Effective Social Media Marketing for More Profit

Social Media marketing has emerged in the online marketing scene only a decade ago. Social media has come a step forward from where it was initially. It is wonderful to see the entire world as a close knit family communicating with each other without any geographical distinction. This has resulted in the emergence of many SEO companies that provide good marketing opportunities to utilize the large network of people. SEO has become a powerful source for popularizing social media. Another important tool is social media optimization and it is very effective. The key to enhance marketing in the sphere of social media is to interact and keep the consumers and the clients in the close vicinity.

There are strategies implied by SEO experts that make the webpage popular amongst people after this it is the responsibility of the business owner to put forward their services and ideas in front of other users. It is to be kept in mind that all the users are not interested in all the websites that pop up on their computer screens. Thus they simply ignore these sites. As a result, whatever money is spent on the social media marketing strategies goes futile. Here is the need of target audience that makes the entire process of marketing successful. Every company has a set of target audience that utilizes the services and products and in return let the supplier earn profit. A steady cash flow is the dream of every businessman and it is for purpose only they spend huge amount of money on hiring SEO and online marketing experts to serve the purpose. 

Social media is catching up fast and is an important component of the strategies of online marketing companies. Considering it to be one of the most effective ways of marketing, companies are devoting a lot of time in chalking out definite plans to make their marketing strategies successful. A concrete and systematic approach helps to stay focused on the goal. Social media marketing is not only about finding the target audience but it also implies a thorough market research and analysis. 

There are certain categories in which the marketing experts work on:

Competitors- Look at the strategies that your competitors are implying for the marketing of their products. Try to find out how are they using social media for their own benefit?
Goal- You have to set definite goals for yourself and devise short term plans to achieve these goals. The action plans for reaching these goals will make the task look simpler.

Purpose- When talking to SEO or marketing experts it is very important to explain to them what your actual purpose for marketing is. It will make it easier for the experts to devise a congenial strategy that will help you realize your goal soon.
Optimize- Optimizing your website or webpage is another important tool in this sphere. You have to merge various platforms together and link them up to save your time.

There are many more strategies that SEO companies are devising through social media to make the marketing plan successful.

Live Chat on Your Website: Extended Marketing Mix Essential Factor

Modern extended Marketing mix is not just 4 Ps; it has gone one step ahead. Undoubtedly Product, price, placement and promotion are the key elements in success of a new business but it does not stop here, modern marketing mix includes Cs (Customer Satisfaction). Live chat software plays its vital role in customer satisfaction and makes them loyal to company brand. Similarly chat application on Facebook is another key feature that increases the customer satisfaction. The article will focus on the factors which play their essential role in customer satisfaction and how those factors are backed by live chat software.

If we deeply analyze the key factors which play their part in the success of a company, they come under two aspects i.e. Technical aspects and soft skills of the company. Of course if the core of the product is not up to the mark the customers will never be satisfied but if the support team is not dealing the customers in right manner, customers will never ever even think of coming back. It is essential for the customer relationship team to deal the customers in appropriate manner.

Here are some of the key considerations to look for when dealing with customers and where live chat software comes and play its role:

Correct information
We are living in a highly tech savvy era, nowadays buyer's research their desired product or service over internet since there are loads of information available on internet. Every renowned company has its online presence these days. The first and foremost concern of the customers is Correct Information. People who are interested in acquiring services or purchasing products always contact the help center of a particular company. They either call the help line or they prefer live chat to talk to the representatives of the company. It is very important for a company website to have reliable live chat software to entertain the queries of their customers. The representatives of live chat support should be well trained and should have complete product knowledge so that they guide their customers with the correct information. Nowadays Social media integration is so important which is why chat application on facebook is a must tool to provide correct information to customers.

Prompt responses
Customers always look for prompt responses. It is a big turn off for customers if they get delayed responses from the representatives of live chat support. Reliable live chat software always ensures the promptness in responses. HOC (Help on click) is what can take your headache; it is one reliable software that is tailor made for your needs. No matter how quick the back end team is, imagine if the software is not good enough, it has lop holes or if it behaves weirdly, the back end team can do little in this situation.

Process guideline
Quality is a degree of excellence and it can't be compromised. Every customer wants to know the procedure of service. Live chat support team should explain each and every step of the service in a detailed and clear manner. It is the responsibility of support agent to clearly guide the customers about pricing, if later on customers find that there are some hidden charges, it will surely be a turn off for them.

MBA in Marketing: What do you Think?

MBA marketing courses are offered by a number of reputed institutions worldwide. The comprehensive courses offered are ideal for both students and working executives, who wish to add value to their educational background. In addition to the courses offered through traditional modules, one can also come across online MBA marketing courses. The remuneration offered to the individuals in this profession is quite decent and there is ample scope for career development. 

