Development and Implementation of a Marketing Strategy of Softxpand Software - Assignment Example

 Development and Implementation of a Marketing Strategy of Softxpand Software Summary Softxpand is software by Miniframe that allows multiple users to share one PC that is on Windows XP professional. Each user will require a monitor, mouse and a key board (PC Plus, 2008). The PC can be shared by six to eight users depending on the product chosen. PCI Express slots are required to connect the users to the single PC. The users share the PC and do not require individual supporting software thus reducing management cost of a business in addition to heat emission to the environment and electricity usage. Any company hoping to go green can adopt this software. The software reduces the hardware required, softwares by each PC, reduction in purchasing and management cost and it is environmentally friendly (PC Plus, 2008). The Miniframe’s softxpand is a unique solution however most market analyst feels that the company target middle class earners and the company should develop a product cuts across all markets. The product meets the needs of companies and organizations that require multiple working stations such as schools, call centers, government institutions, small organizations, banks among others (PC Plus, 2008). Each user is independent, flexible, can run different programmes including heavy programmes like multimedia software depending on the specifications of the PC. They have distributors across different continents with since their main goal is to be the leading distributor of the green computing software (London web, n.d.). Its main competitors are NComputing and MPS plus softwares are developed day after day. Another challenge is to convince established companies and institutions that have invested in the conventional computers to change to the new concept. Both NComputing and MPS are based on similar concept of one PC being shared by multiple users Introduction Businesses operate in a complex environment and its performance is affected by both internal and external factors. In order to attain and maintain profitability a company must adapt to the business environment through change (City of Chandler Project Management, n.d., P. 1) . Companies must be profitable, competitive, focused and productive. The companies must reanalyze its marketing strategies and product strategy. As a result of business environment complexity even a small decision involves various stakeholders. Project management involves putting into practice skills knowledge, techniques and tools to meet the expectations of all involved stakeholders. Each project’s success is measured in terms of the quality, time and cost. In some cases this factors can be adjusted within the period of the project to ensure sussesful completion of the project within the allocated time and resources in form of cost and staff (Enterprise pm n.d.). Therefore a project has to start and end at specific period of time, using specific resources to attain a specific objective (City of Chandler Project Management, n.d., P. 1). Major stages of a project are initiation, planning execution, control and closing. Project management helps the company to plan, organize and implement its activities in an organized manner using the available resources, project manager must have management skills, communication skills, risk mitigation skills, procurement skills, time and cost management skills as well as integration skills (City of Chandler Project Management, n.d., P. 1) The development and implementations of a marketing strategy like any other project requires time, resources and measurable objectives. The project team will be based at the miniframe headquarters. The team will consist of five members. Members will be drawn from marketing department, product development and innovation, finance department and human resources department. The project will be funded by the company. The stakeholders will be the Miniframe, company appointed partners as well as distributors across the globe. This will paper will analysis a project aim at developing a marketing strategy for Softxpand. The project Miniframe, like any other company is seeking to increase its market share in a competitive business environment. Its competitors for softxpand are NComputing, MPS and conventional computers in a company. A new marketing strategy will help the company to set goal and objectives and a plan on how to achieve the goals. The marketing strategy will educate the customers and the target groups for a period of one year with the possibility of extension if its objectives are met. The regular review of marketing strategy will determine the need for extra resources. It will also be adjusted depending on the marketing needs (Klausner, 2013). All key factors of marketing mix will be considered which are product, price, place and promotion (Owomoyela, Olasunkanmi and Oyeniyi, 2013). The objective of the marketing strategy is to double the revenue on sale of soft expand in a period of one year by increase the number of distributors as well its customer base. The project will be funded by Miniframe who is the main stakeholder. The other stakeholders are the customers, the distributors as well as other partners in the distribution of channel of softxpand. The team will consist of five members with one representative from the core department and the project manager. These core departments include marketing department, finance department, product and innovation department as well as Human resources management. Stages of the project Project management is a complex process since all the must be performed in relation to a specific time frame. Gantt chart helps the project manager to develop the project activities in relation to time frame. All the activities are clearly stated and the time frame required. It provides the team members with information on the progress of the project (Mind Tools Ltd, n.d.). The project manager set out all the activities