Business Marketing and Lifecycle Management - Assignment Example

BUSINESS MARKETING AND LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT Name Subject Date Assessment task one It is the aim of every business to satisfy the need of its potential customers and ensure that its products have positive taste and preference within the market. In cases where organizational activities do not full the expectations of the customers, there is need to identify and evaluate organizational activities in order to establish the cause and formulate strategic plans for remedying the situations. Depending on the context of use within the organization, inefficiency is often the major cause of organizational poor domination within the market. It is from this background that the essay would be focusing on the inefficiencies within the Apple Company. Considering the fact that most researches and survey often consider the organization as the ‘King of Technology,’ the company also experiences several inefficiencies, which is the major cause of the sales reduction (Wright, 2011, 152). Moreover, the competitors are taking over and dominating the electronic industry; therefore, it is significant to identify the company’s inefficiencies and formulate ways of reducing their impact on the aims of the organization. From the business context, inefficiencies are occasions when an organization is unable to perform its duties properly and create a competitive advantage for its product, thus considered wasteful or incompetent since it is not able to produce the desired results. Besides manufacturing of the electrical gadgets, the company also engages in supply chain management for the raw materials required to manufacture its electrical gadgets. The main aim of engaging in supply chain management is to reduce and eliminate all problems resulting from inefficiencies in order to save time and monetary resources. As a result, supply chain management assists in streamlining organizational activities. Growth is a very important aspect of every business. It signifies organizational performances in ensuring that it increases its scope of operation. However, accounting for the activities within the company plays an important role in making sure that the organization is taking control of the diseconomies of scale resulting from such growth (Stephens et al., 2003, 97). Through outsourcing some of its products, the company faces several challenges resulting from failure of accounting for some of the activities taking place within its branches. Most people prefer purchasing Apple products, nevertheless, in some areas there is poor accounting leading to unreliability of the products. It is important to ensure that all the branches have sufficient amount of stock for uniform operation of organizational activities. Whenever there is poor accounting of organizational products and activities, there is often product and service deficiency within the market, which in turn influences the sales volume of the product. In order to reduce such inefficiencies, it is important to take clear records of satellite stations and ensure that managers in those stations are committed to their roles. Accounting does not only apply to the products and sales, but also the employees. The amount of gadgets produced and supplied within the market by the organization determines the demand of its products. The supply of Apply products is not uniform globally in relation to market segmentation of the company. In this regard, some areas experience more sales rate than others do; as a result, there is frequent variability for products supplied with various locations. This variability is the major causes of inefficiencies considering cases where the taste and preferences are low. Supplying fewer products in these areas might encourage setting in of inefficiencies especially if the demand arises in these areas (Gregory et al., 2002, 173). In curbing inefficiencies resulting variability in supply and demand, market segmentation as a marketing strategy would more important since it ensures that company identify areas it considers play an important role in determining the overall sales volume of its product. Moreover, the company should hire qualified staffs that are able to make decisions, which suits organizational requirements. Some members are not adequately trained hence equip other juniors to conduct their duties such as coordination of important activities, hence resulting into inefficiencies. Poor motivation and deteriorating working conditions among the employees is another cause of inefficiencies within the organization. Employees are the main assets within any business; therefore, it is significant to note their areas of concern through motivation to ensure they perform their duties diligently for the sake of increasing the performance of the company. With the rising level of completion within the industry, motivating the employees would improve their commitment to ensuring their activities meet the expectation of the customers (Cutler, 2010, 121). Inefficiencies resulting from poor motivation such as reduced sales and product marketing are often the major reasons behind the declining organizational success. Through motivation, the employees are able to work with more strength in the fields of marketing and production of quality products. Moreover, motivation ensures proper customer-manufacturer relationship. The organizations consider lifecycle management as a comprehensive solution, which assists in management of its production processes, and management of database, system, and automated administration application. Through implementation of the lifecycle management, the company aims at reducing the effort used in configuring management by ninety per cent and cut down the effort of provisioning by seventy five per cent. Moreover, proper implementation would ensure that the company reduces the patching duration by eighty percent while saving the information and technology department time by up to fifty per cent. Lifecycle management has the ability of eliminating manual and time-consuming activities in relation to discoveries, initial provisioning, configuration management, and organizational change (Sarja, 2006, 188). Within the production department, the company could use product lifecycle management as a systematic approach of managing a series on changes that a product undergo from designing point to disposal to ensure that it meet the desired