Engineer

1 Summery

In a world economy that is in constant variation and undergoing turbulence, more companies are realizing that their most precious asset is their customer base. An even more important realization is the need to satisfy their customers in order to survive in these increasingly competitive markets.

This assignment will discuss the changes required for ABC company to increase its competitive advantage, and will specifically concentrate on the required changes in its marketing organization structure, and the changes needed in its marketing operations and activities.

This assignment will start with general information about the activities and the customers of the company. The second part will discuss the current situation, such as the current marketing structure of the company and discuss the bad impact of the current structure, then the marketing activities, marketing operation, then SWOT analysis to evaluate the company and identify the problems that facing the company.

The rest of the assignment will concentrate on the required changes in ABC's marketing department structure in order to achieve the desired performance needed from it. Then how can setup the marketing team and can force all the company staff to make the customer the focal point of everything. Then go to the importance of customer segmentation, and how this helps the marketing team to target existing and new customers more effectively. Then move to the changes needed to keep the customer loyalty. Finally the changes needed for the marketing strategy and involve all members of the team who are going to be responsible for delivering the plan.

2 Introduction

ABC is an IT pioneer at Saudi Arabia, with more than 400 major customers involved in a variety of businesses. ABC established in 1997 .ABC has several lines of business services covering multiple aspects of the Information Technology, spanning software design, communications and networking services, e-business consulting services, and training services, ABC operates on developing industry specific solutions. One of the main marketing objectives of ABC is to increase the sales volume.

Most of old ABC's businesses were coming through the relationships between the ABC's top managers and the owners, or managers of the client companies, but recently marketing department was established to be responsible for develop marketing strategy for the company and addressing new markets in Saudi Arabia and Middle East.

Over the last two years ABC has successfully implemented projects for more than 50 clients, with the help of marketing department efforts, in manufacturing, distribution, construction, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, consumer electronics, telecommunications , banking and finance. The company's client base extends beyond the borders of Saudi Arabia to the Middle East and North Africa.

3 Current situation

3.1 Marketing organization

As shown from Diagram 1, that the marketing department separated from the sales department, this structure causes many conflicts in responsibilities between the two departments, like who is responsible for products and services pricing. The marketing team consists of marketing manager and product marketing managers for each service and product that the company sells, then the junior marketers.

Diagram 1

3.2 Marketing activities

ABC's Marketing department is responsible for performing a range of activities including:

* Identifying customer needs

* Communicating information about products and services to prospective customers

* Making the products and services available at times and places that meet customers' needs

* Collaborate with other organizations to achieve a tenacious set of an enterprise's business goals

* Build reliable marketing information system to help top management to take the right decisions

* Forecasts of market demand, but the marketers who make these forecasts are not trained well, so the forecasts tends to be Inconsistent and in most cases not accurate.

On the other hand ABC's senior managers on their business depend mainly on their relationships, not depends one hundred percent on the marketing department, and they rarely incorporate marketing within the company structure as a management function, also the marketing department has no influence on designing the company's software product, and how can improve the shape of the company's services.

In addition marketing department has a very limited budget, so they don not use enough marketing tools

3.3 Marketing operation

Marketing team try to push the company market image and product success, using the following tools;

1. Making conversation with customers

2. Analyze customers behavior

3. Giving the customers articles, newsletters, or other information that can help to learn more about the company's capabilities.

Marketing people have well, but not better, relationship with the customers, this relationship ends up when the project or the sales operation ends.

Although ABC Company offer the same business like hundreds of companies in the Middle East, but marketing team have been succeeded in generating interest to the customers by sending Marketing Messages to them , these messages makes the company unique that makes offer that no other business can, but they don't communicating regularly with customers. Example of the marketing messages that sent to the customer is; "ABC believes that in the ever-changing face of technology success is built on creating long-term sustainable benefits. This is not just a fundamental underpinning of our customer proposition; it is the DNA with which our company is made."

ABC's marketing team try variety of ways to market the company's products and services. They use two approaches in marketing to their prospective client base;

* The first approach entails a visit to the customer