involved in the project and their time frame, the team members responsible to undertake each task and the expected hindrances. In addition all the team members as well as the stakeholders are informed on the project progress. The top management of Miniframe held a strategic meeting on how to increase revenue from softxpand product. The managers decide to develop a marketing strategy and I was nominated as the strategic marketing project manager. In the current project the first step will be team formation (Santiago, n.d.). With the guidance of the head of marketing manager we selected the team members within one and all the members were informed of their new responsibilities and confirmed their willingness to participate in the project. The strategic marketing team has five members. As the project manager I adopted a democratic model of leadership where all the team members were involved in the decision making process from the initial stages of the project. This would help to create a sense of ownership to the project. We developed a list of all activities and allocated duties to each member. This was done in one week. During this period we also come up with the budget requirement for each activity. All members were to develop come up with requirements and strategy for the allocated activities within a period of one week. We held constant meetings and developed a strategic marketing plan for four weeks. The strategy was implemented and with monthly review on the progress. The list of activities was as in the figures below represent the Gantt cycle of the project Activity description start time End time Duration Team Formation Day one Day seven One week Work allocation Day eight Day fourteen one week Discussions and Research Day fifteen Day twenty one One week Formulation Day twenty two Day forty nine four weeks Time in Weeks Activities description In developing the strategy the team considered the following factors Products: A product is an important a key factor. Softxpand is a unique product that fits the needs of organizations to reduce cost and environmental sustainability. The product is available for domestic use as well as company use. Customers are attracted to products that have quality products that have unique characteristic (Owomoyela, Olasunkanmi and Oyeniyi 2013). Softxpand a superior product since users are able to work independently. The team proffered to market the product in its current form. Target market: The target groups for the product are schools, government institutions, business organization. The team decided to promote its products targeting schools which are currently embracing use of technology in their learning processes. Price: companies should adopt pricing strategy that relates to its competitors. NComputing and other competitors offering similar products have similar pricing strategy as softxpand. However adapting softxpand package is cheaper than the conventional computers. Rather than reducing their prices the team agreed to develop a brochure that shows the target customers how they can reduce their cost by buying the softxpand package. Promotion is any activity that creates awareness of a specific company or product to the target customers (Owomoyela, Olasunkanmi and Oyeniyi 2013). The team agreed to increase their presence online to reach to its target customers globally by advertising on social media, online News agency and other website with heavy traffic. Distribution: Softxpand is currently distributed by appointed dealers and resellers across the globe. The team agreed to that the Human resources and finance department should develop a package to reward the distributors who meet a specific target. The marketing department will also recruit more resellers and distributors across the globe. The stakeholders Marketing strategy is a complex plan that involves various stakeholders. The shareholders must support the activity since they must approve the funding of the project in expectation that the strategy will add value to the company. The company management team is the supervisors of the project performance. Their motivation is in increase in sales of softxpand. Currently they have committed to supporting the distributors who show their potential to sell the softxpand without raising the initial capital. However this has not been documented and therefore is still a major hindrance to the project. The team members are motivated to their objective since the management teams are in support of their activities. The reward structure to the distributors has been formulated and communicated to the distributors and this is acting as a motivation to generate more sales. Brochures to educate the customers on how to use the softxpand package has been sent out to customers. Most customers have indicated that this has been of great importance to them. Time management According to Atkinson (1999), a project is an activity that is aim at attaining specific objective in a stated period of time. The development and implementation of marketing strategy of softxpand has limited resources in terms of capital and time. Its goal main goal is to increase sales of softxpand. The development and implementation period was two months. The formulation stage was completed on time. This was due to the commitment of the team members to the project. Team members were able to complete their assigned duties on time and this led to overall success of the formulation stage. This can be associated with the democratic leadership style. Every member was given equal opportunity to in decision making and assignment allocation therefore they were comfortable with their assignment. Major hinderance in formulation stage is obtaining feedback from customers who are the target group. This was contributed by the fact that softxpand is sold directly to the customers as well as through partners. most of the sales are generated through resellers and therefore the team wanted to get feedback from customers who buys directly from the company and from