features of the customers. In procurement, lifecycle management ensures purchase of materials at a lower cost since it ensures an effective relationship between the company and the supplier. During procurement, the management ensures there is reduction in the supply-base risk because lifecycle management uses a standardized approach in supplying commodities. Cultivation of these supplier relationship helps in driving the value of the product thus creating a stronger competitive advantage (Baines, 2003, 158). Lifecycle management could be broken down into several stages including beginning of life which takes into account development and designing of the product, middle of life brings together all partners and warranty management. The end of life includes all the strategies relating to disposal or recycling of the product. In addition, the company might also use the lifecycle management technique to address issues like reduction in the duration taken by a product to reach the market, improving the quality of the product, reducing the cost of prototyping, identification of potential sales opportunities, and reduction in environmental impacts associated with the product. Assessment task two Asset identification and replacement plays an important role in reducing the cost of production especially where the assets are outdated thus leading to inefficiencies. Replacements aim at reducing the cost of expenses used in the maintenance of the old machinery and improve organizational profitability. It is important to note that, with the rising technology within the Apple Company, replacing an asset with a more advanced one. The new one should have the ability of creating a situation in which the organization lays off some of the employee, reducing their pay, shifting to less expensive health insurance program, and upgrading the activities to more efficient and reliable ones (Remmen, 2007, 115). Within the company, to replace the old employees with younger ones who have the ability of incorporating the upcoming technologies into the manufacturing process of the company. However, it is important to note that the cost of hiring new employees would require more resources considering the cost of employing the graduates. Moreover, these graduates with the technical skills are in demand with the electrical and electronic industries making the cost of hiring them quite expensive since other competitors like Samsung Company are also competing for them. Even though replacing them employees would cost the company more financial resources, it would help cut the cost of production considering the fact that currently there is a lot of confusion in the allocation of duties since most of the employees are only able to do particular similar activity. The reduced cost of paying these employees could be invested in the marketing of organizational products. Within the same production department, there is need to change old computer gadgets. Ironically, the company produces some of the best computers and laptops in the world but in the manufacturing process, it uses outdated systems running on the oldest operation system. Tangible working assets are often considered some of the greatest investment within any business entity, therefore, there is a greater need to monitor and evaluate, and depending on their condition, the organization might decide to replace them. Furthermore, the company needs to anticipate the cost of replacing these assets in order to explore the insurance coverage for these machineries. Besides the cost of replacing them, there is also need to calculate the cost of the unforeseen losses like possibility of fire or natural disaster occurrence that destroys the equipments. Replacing these computers would result in faster, effective, and reliable manufacturing since modern equipments offer a wide range of technologies from those operating faster to those that take time. Identifying the sources of the replacing materials and employees is also important in ensuring that the company hires only reliable equipments and people with passion respectively. In relation to the new employees, the company currently works closely with internationally recognized learning institutions and offer the students internship programs to assist them put their theoretical knowledge into practical. Moreover, the company tends to retain those interns showing exemplary performances in their roles of advancing the technology utilized within the institution (Bogetoft, 2012, 132). While considering replacing computers, purchasing the latest applications from renowned companies like Microsoft Corporation would be important as this might as well offer the company an opportunity to market easily its products. As noted earlier, the cost of replacing the assets might be quite expensive; therefore, the company needs to roll out the replacement program not at once but in bits in order to ensure that organizational activities are not compromised by these activities. in addition, the company still requires these old employees since they have more experience in the old systems which might still be helpful to the company. While estimating the replacement cost, it is important that the projected cost is as accurate as possible in order to avoid inefficiencies likely to result from the production process. Viewing from the insurance point of view, most insurance policies often include co-insurance clause, which compels the insurance company to cater for the eighty per cent of the actual replacement value. Fortunately, the clause has no limit to a total loss of the organizational property. More importantly, the company should be carrying a replacement exercise only after conducting the cost-benefit analysis to establish whether their plan would create more opportunities for the company or not (Salomone, 2013, 155). Cost-benefit analysis plays an integral role in decision-making since it does not only focus on the current issues, but also future merits and demerits associated with such changes. For example, within the Apple Company, there is need to replace about ten complete computers inclusive of all the applications required to perform various function at a cost of approximately $100,000 in which in this case becomes the capital spending. The second step is to identify the salvage value of the computers the company wishes to acquire. The new computer systems have the ability of improving the annual efficiency of the organization by $25,000, which