market share and measures of customer satisfaction.

It is better to pursue effectiveness.

What makes an effective control system?

Control systems require careful design. Generic principles  exist which are common to all effective control mechanism. It is important to retain a degree of flexibility and common sense.

Six principles to ensure effective control.

• Involvement – It is achieved by encouraging participation in the process. Management can achieve desired results through consultation. Staff could contribute to setting targets. Their development needs could be considered along with the required tasks. Correctly applied, this enhances morale, promotes ownership and develops skill base of employees.
• Target setting: The target criteria should be objective and measurable. How this is assessed needs to be communicated and agreed in advance. Targets needs to be challenging but achievable.
• Focus : It recognizes the differences between the symptoms and the source of the problem. While it may be expedient to treat the symptoms, tackling the source of the problem should eliminate it once and for all.
• Effectiveness: The tendency exists to measure efficiency as opposed to effectiveness. Efficiency is the usage and productivity of assets. Effectiveness is about doing the right things. In reality we tend to apply efficiency measures to areas easiest to measure. The system should measure what is important not what is easy to quantify. The measurement should be accurate, valid and consistent.
• Management by exception: Management attention is directed to areas of need. Identifying what constitutes an exception to the norm is useful exercise in its own right. The process involves setting tolerances and benchmarks for normal operations. Management action becomes a priority when pre set limits are breached.

Problems of Control

Three problems are commonly associated with the control systems.

·         The system can be costly. The benefits of control and subsequent improvements are outweighed by the cost of the control mechanism. This often relates to large bureaucratic systems- layer upon layer of administration is built upon each. This is self serving rather than customer focused, often absorbing resources that would be more effectively deployed in core activities.

·         Control systems stifle effort and creativity – such systems promote uniformity and conformance to pre set targets. They become barriers to innovation.

·         Control promotes a view of inspection as opposed to developments- systems often deal with the symptom rather than the root of the problem. This leads to constant fire fighting and looking for quick fixes as opposed to developing a better overall method of operation. The effect is to filter and /or suppress information from those with the power to radically overhaul a poor system.