Do Business Well

Yet today most companies organize their inbound and outbound functions separately. To avoid this, the engaged organization must organize all its marketing, customer service, and support functions into one department. This way, customers visiting the company’s website or receiving email see a single company and a single brand.

There are two primary reasons why it makes sense to combine customer service support and marketing into one department. First, organizing different functions under the same department lets you align their goals and measures of success. When the goal is to build and nurture lasting relationships by engaging customers in an ongoing dialogue, it makes intuitive sense that the inbound and outbound parts of that dialogue come from the same place. Continue Reading »

3 Comments »

4. Warranties/repairs: Who will provide ongoing service?

One challenge faced by smaller companies, particularly makers of products, is persuading the prospective buyer that they will be around for the long term to provide ongoing service—repairs, replacement parts, and updated products. The business plan must address the issue of ongoing service, both to determine its exact form and to allow for the costs of providing it.

The first concern that typically arises is that of a warranty. How complete is the warranty and how long should it extend? That is, does the warranty cover parts and labor, or just parts? Does it extend for six months, one year, or two years? Obviously, the more complete and lengthy the warranty, the more costly it will be.

Warranty decisions should be driven by factors similar to those that determine price—how important the warranty is to the market, what competitors are doing, how the costs come out. Concerning costs, providing in-house labor may be very expensive, whereas subcontracting out repairs could be much less costly. Continue Reading »

4 Comments »

`Place’ (Convenience in the 4- Cs) means the elements of the marketing mix that marketers use to enable customers to access the benefits of a product or service. Traditionally, this has meant ‘channels of distribution‘ through (e.g.) various wholesaler and retailer combinations. Viewing from the ‘convenience for the customer‘ (4-Cs) perspective gives a more customer-orientated focus. This is a vital decision area for the e-Business for three reasons. First, relatively small local companies can widen their market and even export (e.g. Botham (www.Botham.co.uk), to be described further in Chapter 9). Second, many e- Businesses aim to gain competitive advantage by using e-Systems to de-layer the distribution chain. For example, Dell (www.dell.co.uk) supplies customers directly, rather than through distributors, wholesalers or retailers. Third, distribution is an area where some e-Businesses have been severely criticized for failing to deliver customer service (see Chapter 9 for more details).

Place elements of the marketing mix have been changing rapidly over recent decades, and these changes impact in many ways on the marketing operations of the e-Business. First, the growth of retailer power has involved major retailers taking more control of their supply chains. The involvement of wholesalers has been reduced, tending to give way to contract logistics (under retailer control). At the same time, supply chains have become more efficient, with computer network links between suppliers and retailers — many still based on EDI. Predating the Internet, EDI is based on privately owned third-party computer networks. Stock levels have been reduced using techniques such as JIT and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). Control of the physical distribution, ordering, invoicing and payment systems, particularly for major retailers, is often still carried out using EDI networks such as Tradanet (www.gegxs.com/gxs/ products/product/traser). Increasingly, though, retailers such as Tesco are allowing Internet access to their suppliers for real-time electronic point-of-sale (EPOS) data. Trusted supplier partners can thus respond more quickly to changes in customer demand. Continue Reading »

4 Comments »