Hovey Insurance and Financial Services - Research Proposal Example

? UNIT 5 Assignment Hovey Company [Pick the home Contents Contents 2 Introduction 3 1 Purpose 3 2 Stakeholders 5 3 Scope and Limitations 6 2.0 Industry Background 7 3.0 Current State 7 4.0 Desired State 8 5.0 Methodology 8 6.0 Literature Review 9 7.0 Business Analysis 12 8.0 Conclusion 13 9.0 Alternatives 14 10. Recommendations 14 11. Justification 15 12. Implementation Proposal 15 Appendices 16 Figure 1 16 Figure 2 17 References 18 1. Introduction JM Hovey is an insurance company which is seeking to make a new marketing plan in order to attract more customers and create a place in the insurance market. The company is adopting a new approach that is the technology approach which will help the company to fulfill and achieve the objectives that it wants to achieve. It hired a designer to create their company website which would inform the people of all the products and services that the company provides. Along with the new marketing strategy, the company faces a number of challenges that it has to overcome in order to create awareness about their website. The company is using different approaches which would help them to achieve a greater market share and also increase their sales (Admin 2010). 1.1 Purpose I was asked to perform two tasks by the company. Firstly, I had to search for a website designer who would make a plan to create a website for the company. I was responsible for creating the contents of the website and also work with the designer so that there exists collaboration between both of us. Secondly, I had to create a marketing plan which would attract the consumers towards the website of the Hovey Company. I was given a time of two months at the most for the completion of the tasks. In order to complete the work in the given time, I took out time every week in order to see the amount of time that the execution can be carried out and also check if the plan needed any kind of reform or change(Nijssen & Frambach 2001). The New Brunswick province is considered to be a niche market and is the main target of the company. Huestis Insurance Group is the parent company of Hovey company which manages the Atlantic Provinces and the Hovey company can also be understood to be an agent or the broker for the Huestis Group (Nijssen & Frambach 2001). A road map was constructed which would help to complete the work and fulfilling the major objectives and plans of the tasks. The first task as mentioned before was to design the company’s website. For this, I selected the three major areas of the company namely life, personal and commercial insurance. Each of the topic had a different color different than the others and consisted of all the information about that type of program of insurance. Every category would have a sub-category for example liability insurance and commercial insurance under it. I also added some details about every category of insurance in order to motivate and attract people to buy the insurance(Nijssen & Frambach 2001). The home-page of the website will consist of the slogan of the company which is ‘Insurance is the Solution’ that will give an overall idea of the company to the people. The website will also consist of the contact numbers of the company as well as their toll free number. The next step was to meet different designers and claim the best design and offer for the website. These steps were important in order to create the marketing strategy for the company on the internet. The first task for me to fulfill was the online marketing for the company (Berry & Wilson 2001). The next objective that i had to fulfill was to create a plan by attracting potential consumers so that they go through the website of the company and come to know about the current services and products(Berry & Wilson 2001). Once to website is fully constructed, I would need to look for different strategies on how to let the customers know about the website and its services. 1.2 Stakeholders The insurance agencies and the brokers mostly sell similar services and products and they also have the same prices which is creating difficulties for the smaller companies to create and compete with the bigger companies (Berry & Wilson 2001). The Hovey Company was focusing on the Moncton and Saint John market and also in the areas which lied between Hampton and Sussex. The Hovey Company however is seeking to gain more market share and the sales products. The overall expansion of the plan has been carried out even though they are restricted to specific challenges that are faced by the company (Nijssen & Frambach 2001). The main dimensions that the company is working on is enhancing the customer services and creating a new marketing plan in order to reach out to more clients who might be commercial or individual(Berry & Wilson 2001). The website would also help to attract individuals or group stakeholders. This will help the company to expand their budget so that it can be used in a broader sense. Technology investment has a long term and positive effect on the performance of the company, but the company currently is focused on the short term rather than a longer term (Westwood 2013). Presently, the company has realized the importance of the investment in technology and how it would have a positive impact on the company for a longer term. It also has the opportunity the position the company again the market and enhance the activities by investing in technology and innovation (Westwood 2013). 