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MANAGING PROJECTS

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Projects represent nonroutine business activities that often have long-term strategic ramifications for a firm. In this chapter, we examined how projects differ from routine business activities and discussed the major phases of projects. We noted how environmental changes have resulted in increased attention being paid to projects and project management over the past decade. In the second half of the chapter, we introduced some basic tools that businesses can use when planning for and controlling projects. Both Gantt charts and network diagrams give managers a visual picture of how a project is going. Network diagrams have the added advantage of showing the precedence between activities, as well as the critical path(s). We wrapped up the chapter by showing how these concepts are embedded in inexpensive yet powerful software packages such as Microsoft Project. If you want to learn more about project management, we encourage you to take a look at the Web site for the Proj...
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Managing a Holistic Marketing Organization for the Long Run

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The modern marketing department has evolved through the years from a simple sales department to an organizational structure where marketers work mainly on cross-disciplinary teams.
Some companies are organized by functional specialization; others focus on geography and regionalization, product and brand management, or market-segment management. Some companies establish a matrix organization consisting of both product and market managers.
Effective modern marketing organizations are marked by customer focus within and strong cooperation among marketing, R&D, engineering, purchasing, manufacturing, operations, finance, accounting, and credit.
Companies must practice social responsibility through their legal, ethical, and social words and actions. Cause marketing can be a means for companies to productively link social responsibility to consumer marketing programs. Social marketing is done by a nonprofit or government organization to directly address a social problem or cause.
A brilliant strategic marketing plan counts for little unless implemented properly, including recognizing and diagnosing a problem, assessing where the problem exists, and evaluating results.
The marketing department must monitor and control marketing activities continuously. Marketing plan control ensures the company achieves the sales, profits, and other goals in its annual plan. The main tools are sales analysis, market share analysis, marketing expense-tosales analysis, and finansial analysis of the marketing plan. Profitability control measures and controls the profitability of products, territories, customer groups, trade channels, and order sizes. Efficiency control finds ways to increase the efficiency of the sales force, advertising, sales promotion, and distribution. Strategic control periodically reassesses the company’s strategic approach to the marketplace using marketing effectiveness and marketing excellence reviews, as well as marketing audits.
Achieving marketing excellence in the future will require a new set of skills and competencies.

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