resellers. The project team had to contact resellers who in turn obtained information from the customer. This was not predicted at the initial stages of the project. The team was not able to implement the full strategy in one month as planned. Implementation of the strategy required that the team work together with managers of various departments such as human resource and marketing. This required a lot of time than expected. The team anticipated doubling the number of distributors in two months but most of the distributors were not willing or able to pay the initial deposited. The team suggested that the company should reevaluate on the terms and conditions that a distributor should fulfill before joining the network. Most of the distributor suggested reduction on the initial licenses a distributor should buy. However the company suggested that they need time to evaluate the policies. The project is a continuous process with monthly review. The project has led to increase in revenue collection from sale of softxpand but its goal has not been achieved. The project was expected to increase double sales revenue from softxpand but this has not been achieved. However the project period have not lapsed and therefore the team needs to improve the current strategy. SWOT Analysis of the team This is a management strategy to determine internal and external factors affecting business or a team. Internal factors are the strength and weakness of the team that influence their performance (Downey 2007, P. 5). The project manager can be able to improve the team performance by analyzing their strength and take advantage of them while eliminating weakness. The team strengths include. Skill and knowledge is a major strength. All the team members are drawn from different department thus pooling together people from different background in terms training and experience. Resources, the top managers as well as the shareholders have committed to support the team in terms of cost and training. Product, the team is developing strategy to promote a product that has strong characteristics in terms of efficiency, reducing cost and environmentally friendly. Leadership, as a team manager I have adopted democratic leadership style where all members are treated equally and their decision is important. Weaknesses are the negative aspects of the team. The major challenge facing the team is time management. The team is working under tight schedule since it has not been able to achieve the objectives so far. This can be associated with huge workload that was not anticipated at the initial stages of the project. Policies, the company has policies that are not favorable to the distributors due to the initial capital requirements. However the top management team has committed to reevaluate these policies. The team is does not have a reward programmes for members with extra ordinary performance. Recommendations The team has been able to perform some of their activities within the required time frame but there is need for improvement. As the project manager, I recommend that the team need to reevaluate their strategy to allocate time for the activities that were not anticipated at the initial stages. The company needs to reevaluate their requirement before a reseller is recruited to reduce the initial capital requirement since their aim is to increase sales through distributers. Communication is a key factor in obtaining feedback. The company needs to establish ways to interact with their customer in order to get feedback o how to improve their products. Conclusion Project management is an important aspect of any company. All activities must be directed to a specific objective in a specific period of time. Any project is analyzed in terms of cost, time and quality results. The project manager must involve all the stakeholders in decision making to ensure that their needs are met. Projects are faced with several challenges that must be resolved in order to achieve the set objectives and therefore the need for constant review. References Atkinson R. 1999, “Project management: Cost, time and quality, two best guesses and a phenomenon, it’s time to accept other success criteria.” International Journal of Project Management Vol. 17, No. 6, pp. 337 ± 342, 1999 City of Chandler Project Management. n.d., “ Methodology guidelines: Project management methodology & step-by-step guide to managing successful project s.” PM0.0.0-PMMethodology-GDE.doc Downey J. 2007, “Strategic Analysis Tools’ Topic Gateway Series No. 34. The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants” . Viewed From: Enterprise PM n.d. “The triple constraint: The triple constraints of projects: quality, cost and schedule.” Klausner A., (2013). “Ideas from financial advisors: Creating a successful marketing strategy.” Forbes.com Viewed from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/advisor/2013/04/17/creating-a-successful-marketing-strategy/ London web. N.d., “ MiniFrame Receives Frost & Sullivan's 2010 European Desktop Virtualisation Product Innovation Green Excellence Award.” Viewed 9, November 2013. http://softxpand.londonweb.net/index.cfm?asset_id=1436 Mind Tools Ltd. N.d., “Gantt charts Planning and scheduling team projects.”Viewed 9 November2013: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_03.htm#sthash.l9HVCogw.dpuf Owomoyela, S. K., Olasunkanmi, S. and Oyeniyi, K. O. 2013, “Investigating the impact of marketing mix elements on consumer loyalty: an empirical study on Nigerian breweries plc.” Interdisciplinary Journal Of Contemporary Research In Business, 4(11), 485-496. PC Plus. 2008, “MiniFrame SoftXpand review: Turn one PC into four, or six, with MiniFrame's handy setup. Future Publishing Limited. Viewed 9 November2013 http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/software/utilities/other-software/miniframe-softxpand-463964/review Santiago N. n.d., “Project management tools and techniques: An introductory course in project management foundations.” Project Management Institute Read More