Systems Group marketing adds value in two broad categories: customer facing lead generation engine and internally facing owner of the corporation’s brand and lead generation operational supply chain. As a customer facing, lead generation oriented organization, System’s marketing team approaches the marketplace via a number of carefully integrated media channels. Internally facing activities include:
Both the customer facing and internally oriented areas of the marketing value chain are inextricably intertwined. I developed this wheel diagram several years ago to describe the complex dynamic that exists between them. An argument can be made that without the diagnostics the chain would atrophy, losing value and mission focus over time.
The wheel
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• Integrating and unifying cross-brand strategy, guiding execution, monitoring performance, assessing efficacy, providing customer / marketplace insight and affinity to the IBM brand.
How Does the IBM Systems Group Marketing Value Chain Operates
As a worldwide very large enterprise, IBM has a number of layers that have to be integrated in order to cohesively disseminate a consistent message to markets worldwide. To examine the means by which the marketing value chain operates, we first need to orient ourselves to its organizational elements.
IBM consists of many individual brands, all of which are organized with relation to the marketplace starting with seven large geographic regions, such as North America, Latin
America, Europe, Greater China Group, etc. Each geographic element has a headquarters that manages the local operating company. Sellers and marketers are responsible to those local organizations, but their numbers also roll up to corporate HQ located in Armonk, NY.
Those large geographic areas break-out further into regions, countries and
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Although a very important sales and marketing channel, the operations management of the
Business Partner channel is handled by a dedicated organization. Still, the efficacy of their marketing campaigns and sales activities, are included as part of the marketing discipline ' so responsibility within the overall brand. This is because business partners are a primarily marketing driven customer facing channel.
Now things get a little tricky, brands cut across campaigns and campaigns cut across brands, sometimes by design, most of the time not. For example, the Systems Group has a broad marketing program called IBM Systems Program, it contains hundreds of campaigns which each contain multiple tactics that are executed in markets worldwide by IBMers and business partners, nearly all of which are also represented in one way or another online. The result of those tactics are interest generated for Systems products (zSystems / POWER / Storage) but also for applications which run on those systems or are used to manage the
They have a strong core transaction processing infrastructure for meeting operational needs of a company this size.
In a high competitive world market and with the increasing rational buyers a company can only win by creating and delivering the best customer value than the others competitors do. To succeed, a company needs to use the concepts of value chain.
IBM is a global information system and computing company. It is organized in 5 worldwide regions, and the following business units:
they are aligned to the organization 's goals is the firm 's best importance. Companies have started provided that their
The world has grown increasingly complex, resulting from the greater interdependence among world economies (Thompson, 2002). Successful organization is largely determined by how well the organization adjusts all its tangible and intangible properties to keep itself on track with its surrounding (Armenakes & Bedeian, 1999). Strategy was concerned to manage firm’s activities and resources to the environment in which it operates. This essay will analyse the micro and macro external environment in the part five years (2000 to 2006) of IBM Company by using PESTEL and five forces model to analyse in the first part. The second part will discuss about the advantages and disadvantages of the two possible alternative strategies for IBM.
Value Chain Analysis"Accounting for Strategic Management Porter identified the 'value chain' as a means of analysing an organisation's strategically relevant activities in order to understand the behaviour of costs. Competitive advantage comes from carrying out those activities in a more cost-effective way than ones competitors.This essay describes the activities which are referred to as the value chain and discuss how cost analysis of the value chain can be achieved in order to facilitate cost-effectiveness.M. Porter (in Competitive advantage, 1985) breaks the value chain (VC) model into two distinctive types these being primary and support activities. (Bowman C., 1990, p63) The model suggests, that no matter how many operational units that are involved in the process of generating customer value; these primary activities can be conceptualised into five generic stages. The five primary stages are inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing and sales, and service. These primary stages are supported by the firms infrastructure, human resource management, technology development, and purchasing and procurement. The stages within the VC should not be seen in isolation but looked at in a wider context and include the interactions between stages not just within the processes. The relationship between sales, operations and procurement for instance can determine how much stock is to be carried and therefore reflected in cost of inventory held.When analysing the VC of a given company/organisation the management accountant (MA) should firstly identify the activities of the firm to establish the framework of the chain.• o ". . . Porter suggests the detailed assignment of operating costs and assets to each value activity" (Grant R.M., 1995,p193) A company producing computers and a firm of accountants for instance would display very different components within the chain due to the differentiating activities (see below); this framework will allow us to establish the relevant importance of each unit of activity in regards to costs. As you can see the relevance of operations within the manufacturing company is higher than that of operations within accountancy. With over 60% of its costs being allocated to operations, it would seem that the manufacturing company should concentrate on this area to maximise savings, as this is the main cost driver. The accountancy firm however as two main cost drivers these being operations at 26% and marketing at 21% , suggesting almost equal saving potentials can will be offered. As MA’s we need to identify the cost drivers, in a similar manner as ABC costing.
