Nabbit Grabbit and Cheatem Automotive Group - Case Study Example

Nabbit, Grabbit & Cheatem Automotive Group (NGCAG) Nabbit, Grabbit & Cheatem Automotive Group (NGCAG) is one of the greatest as well as largest automobile companies that deal with the sales of vehicles, their parts and also the services of the vehicles. It is located in the western part of Australia and has a total of six well established outlets which are located around the metropolitan suburbs and also there are eight small outlets located in the greater part of the metropolitan. The company employs only a total of less than one thousand employees. Nabbit, Grabbit & Cheatem Automotive Group (NGCAG) is divided in a some business units namely body repair and sales, service, and parts. It is a company that does it operations in the market centre and it never services the luxury vehicles. Identification of the main business events and the use cases as well as relevant activity diagrams for the computer based workshop loading system There are four main important business events in the company namely services, body repairs, sales and advertisements all of which are best managed through strategic panning. Strategic planning is a very important component of the success of an organization either profit earning or non profit earning organization (Chandler, 2002). It is the means by which the organization uses as its framework for making decisions as well as securing its approval and support, it provides the means by which an organization gets a detailed plan to run its activities, it acts as a way of advertising the business to the world for the purposes of informing, involving and motivating. It is a way of assisting in performance monitoring and benchmarking, it is also the means by which the organization stimulates change as well as it is the building block used for initiating the next needed plan for the organization (Burns, 2001). In the very competitive environment in terms of business, a business must have a strategic plan so that it can be able to stand in the platform of competition (Boxall & Purcell, 2003). The following are the five processes that is involved in the process of formulating a business strategy; objectives and mission formulation, environmental scanning, formulation of the strategy, implementation of the strategy and finally the control and the evaluation of the strategy (Peter, 2007). Unlike products, services have more direct impact on the customers. Thus marketing of services ought to be more deliberate and considered (Salder & Craig, 2003). The competencies of a service provider and his resources need to be audited carefully. Services require to be positioned appropriately for them to be bought by customers (Burns, 2001). As opposed to products, services are more intractable. Services need to be defined precisely and be designed in an appropriate service product mix. Promotion of products is less challenging as opposed to promotion of services due to intangible nature of services (Salder & Craig, 2003). Another unique aspect of services is that one basic service can be provided in many different service business enterprises which are involved in provision of different levels of amenities and luxuries. Services are also unique in that similar services can be delivered in different ways (Chandler, 2002). Marketing mix used in marketing services conveys how the service is positioned in the market. Apart from being intangible, services have other unique features such as perishability, variability and presence of other consumers. Thus during marketing of services, the marketing mix ought to differentiate the service from competition on attributes that are highly valued by the target customers (Finlay, 2000). This implies that the marketers ought to make two vital decisions: choose the target market and create differential advantage. Therefore, service marketing requires that marketers be able to know where to compete and how to compete (Hendry, 2003). The 4Ps of marketing is the best known way through which the marketing mix is defined which was first expressed by E J McCarthy. The 4Ps are product, price, place and promotion. The product is what the consumer wants from the service or product. It also entails the needs satisfied by the product or service (Chandler, 2002). The product also describes the features that the product or a service has that enable it to satisfy the needs of customers. It includes things that the marketers do to make the product or service to be more attractive to customers so that they can buy it. Thus, products include the physical product or service itself, elements associated with the service or product such as packaging or the way the service is delivered, quality, features, options, warranties, brand name, and features. These attributes of a product or a service ought to meet the needs of a specified target market (Boxall & Purcell, 2003). For instance, a luxury service ought to create the right image for consumers who have everything. Place on the other hand describes decisions that marketers have to make on where to sell the product or the service (Hendry, 2003). It may also entail the location of the customers and how to reach them. Place also takes into consideration all channels of distribution that are needed to get the product to the customers (Trevor, 2009). On the other hand, promotion is the mode used by marketers to describe the product or the service to potential customers (Hill & Jones, 2007). Promotion may be mass selling, sales promotion, or personal selling. Mass selling involves advertising which a firm pays for or publicity which is free of charge (Finlay, 2000). Sales promotion entails things that marketers do to get the consumers to try the service or the product or coupons, contests and free samples. Price refers to how much the firm charge for its product or service (Guest, 1997). Pricing is used by marketers when the price for their product or service is lower than that of competitors. High priced products fetch more profits but are hard to maintain especially where there are more competitors or where the product or service quality is compromised. Thus pricing of products or services is dependent on the value the product or the service renders to the consumer. The price of services or products can be determined through various means such as cost plus, value based, competitive, going rate, skimming, discount, loss leader or psychological based. Produce the necessary use case and activity diagrams to show how parts are ordered for service work Use Case Diagram The case diagram below represents the process that a product takes from the time the expertise are on a meeting for their job description till the time a car is manufactured and incase there is a fault, it is then returned for repair. The expertise is responsible of diagnosing and then giving the report to the manufacturing department. The accounting department gives the payment details to the invoice department which then gets in touch with the customer. Once the customer receives the product then he or she can communicate back to the company for any needs that are not yet meet. This is then again discussed in the seminar with the expertise. Use case diagram Job description Request service Expertise Customer Update Return of the car for services Diagnose report Notice Mechanical Payment detail Perform job payment Activity diagram explanation The diagram below is a representative of the activities that take place from the moment a customer brings a car in the company during the seminars for repair until the services are offered and the car given back to the customer Customer needs. Needs approved New customer Diagnose report Identification current member Report (Car return) Payment