in these cases might help in the calculation of the salvage value using a corporate tax rate of about thirty-five per cent. Assuming that the system value of the acquired computers would last in five years and were acquired at ten per cent discount, then the salvage value would be: Salvage value = $(25,000 x (1-0.35)) = $16,250 In the third step, the company would consider calculating the actual annual savings that it is likely to enjoy from the efficiency while taking into account the taxes and depreciation aspects. Every acquired computer system would save $25,000 per year if the upgrade roles out, meaning, the company would increase its cash flow of operation by the same amount. In a year, the cost depreciation would be $20,000 ($100,000 divided by five for the number of years) and then subtracting it from cash flow operation. The resulting $5,000 would be the increased cash flow, which the company would subject to a thirty-five per cent tax rate. This would yield $1,750 ($5,000 x 0.35) which is an additional tax liability. The aspect of life cycle management in this case would occur while calculating the life cycle cost the new machineries. This cost involves the summed up value of the items to be replaced (computers and some employees). Moreover, there is need to consider the cost of planning, designing, acquiring, operating, maintaining, and disposing after the usage. Life cycle cost often exists in two perspectives including the direct life cycle costs and economic costs. Under direct life cycle costs, there is need to consider the cost of acquiring, operation, and decommission of the new machineries. On the other hand, the sources of the economic costs often result from financial costs direct either to the governmental organizations or to customers or the community and the triple bottom line costs emanating from financial and economic costs, social costs, and environmental costs. In other words, the sources of direct life cycle costs come from direct usage of the acquired machinery while the economic costs originate from the indirect impacts of the machineries. While calculating the life cycle cost, it is important to subtract the sum of the salvage, operating costs, maintenance costs, renewal costs, and decommissioning costs from the original cost. Therefore, while considering implementing life cycle management, it is important to conduct cost-structuring activities and cost allocation evaluation since the whole concept is about understanding the changing trends within the manufacturing process and factors that are driving those changes. From that, it is evident that time is a very special aspect that requires serious consideration. Assessment task three Assessing organizational activities plays an important role especially while identifying if there any mechanical problem within the production process. Maintenance within electrical industry reduces the possibility of occurrence of any incidence or accidents that might compromise the safety of the employees. Certain equipments require frequent maintenance while others have the ability of functioning for a long time without requiring any form of maintenance. All the machineries requires maintenance, however, it is important to that those posing serious threats and deals with dangerous chemicals requires monitoring on almost daily basis. Within the Apple Company, there are qualified staffs with the ability of conducting some maintenance services while those that require the expertise of a qualified person are often outsourced to either the manufacturer or another company with professionals in that field. Some of the maintenance services carried out within the production department and those responsible for such activities include: Computer hardware maintenance permanent staff Computer hardware maintenance outsourced Electronics repair permanent staff Incinerator for waste materials permanent staff Transformers and voltage regulation outsourced Department wiring system outsourced Energy efficiency permanent employees Drainage system maintenance permanent employees Ventilation chambers permanent employees From the analysis, it is significant to note that the company is responsible for most of the maintenance activities. This reflects the diversified number of professions available within the company which in turn reducing the cost of outsourcing maintenance roles. The main aim of carrying out maintenance is to prolong the lifespan of the equipment, its reliability and availability, lower spare parts inventory requirements, and ensure improvement in personal and environmental safety. Maintenance procedure Preparation for maintenance While planning to conduct maintenance of any machinery, it is significant to remove it from the service while servicing is in progress. Within the Apple Company, the same procedure is followed with consideration of an alternative machine to ensure that the production processes do not halt. Even though the alternative equipment might be functioning efficiently and effectively, backup systems are crucial for emergency operations. From this point, shutting down the reactors is of significant purpose in order to reduce the probability of any incidence or accidents during the maintenance period. In addition, acquisition of the license permitting maintenance services to the machines is crucial considering the fact that some servicing activities often have negative environmental impacts. The safety of the people is also of great concern, hence, the company always consider various methods of ensuring the occupational health and safety practices prevails during the process. Repair details After conducting all the preliminary requirements for maintenance purposes, there is need to ensure that the maintenance experts have detailed information on the equipment that requires servicing so as to conduct an adequate job. This step includes making a reference list from the manuals for purposes of clarity and confusion elimination. Furthermore, the company often ensures that besides the external expert, there is always a permanent employ working in that particular department to offer technical support. Checkout Upon completion of the servicing process, any standard procedure should require an equipment test to ascertain that the job is complete. It is also important at this point to note that some tests are quite extensive and might require preoperational test while others might require simple test. It is appropriate