Value chains are essential elements of successful businesses, and how to gain a competitive advantage by analyzing them is the most important aspect. In Porter’s value-chain model, he points out that there are two types of business activities: primary activities, which include inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing, sales and service; and support activities, which include procurement, technology development, human resources management, and firm infrastructure. In order to gain an edge, companies should focus on these activities to improve or create products that will satisfy their customers.
Value chain analyses a firm 's internal activities such as planning, production, and development, packaging and distribution so as to create value for clients. The function of the value chain is to identify the sources for cost reduction along with quality improvement. It means value chain is used to identify the strong and weak points, positive and negative points, the scope of improvement; in a nutshell, the advantages and disadvantages of the activities taking place in the system. The value chain is also called as a strategic analysis tool and it is a well-known concept in business management industry.
Managing and innovating productivity while understanding the business core competencies is just one way operations management ensures a competitive and differentiation advantage. Since Henry Ford’s innovative processes, many business strategy models have been designed to give customers more value with their purchases of goods or services. The value chain is the latest proven strategy model which consists of a sequence of activities that create and build value while improving an organizations positioning against its competitors (Robbins & Coulter, 2012). Croc’s, Inc. an innovative retail brand footwear company started in 2003 incorporated a value chain strategy which had a dramatic effect on marketplace demands as well as helping lead to dramatic increase in revenues. The purpose of this paper is to analyze Croc’s value chain strategy and how using vertical integration to combine the assembly and distribution process under a single ownership (Khoi, 2007).
One of the largest technology company in the world, Lenovo had a humble beginning as a small Chinese firm founded in 1984. The company showed modest growth throughout the rest of the 20th century. It wasn’t until the company’s acquisition of IBM’s personal computer business in 2005 (Martin, 2014) that the company began to gain prominence in the technology industry. Lenovo’s innovation and strategic decision making has allowed the company to evolve on a global platform and enabled it to become one of the leading technology companies in the market today.
To get started, we first need to understand what Crocs' value chain is and how that process plays a role in the strategic direction of the company. The authors of our text, views the value chain as "the entire series of organizational work activities that add value at each step, from raw materials to finished product. In its entirety, the value chain can encompass supplier's suppliers to the customer's customers"(Robbins & Coulter, 2009, p.430). At Crocs, the entire series of organization work activities may be broken down even further using Porter's value chain model of viewing a manufacturing (or service) primary and secondary activities as a "system made up of subsystems, each with inputs, transformation processes and outputs"(Ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk, 2011). A diagram, compliments of Porter(1985) can be seen below:
A good definition of marketing is the process of the intermediary function between product development and sales. (Reddy ) The field of marketing entails taking a generic product or generic service (the product or services do not have to be “generic” they may be actually unique to the marketplace) and associating the generic product with a brand name (Petty 2001). Under this generic concept are the activities of advertising, public relations, media planning, sales strategy and so on.
"Marketing consists of individual and organizational activities that facilitate and expedite satisfying exchange relationships in a dynamic environment through the creation, distribution, promotion and pricing of goods, services and ideas." (Dibb et al 2001, p1)
Marketing can play a crucial role in searching and discovering efforts and for identifying new markets to promote an event. It should include other classic elements and marketing such as promotional campaigns, advertising and telemarketing to bring all of the event goals to life.
The organization traditionally concentrated on the lower end of IT value chain from 2000-2004, this shifted to higher value IT services in order to obtain the competitive advantage. Value chain offers organizations ways to improve value to its customers; it can also be defined as generic strategies of differentiation and cost leadership (O’Connell, 2010).