The Marketing Book 5th Edition

Market

understanding

Innovation

management

Supply chain

management

Customer

relationship

management

R&D Production Sales Distribution

488 The Marketing Book

Ideas and knowledge exist across the
business and beyond it. Thus, there is the need
to have processes in place that can capture
ideas and knowledge and convert them into
marketing opportunities. CRM has a crucial
part to play by ensuring that the appropriate
systems capture and communicate all relevant
information. In a sense, the market under-
standing process underpins the successful man-
agement of all the other business processes.

The innovation process

Businesses need to maintain a continuous flow
of successful new product/service introduc-
tions into the marketplace. With life cycles
becoming shorter and demand more volatile,
being able to respond to changes in customer
requirements and to exploit new technology-
based opportunities has become a key com-
petitive capability.
Innovation is not the sole preserve of any
one particular department. It has to be man-
aged cross-functionally. Those companies who
have moved towards the cross-functional
approach to innovation management have

found that it has paid great dividends. Typi-

cally, such companies have formed interdisci-

plinary teams that bring together a wide range

of skills and knowledge bases. These teams are,

to a considerable extent, self-managed and

autonomous, and are able to take rapid deci-

sions and short-circuit the conventional and

time-consuming procedures for taking new

products to market.

For example, in the car industry, such

teams are now the norm for new product

development. As well as drawing their mem-

bership from different functions across the

business, they will often include representa-

tives from suppliers so that further opportun-

ities for innovative thinking can be exploited.

The supply chain management

process

How will demand be fulfilled once it has been

generated? This is the role of the supply chain

management (SCM) process. In the past, the

activity of order fulfilment was not regarded to

be of great strategic significance. Whilst it was a

necessary activity it was a cost and therefore was

Figure 19.2 Processes cut across conventional functions