1.3 Scope and Limitations In order to attract the customers, the company would need to use an emotional effect on them through including pictures which would tell how important insurance is in their lives and it is an investment which is worthwhile, since insurance is known to be a hypothetical service and product. The major challenge that is being faced is the database of the old customers that is not available. This is also one of the major problems in order to attract the new customers (Smith 2013). Another challenge is the budget of the company which is limited so this poses a great problem because the company cannot mail brochures to random people. I decided to mainly focus on the festivals and events in Sussex and Saint John due to these challenges. I would distribute the designed brochures in the festivals of Sussex and Saint John and let people know about the products and vision of the company. Some external factors exist which would help the company to increase the sales for example the people’s nature which I afraid of the risks and they understand that it cannot be faced alone (Smith 2013). The people are always seeking to send that risk to another partner and the company wants to be that partner. It is seeking to build a relationship with its consumers that are strong and also provide them with service of high quality. Anyone who has even the slight knowledge of using the internet will be able to access the website. The company also adapts the change of policies and also sending notices of renewal to its clients. In order to improve its efficiency and save time, the company wants to convert all its activities into digital computing. The company wants to achieve the objectives and also want to gain more customers with the help of technology since it is their belief that technology will help the company in achieving those objectives (Leeflang 2000). 2.0 Industry Background The JM Hovey Company which was founded in 1965 is a finance and insurance company which is recognized for its excellent service ad good quality. The headquarters of the company were stationed in Hampton in New Brunswick. In recent years, the company has grown a lot. It provides a variety of insurances to the individuals and businesses that they go through daily. The company consists of three areas namely life, personal and commercial insurance. The company offers different policies in each of these areas to the clients (Admin 2010). Although the company exercises very uncomplicated approaches and techniques but it needs to better its techniques in order to stay consistent with the outlook of the company. At the early stages of the company, the ‘word of mouth’ technique was very successful but it is not very effective now because the competition has increased in the business area and other techniques have become more effective(Admin 2010). 3.0 Current State Currently, the company is facing a number of challenges in order to complete the project and the plan that they have developed for the website. In order to survive the challenges, the company has to follow different plans that give the solutions of the problems. Limited budget is one of the biggest challenges that are being faced by the company. When implementing a business plan, the funds are one of the most important parts. The different types of funds required are the wages for the website makers, the payments for the consultancy fees, marketing fees and other small expenses as well (Leeflang 2000). If all of these are not successful, it gets very difficult for the company to take the project to the end stages. Very few companies in the current environment of business have the complete amount of resources to fulfill their objectives. Apart from that they also find it difficult to fulfill their objectives in the limited budget they have. The JM Hovey Company is also part of this current environment and has to compete with other companies with similar problems. This problem sometimes forces the company to go for the bidder with the lowest bidding as well as looking for the correct people they want to deal with for the completion of the plan. Opting for the low bidders would also mean that the company would not have the people who are best in their work and experienced in this market. Consequently, this till not help the company to achieve its targets in the best manner because the expectations would not be able to be fulfilled and the project would also take more than its time to complete. (Leeflang 2000). 4.0 Desired State The company wants to market their website in various ways and try out the different options that are available to them. One of the biggest resources they want is the funds which they can use for investment. Since the company has a limited amount of budget and they have to act in that limit, they do not have a lot of options to avail. Due to this, the company has to depend upon the cheap ways of marketing their website which are the only ones available to them. One of the problems is that the company does not use the latest technology because of which it finds difficulty in adopting internet to form a campaign in social media; instead of that, they can only rely on the old methods for the campaign(Nijssen & Frambach 2001). The company however, is planning to take the campaign to a new level i.e. the digital level after its website reaches the success point. 5.0 Methodology JM Hovey Company currently plans to utilize the flyers for their campaign of the website. It has planned to circulate the flyers in places like Saint John and Sussex. The distribution of flyers in the public places would help the company to spread awareness about the company’s website at the limited funds that they have. This method also requires less people to do the job which would reduce the cost that is involved in the whole process(Neves, e Castro & Consoli 2010). These places are visited by a very large number of people due to which the company wants to focus on this particular area of market. In addition, this campaign has also been proven to be a success and also very effective in transferring the message to everyone(Neves, e Castro & Consoli 2010). One of the disadvantages of this process is that it does not draw enough attention of the consumers which does not send the proper message that the company wants to convey. The social media like Facebook and Twitter is more effective than the flyers and very less people would search the website of a company. The company also does not have the database of its previous customers or the campaign would have been much easier to be carried out. This would have helped the company to use the contacts of the customers to spread awareness about their website, but this is not the case so the company has to rely on the new consumers to make their campaign a successful one(Neves, e Castro & Consoli 2010). 