that the expert conducts the test in the presence of the permanent staffs with adequate information on the equipment. Return to service The company has several machineries, which perform various functions. During the maintenance period, all the shut down operations should be on to ensure that the production process continues as required. Moreover, the serviced machineries should be receiving special surveillance on frequent basis until the completion of the break-in period to ensure that it is functioning normally. In order to improve the productivity, the organization must ensure that it procures advanced machineries with a prolonged lifespan in order to reduce the frequent break down often experienced within the company. The rate of productivity also has direct relationship with the employee performance. Employees are very special organizational assets and their morale often determines the general performance of the company, as a result, there is need to ensure that the organization takes into account the welfare of its employees for efficient, effective, and reliable production process. Additionally, procuring advanced machineries have the ability of reducing the environmental impact since most manufacturers are on the move to ensuring environmental complaint. Complying with global environmental laws plays a significant part in marketing of the products. The company should also strengthen its environmental and safety department to monitor all the activities. In comparison between maintenance services between the production department and organizational Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), the departmental activities still lie within the company’s objectives. KPI is often a measurable value that has the ability of demonstrating the achievement of the business against its objectives. Within the company, one of the objectives is to ensure production of efficient mobile gadgets with minimum environmental effects. In order to ensure the fulfillment of this objective, the company has in place environmental and safety department to ensure that its production activities have little influence on the environmental ecosystem and the surrounding neighborhood. A well-qualified team of human resources also plays an important role in ensuring that the company only employee people with the required expertise for production of quality products (Salomone, 2013, 221). The maintenance services within the department are similar with that of the overall organization; however, there is need to make few improvements to reduce the cost. The company should employ people with expertise in order to reduce the cost used in outsourcing some of its activities and build an ultra modern containment facility considering how dangerous the wastes generated from these electronic products are hazardous. Environmental experts should not be focusing on the activities of the production process, but also the overall organizational activities to ensure that the entire company is environmental compliant. With the changing technology, methods of monitoring construction facilities are changing. Most construction companies are using Building Management Services (BMS), which is a computerized control system, to monitor the installed housing equipments. Within the facility, BMS has the ability of monitoring both mechanical and electrical equipments used by the company to facilitate the production process. These structures include ventilations, power and security system, lighting, and file systems. Even though the system consumes almost half the total energy used by the facility, it plays an important role of increasing efficiency, reliability, and effectiveness within the construction industry. Since it has the ability of predetermining the likelihood of an impact from occurring, projected impacts of the building during the using phase might be prevented (Marconi, 2000, 184). In relation to lifecycle management, BMS has a responsibility of monitoring the all-organizational equipments with much focus on those whose projected time limit are nearing. At this point, it is important to note that all machineries have the ability to perform continuously a task until a given period when they require servicing. With installed cameras and computers, BMS offers a wider field of view while monitoring the company’s activities. Moreover, it might as well be used in managing contracts. It is the responsibility of the contractor to install BMS within the facility, then a proper trained, and a permanent staff would be charged with the responsibility of operating and monitoring it. The achieved outcome of the program would determine the existence of the partnership between the contractor and the company. While looking at the contract aspect, BMS ensures achievement of specific organizational needs, management of the projected risks, maintenance, and improvement of efficiency, and ensuring that future upgrades or alterations are consistent with the organizational objectives. Besides, it ensures that the contractors meet the statutory compliance and optimization for the quality of money for the betterment of the organization (Enz, 2000, 119). The company also uses contract lifecycle management for streamlining business processes occurring within the company and improving organizational profit margin. It is important to note that with poor implementation of the contract lifecycle, there is likely to be an emergence of protracted contracting cycles, adoption of poor quality systems, and runaway project cost. Environmental Management System (EMS) offers the basis in which organizational environmental issues are comprehensively and systematically addressed through planning and documentation of the findings. In addition, EMS integrates organizational structure, planning, maintenance policy for the purposes of environmental protection. Since EMS involves training of various personnel, monitoring, and reporting issues relating to environmental performance, it plays an important role in ensuring that the machineries used within the organization meets the compliance requirements (Kitchen, 2010, 101). Through integration of EMS and lifecycle management, the organizations have a chance of improving the quality of its products and creating new opportunities like lowering the consumption of resources, recognition and improvement of the brand image, and bettering the relationships with both internal and external stakeholders including the