cleared i) Explain how NGCAG can use the new system to improve the utilization of its staff and resources. One of the ways of human resource management is through motivation. Through motivation, there can be a great deal of improvement in performance (Guest, 1997). Motivation has been defined as the combination of one’s desires as well as energy, which are all directed in achieving a certain goal. In other words, it is what causes a certain action to be taken (Finlay, 2000). In order to influence people’s motivation then it means to get them to do what you actually want them to do. It should be noted that not all people are motivated by the same things to perform. There is a very strong relationship between the improvement in the human resource management and the management of the human resources in a given organization. Actually, it is very evident that the management of the human resource is a facilitator or rather an enabler and a very effective strategic option to achieving improvement in organizational management. Human resource management has also been termed as the perfect approach of personnel (Boxall & Purcell, 2003). Some of the outcomes that have proved that it is a good form of human resource management include low absenteeism; cost effectiveness is high, dull to utilization of the human resource in full, increase performance in their jobs and good relationship with others. Performance in any organization is however not completely based on the human resource management, there are other things other are also involved like the performance relationship (Burns, 2001). Also the plan enables the business to be focused to the objectives, goals and purposes that it was intended for (Burns, 2001). The management can be keen in the issues of appraising the employees, training them frequently and also rewarding them. Also there can be an introduction of a night shift. Innovation is dynamic meaning that for the company to remain competitive it must keep up with the new technology (Lovelock & Gummesson, 2004). This means that more often the company must important new technological equipments. ii) Explain how NGCAG can use the new system to improve customer satisfaction. Services encounters acknowledge that any terrible ending often dominate the recollection of the experience of a person. In most cases, customers do not notice how long it takes the service to be delivered when they are engaged mentally and hence service marketers often take advantage of this to engage their customers mentally (Burns, 2001). Furthermore, more often than not customers desperately want to make sense out of unexpected events. The service encounters should therefore be studied from the customer’s point of view (Guest, 1997). Marketers should finish strongly, ensure they get the bad experience out of the way early, segment the pleasure, combine the pain and build commitment via choice and offer people rituals and stick to them. On the other hand, service recovery ensures that angry customers are assuaged through well-intentioned, apt, and prompt recovery (Finlay, 2000). This requires that all stakeholders at the firm have the motivation, skill and authority to make service recovery to be the main component of service operation (Guest, 1997). In order to attain high service standards the service delivery system need to be production oriented. If marketers pay extra attention to all what the consumers need or want then, marketers will definitely make products similar to the ones already in existence (Boxall & Purcell, 2003). This is because consumers normally go for the products they know and not for the ones they possibly not know. Therefore, for the marketers to be effective, they need skills, which go beyond APIC (analysis, planning, implementation and control). Marketers need to be able to create new realities, dramas, artificial scarcities and celebrations among others (Ramlall, 2003). The contemporary marketing concept implies that marketers must be submissive to customers and go all out to please those customers (McDaniel & Gates, 1998). This vision may be conceived as pull. This means the firm listens to customers and is driven by satisfying their needs or wants (Hendry, 2003). In contrast, marketing may also be conceived as a push. This reflects discipline. Whereby, there is influencing/persuading. However, any suggestion that marketers might share with the customer, even manipulating the public, is taboo (Guest, 1997). This is because the public is meant to make decisions for itself without any external force or influence. In fact, some of the greatest marketers of the past such as PT Barnum teased the public, overdramatized offerings and yet the public loved it. Should the customer be dominant and the marketer always submissive? The automobile industry will be the key example. ii) Make a suggestion as to how NGCAG can differentiate itself in the vehicle service market and explain how the new system could help in this process. The main way through which the company can differentiate itself in the vehicle service company is through making considerations in deciding marketing objective (Paauwe, 2009). There are a number of considerations in formulating marketing objectives for any given organization depending on the industry involving. It should be noted that the entire objective must be SMART (Thompson & Martin, 2005). This means Specific, measurable, achievable, realist and time bound. In order to achieve a smart objective in the market, any the marketers must consider the profit margin that they want to reach (Boxall & Purcell, 2003). This means that before setting any market objective, they should make a cost benefit calculation to decide the profit they intend to achieve, by doing that they will be able to come up with a good objective (Burns, 2001). The marketers should also consider the needs of the customers. This means that there should be a research carried out in the vicinity where the business will be set to be able to establish what the customers need (Thompson & Martin, 2005). The marketer should also be able to look at the corporate vision (Lovelock & Gummesson, 2004). This means that the corporate leader must have a definite vision to where the business is heading. The final consideration to make is the eight P’s. This refers to the following Product- this refers to the product that is in question like the model of the car Price-the amount of cash needed to purchase the product if it is exported cars Promotion-this entails the methods of advertising to get the product familiar to the buyers People-the consumers that are targeted Placement-the location of the product Process- the channel to be used to get the product to the consumers Physical environment- the place in terms of mood, tone and ambient of the environment Packaging- the ways in which the product will be protected References Boxall, P. & Purcell, J. (2003). Strategy and human resource management. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Burns, T. (2001). The management of innovation. London: Tavistock. Chandler, A. (2002). Management theory and practice. London: Thomson. Finlay, P. (2000). Strategic management: an introduction to business and corporate strategy. New York: Pearson Education. Guest, D. (1997). 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Human Resource Planning, 26(1), 51-62. Salder, P., & Craig, J. (2003). Strategic management, 2nd Ed. London: Kogan Page Publishers. Thompson, J., & Martin, F. (2005). Strategic management: awareness and change, 5th Ed. California: Cengage Learning EMEA. Trevor, J. (2009). Can pay be strategic? In S. Corby, S. Palmer and E. Lindop (eds.): Rethinking Reward, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, pp. 21-40. Read More