6.0 Literature Review The JM Company has been doing business since 48 years but it still does not rely on the latest technology to create awareness about their business. Many companies are doing the same business in market and they also have more market share and profit. JM Company has decided to create their own website which would give all the details of their business and attract customers. They have a limited budget in which they have to complete their tasks. The main problem that the company is facing is the absence of technology in their methods of working. Almost all the companies currently are using technology to carry out their day to day operations to fulfill the demands of the global world and deliver quality products and goods to the customers. In order to deliver the high quality services and products, the companies have to use the latest technology and invest in it. The companies carry out their operations in an international platform which involves a lot of competition and the consumers have a lot of choice to regarding the services and goods. Many companies are increasing technological investments in order to compete heavily in the market. Many of them have to objective of the long term advantages from this investment. The capital investmentin technology is very high but there are also long term advantages for the company(Woodward 2005). The service industry gains loyalty form the customers due to their high quality service while the companies save a lot from producing the goods. The JM company is low on investment in technology. The company also faced a number of problems while creating the website. The country was short of technology during the development process. This is a more big issue because the people who would want to access the website would be facing problems because of the internet traffic(Berry & Wilson 2001). This issue would also require the company to have more funds because in order for their customers to access the site easily, the company would have to pay additionally to the providers of the internet for a fast service. This is a great threat for the company. The company also is also going through the problem of confidentiality because it has to give the inside information to the public. This might pose an issue for the company because anyone from the public would give the information to its competitors in return of something. Apart from that the provider’s cost would also be high which does not suit the company at the current time because of its limited budget. One of the major factors is time which is important for quality work and giving good services to the consumers. The implementer and the planners give time to develop the plan of the project and start its first stage. Changes are also allowed during the implementation of the plan if any problem arises. On the other hand, the workers do not rush with the development of the plan which guarantees quality services and work. The workers take their time to do the work. The company also faces the issue of time for the completion of the project. This project is allowed to have eight weeks of work; however, normally a project is given twelve weeks with one week of lateness(Nijssen & Frambach 2001). So the company has to complete the project in a rush in the short time they are given. The workers are also working in pressure to complete the project. The developers also have to raise their cost of completing the project in order to do business with the company in future. If the developer has no intention of working with the company in the futures as well, then they do not give full attention to the quality of the work that they do in the given period of time. The important elements for the success of the company are research and development. Research helps the company to know its market. With full knowledge of what the company is about to face, it can easily recognize the types of services and products that would have a huge appeal to the consumers. It also helps to recognize the problems and finding out their solutions. It also delivers the high quality products to the customers and increases the revenues and profits for the company(Neves, e Castro & Consoli 2010). The research team after its research gives the report to the development team so that it can start its work based on the research. This also reduces the problems which are affecting the profitability of the company(Leeflang 2000). The company can result in a number of savings if it follows its research report. The JM Company should invest in the department of research but is lacks a fully equipped research department. They do not have the resources to carry out full research on the products that are available in the market. This resulted the company to take a lot of time in creating a website for their market strategy. 7.0 Business Analysis In order to analyze the business, it is important to go through its position in the market which includes conducting a SWOT analysis. Strengths: The company is existing since 48 years which means that they have customers who trust the company to and a line of loyal customers as well. The workers who are working with the development process are not rushing through the work which means that they are not compromising on quality work. The campaign which uses the distribution of flyers will be effective because it is being distributed in a public place. The intended message is easily transferred and the people transfer that message to more people. Weakness: The company does not have a lot of resources that they can utilize to create the website JM company has a limited budget which does not allow them to spend a lot of money on their campaign. The company does not have a research and development department as a result of which they do not have any information about the current market they would be entering The company does not use the latest technology which would leave them behind its competitors who are investing in technology for long-term plans Opportunities: The developers that the company has hired are sincere with their work which can be beneficial for the company’s marketing plan. The new technology can provide the company to attract more customers than the campaign that they have adopted. Threats: The company has a very short time in which to complete the project. This can result in the project that is full of problems The country also faces lack of technology which would make it difficult for the customers to access the website and the company would have to pay more than their budget to the outsource providers to gain a fast access on their website The company faces a security threat because all their inside information is being shared with the public and its competitors can gain that information. 