Implementation and Control for Marketing Plan - Assignment Example

9. Implementation and Control The previous section of this report was associated towards the development of economic evaluation whereby the market size and other related variables such as price, revenues, customers, and financial concerns such as sales force, forecasts of sales, market share were examined along with the profit and loss analyses and simulations illustrating the sensitivity. The focus now is towards the implementation and evaluation of the marketing strategy by means of deploying the three key steps i.e. the action plan, monitoring the action, and finally the contingency planning. The plan of action defines how the marketing plan would be executed i.e. put into action. Monitoring of the activities is another critical aspect because it is the monitoring of the same that defines and ensures that the plan is moving in the right direction and is rightly applied. Finally, the contingency plan is another important aspect because it defines the exception situation i.e. the reaction towards an unforeseen or an unexpected situation or circumstance. 9.1 Action plan for implementation of recommendations Activity/Task Responsible Start Date Completion Date Establishing links with the primary target market Marketing Department 19th October 2009 26th October 2009 Identification of opportunities Market Research Department 26th October 2009 2nd November 2009 Segmentation and idea generation Market Research Department 2nd November 2009 7th November 2009 Idea screening Market Research Department 7th November 2009 12th November 2009 Pilot testing / focus groups Product Development Department 12th November 2009 15th November 2009 Product development for test marketing Market Research Department 15th November 2009 22nd November 2009 Test marketing Market Research Department 22nd November 2009 10th December 2009 Mass production Product Development Department 10th December 2009 30th December 2009 Launch and Mass marketing Marketing Department 31st December 2009 9.2 Monitoring of Action Plan For monitoring the task, it is proposed to have a cross functional departmental team assigned to the project which will not just be responsible for having a check at the progress and comparing it against the proposed timeline for ensure timeliness but would also be responsible for regular feedbacks, which may lead to amendments in the marketing plan at any level, even if it is at the fundamental because the organization does not want itself launching a product that back fires and takes down the existing repute of the business as well. Following is a basic pictorial representation of how the monitoring cycle looks like, as the one described above is derived from the same: Figure 6 – Monitoring process 9.3 Contingency Plans Miller (2002) states that 70% of the strategic plans containing various initiatives primarily fail due to factors contributing from: the organization itself, the people (the employees) or the partners (share and stakeholders). In this scenario i.e. of SBA, the major participants are the marketing department personal along with the organizations that are currently involved in development of these games. Despite the great number of internal forces addition to the external factors, Hrebioniak (2006) conducted researches to conclude some potential obstacles that hurdle the implementation of an effective strategy. Some of these that are associated to this case are: Lack of information sharing as much as it should be done amongst the units that are responsible for the execution of a strategy Execution of strategies that conflict the present/existing set up Executing strategies when there are high priority jobs pending Inadequate participation and commitment from the management stakeholders, including the difficulties in initiation of a project and low levels of management interest being the prime factors For overcoming these and several other forms of issues, it is recommended to serve the internal customers on top priority, making people realize that this is a business opportunity that would be beneficial for their organization in the long run and it is a window of opportunity that needs to be exploited. The concept is similar to that of customer care, i.e. just as the external customers, the strategy to be implemented needs to be ‘sell’ to the internal customers to have a major impact towards its ease of application. Researchers such as Hooley et al (2008) clearly embark that internal marketing is critical for the executives for providing the analytical insight to the issues that need to be addressed before the implementation of the strategy. And factors such as culture, power, organizational values, view points and other intangibles of the employees have a major influence towards the decision making and therefore can ultimately impact the way the organization approaches this business opportunity. Read More