540 The Marketing Book
then implementation capabilities are a function
of the individual behaviours and motivation of
individuals in the organization, and the under-
lying organizational context in which the proc-
ess operates. If implementation is viewed in
these terms, the question of the strength of the
marketing paradigm becomes critical to evalu-
ating true implementation capabilities. At its
simplest, if the people in an organization do not
believe in marketing and customer imperatives,
and management priorities are focused else-
where than the customer marketplace, the
marketing strategy implementation capabilities
are likely to be low.
How seriously major firms are taking the
management of marketing processes in these
new structures is well illustrated by the radical
global customer relationship management initi-
ative at IBM. The main characteristics of this
programme are summarized in Table 21.1.
Interfunctional relationships
One important implication of a process per-
spective for implementation capabilities is the
need for seamless integration of all the activ-
ities in the organization that impact on the
value offering to the customer – when many
of these activities are controlled by other parts
of the company, or are located in partner
organizations. For example, one way of using
the model of value processes in Figure 21.3
is to use the structure to model the ‘owner-
ship’ of critical parts of value processes by
different parts of the organization, and then
examine how well integration is achieved.
The quest for total integration or organiza-
tional processes around customer value prom-
ises to be one of the major challenges facing
marketing, because in the type of markets we
now face:Table 21.1 Customer relationship management at IBM
Most of IBM’s marketing activities are now embedded in a global initiative called customer
relationship management (CRM).
CRM works through core processes:
Market management – to identify and select key market segments
Relationship management – handles interaction between IBM and the customer with
established customers
Opportunity management – as soon as a sales opportunity is identified, the opportunity
manager has the role of finding the right ‘opportunity owner’ who can offer the right type of
expertise and the right level of interaction (e.g. mass customization versus one-of-a-kind),
drawing on the next processes
Offering information – keeping track of every product or solution developed by the company
or its business partners, so no-one in IBM has to waste time re-inventing the wheel
Skills management – a worldwide database of IBM personnel’s skills, graded on scales from
levels 1 to 5
Solution, design and delivery – each offer and bid is tracked to check the result
Customer satisfaction management – handling customer feedback and complaints
Message management – handling communications
The goal is co-ordination of customer relationships through managing business processes that cut
across boundaries to achieve maximum effectiveness.Source: Piercy (2002).