employees, local communities, and authorities. Machineries often have a given lifespan then their qualities begin to deteriorate. In such incidences, these machineries cause many environmental damages such as pollution resulting from the smoke and continuous vibrations posing much threat on human health. Through monitoring organizational activities, noticing any form of environmental destruction is easier especially if the company has properly implemented EMS and Occupational Health and Safety (OHS). Lifecycle of a product has a greater relationship with the rate of pollution of that same product. Worn out machineries tend to pollutes environment more than new ones since their lifecycles have already elapsed. In 1992 at the World Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, many countries signed a treaty that had the responsibility of cushioning sustainable development activities in every state through introduction of eco-friendly products for the purposes of improving environmental quality and benefits associated with it. From environmental point of view, ensuring cleaner production processes would result in improved efficiency hence saving on organizational resources (Sathiyamoorthy et al., 2013, 196). Environmental management plays a significant role in improving the quality of the organization while cleaner products often create a competitive advantage. Benchmarking is the process of identifying practices considered the best within an organization. It has the ability of setting standards for operating measurable and scientific processes operating within the organization. The performance of the company is the major determinant of its position in the market. Poor performances always reflect poor organizational structure and irrelevant marketing techniques, which not only contribute to the loss of organizational resources, but also reduced sales of its products. Through benchmarking, the company has a chance of comparing its services and products against the competitors that the electrical industry considers the toughest. From the analysis of the criteria used by other organizations to create a reliable and efficient performance, the company might imitate but use a different approach. Moreover, in trying to improve performance, the organization should focus on three main areas. Firstly, the company should use benchmarking as a reference point for finding the gaps between its business activities and others to establish the main reason behind the deteriorating organizational performance. Secondly, it is crucial to make a comparison between organizational activities and others to establish whether the criteria used are relevant especially while trying to create a positive brand image among the consumers. Finally, benchmarking offers the company an opportunity of designing and implementing measures that would ensure improvement in organizational performance such as employee motivation and well structured management portfolio. Ideally, Benchmarking entails measuring internal processes against external standards. This way, a company is able to master its competitor’s activities and functions which they stand a chance to imitate or even improve the acquired techniques. Cost reduction is a far much important tool in any business to make large profits or to lower the rates of their services which intern gives them a competitive edge against their competitors by luring more customers to their services at the same time maintaining the quality of their services or products. Improvements on competitor production techniques can help the company to lower their cost of production (Baines, 2003, 167). Management and organizational skills exhibited by the staff is key to Performance of every business, poor management automatically prevents the business from thriving. After benchmarking, a company may realize a need to change its management style for the better and to compete effectively in the market. Better still, new operations can be of more importance depending on the techniques acquired through benchmarking and the innovations by the business staff. Benchmarking can lead to reconsidering of existing strategies in the company, which can lead to a complete overhaul of the whole approach and create even better chance for a new venture, which can prove to be more profitable to the company. As a result, the company can be able to compete effectively under new brand of product. References Baines, Mark D. The National Telecommunications Infrastructure a 21st Century Organizational Paradox. Carlisle Barracks, Pa.: U.S. Army War College, 2003. Bogetoft, Peter. Performance Benchmarking Measuring and Managing Performance. New York: Springer, 2012. Cutler, David M. Where Are the Health Care Entrepreneurs? the Failure of Organizational Innovation in Health Care. Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2010. Enz, Jac. The ROI of Human Capital Measuring the Economic Value of Employee Performance. New York: AMACOM, 2000. Gregory, James R., and Jack G. Wiechmann. Branding across Borders: A Guide to Global Brand Marketing. Chicago, Ill.: McGraw-Hill, 2002. Kitchen, Philip J. Integrated Brand Marketing and Measuring Returns. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Marconi, Joe. The Brand Marketing Book Creating, Managing, and Extending the Value of Your Brand. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Business Books, 2000. Remmen, Arne, and Allan A. Jensen. Life Cycle Management: A Business Guide to Sustainability. Nairobi, Kenya: United Nations Environment Programme, 2007. Salomone, Roberta. Product-oriented Environmental Management Systems (POEMS) Improving Sustainability and Competitiveness in the Mobile Chain with Innovative Environmental Management Tools. Dordrecht: Springer, 2013. Sarja, Asko. Predictive and Optimised Life Cycle Management: Buildings and Infrastructure. London: Taylor & Francis, 2006. Sathiyamoorthy, S., and B. Elizabeth Caroline. Emerging Trends in Science, Engineering and Technology Proceedings of International Conference, INCOSET 2012. Dordrecht: Springer, 2013. Sen, Mridul. Business Management. Jaipur, India: Oxford Book, 2008. Stephens, David O., and Roderick C. Wallace. Electronic Records Retention: New Strategies for Data Life Cycle Management. Lenexa, Kan.: ARMA International, 2003. Wright, David. Software Life Cycle Management Standards Real-world Scenarios and Solutions for Savings. Ely, Cambridgeshire, U.K.: IT Governance Pub., 2011. Read More