8.0 Conclusion In order to complete the marketing plan given by the company, I completely desire to give my full contribution to the JM Company and help in improving the status of the company. The company must develop a research plan and look out for the developments happening in the market. This will give them an opportunity to the company to avoid the threats and grab the opportunities that come their way. The various challenges that are being faced by the company can be overcome if the company takes a different type of approach with its campaign. The JM Hovey Company is on the correct path and is prepared to launch its website the next week. This is the start of my journey of work in the hope that my work would completely satisfy the company and its members in all external and internal matters. 9.0 Alternatives The company is using the distribution of flyers in the public places. Another alternative that they can use is the door to door approach which would help the customers to better understand and take interest in the project of the company. The messenger would be able to easily convince the people to go through the website and apply for insurance. Apart from that, this would help in reaching more people who would then tell more people(Berry & Wilson 2001). The company can also paste flyers in different areas which are full of people and also give a help number for further information(Admin 2010). This would give the people an opportunity to know more about the company and its plans before the completion of the project. 10. Recommendations The company faces a number of issues which if they overcome can develop a successful place in the market. It should create a Research and Development Department which would help the company to overcome most of its problems. Researching first about the market that the company is going to enter would give an upper hand to the company against its competitor (Leeflang 2000). The company must also start investing in technology which would be beneficial for the long-term plans of the company. The companies are competing in the international platforms which give them experience and more funds, but the JM Company is still behind in technology, so they need to start adopting the internet for its campaign. Thirdly, they must also start meetings with high officials who would invest in their business because insurance is required at every level. It would increase the trust of the people and will help the company to gain more funds in order to carry out their operations in a much advanced way(Berry & Wilson 2001). 11. Justification The company is not given enough time for the development of their plan which can lead to a number of issues and their website can also face problems if the workers start working under pressure. The rush can provide minute problems that can happen in a rush and also be difficult to notice due to the quick working of the implementers(Berry & Wilson 2001). Apart from that, the technology that is absent from the country which is not the fault of the JM Company. If the country cannot provide its businessmen with proper facilities, then the company has to do work with the limited resources that they have. The JM Company with its limited budget is also taking risks by using the flyers distribution and providing all the internal details of their business to the company. This must be applauded because the other competitors can take advantage of this move. 12. Implementation Proposal As mentioned earlier, the company lacks its own Research and Developmental department which can help them to achieve more objectives in a shorter period of time. Before starting the project, the workers must busy themselves in researching the market. They can also carry out surveys which would help them to clearly understand the mind of the people(Vavra 1997). The surveys would allow the company to measure the factors that they can involve in their campaign and project. Despite the low finds and resources that they have for this project, the company must try to maintain the trust of their workers so that even if it is not able to provide them full payment, the workers work hard to complete the project. This will maintain the image of the company which has been operating since 48 years. Although technology is not readily available in the company but it must be adopted by the company in order to keep up with the latest changing trends. They must adopt the social media campaign for their project which will prove to be more fruitful and the project can be known by more people than just a limited amount of them (Vavra 1997). Appendices Figure 1 Figure 2 Milestones Deliverables Date Meetings for understanding the requirements of the designers Data Gathering 27/07/13 Surveys of other Insurance companies’ Websites Market Research 05/08/13 Meeting the Project team Analyzing the market 10/08/13 First template of website Design Software 20/08/13 References Admin 2010, 'Hovey insurance and financial services', Profile Canada. Admin 2012, 'Engaging children in literature through film', Kumon. Berry, T & Wilson, D 2001, On Target: The Book on Marketing Plans : how to Develop and Implement a Successful Marketing Plan, Palo Alto Software, Inc, UK. Charlotte, P 2012, 'Hollywood ate my novel: Novelists reveal what its like to have their book turned into a movie.', The Independent. Leeflang, P 2000, Building Models for Marketing Decisions, springer, UK. Neves, MF, e Castro, LT & Consoli, MA 2010, Marketing Methods to Improve Company Strategy: Applied Tools and Frameworks to Improve a Company s Competitiveness Using a Network Approach, Routledge, UK. Nijssen, E & Frambach, R 2001, Creating Customer Value Through Strategic Marketing Planning: A Management Approach, Springer, US. Running, K 2012, 'Books made into Movies', The Observer. Sawyer, P 2013, 'Is the Book Really Better Than the Movie?', Good Reads. Smith, H 2013, Marketing the City: The role of flagship developments in urban regeneration, Taylor & Francis, UK. Vavra, T 1997, Improving Your Measurement of Customer Satisfaction: A Guide to Creating, Conducting, Analyzing, and Reporting Customer Satisfaction Measurement Programs, ASQ Quality Press, US. Westwood, J 2013, How to Write a Marketing Plan, Kogan Page Publishers, UK. Woodward, J 2005, Creating the Customer-driven Library: Building on the Bookstore Model, American Library Association, US. Read More