The minimum eligibility criteria required for students seeking admission to MBA marketing programs is graduation. In some of the institutes at least 60% marks is required for taking admission. However, selection process may vary from one institution to the other. Candidates seeking admission to the reputed B-Schools for pursuing their higher education in marketing are expected to qualify the entrance examination conducted for the selection of the candidates. 

The entrance test held is generally based on multiple choice questions which include quantitative ability, verbal ability, logical reasoning and data interpretation. Candidates selected on the basis of their performance in the entrance examination are then called for a personal interview round. A group discussion session is also conducted for the short-listed candidates to take part. 

There are an enormous amount of career opportunities and options for MBA in Marketing. The most common are corporate positions such as marketing manager, brand manager, market research analyst, and new product manager. Persons with strong financial skills could seek a career in strategic or market related planning. Additional corporate positions such as sales manager, advertising manager, PR (public relations) director, and marketing communications manager are also common.

In marketing or advertising agencies, numerous opportunities exist in advertising, direct marketing, and communications specialization. Consulting firms also hire marketing MBAs as new market developers, strategists, and customer segmentation specialists.

Product management careers as well as brand management careers typically require that a candidate have an MBA, even at the entry level. However, some companies that focus intensively on sales promote these positions internally from highly successful sales representatives.

The product manager is entirely responsible for the profitability and market growth of a product line. The product manager could be considered the CEO of a particular product. They typically coordinate and oversee a number of diverse divisions of a corporation to ensure the efficient and timely flow of a product to market. While some product managers have international responsibilities, most product management positions focus on product and market development domestically. Product managers often will see promotion to director or manager of a group of products or even to the position of VP of marketing.

Some companies have a position specifically targeted to managing new or developing product lines. The new product specialist is skilled at launching and developing new product lines.

The marketing manager's responsibilities are similar to those of the product manager, but are focused on servicing and managing an ongoing relationship with existing customers. The marketing manager utilizes skills in international marketing, customer satisfaction and retention, market strategy, and emerging technologies. This position can be highly demanding and require intensive knowledge of market research and customer management.

Guerrilla Marketing - Surprisingly Simple!

Guerrilla marketing is the use of wide and varied unconventional marketing tactics to achieve conventional business goals. This type of promotion is designed in such a way that most times the target audience is unaware that they have been marketed to! Talk about surprise tactics.

The beauty of this type of marketing is that it can be done with very simple tools. Some guerrilla marketing examples and techniques which find application for internet based businesses are given below. See if you can relate any of these to your particular line of activity.

1. Including a website address on all business cards and stationary. This looks professional and helps people reach out for information at the first instance. No one needs to ask where the particular company can be found.

2. Placing a bumper sticker on company vehicles or personal cars is another great way to get noticed. You will be surprised to know that people remember web addresses that they've seen on vehicles better. Also, shorter names are known to fetch better results.

3. Taking advantage of any advertising opportunities on signage in strategic locations. On a busy road there are thousands of people who could be potential customers.

4. Branding staff uniforms. Printing a URL on T-shirts and caps makes it easily identifiable by the audience. This is a useful tactic at trade shows, along with handing out company leaflets to passersby.

5. Small giveaways like pens, mouse mats and coffee mugs printed with the website address are generally appreciated by customers. A memento of this nature will always remain in memory.

6. Press releases in local newspapers work well for websites of community interest.
Alternatively, an interview on the local radio channel is likely to enjoy a decent audience. It doesn't necessarily have to be pure advertising. Subtle approaches work well too - for example, an online retailer of organic foods can talk about what constitutes healthy nutrition.

7. A bit of lightheartedness has worked for many businesses. Flash cartoons featuring a URL could get forwarded to a lot of people in a short time. They are often found on free download sites.

8. Taking advantage of the holiday season. During holidays people spend more time surfing the web, so many businesses develop a "holiday version" of their logo to attract attention. If this is backed up by special price offers for online purchases, there's a better chance of popularizing the website.

Highly Effective, Non Traditional Marketing Strategies

Marketing is undeniably a costly but essential part of a company's business strategy. The financial success of a brand depends on a company's recipe of financial strategies and marketing efforts. Marketing is the avenue for a brand to communicate with its audience, and the audience decides on a product based on what they know about it. This is how marketing impacts a business.

Advertising or marketing impacts the bottom line in 3 ways. When marketing processes turn leads into sales or while keeping and nurturing other leads that are not yet ready to buy, the direct impact is revenue. Budget maximization is also affected by marketing. And the third impact of marketing is in sales costs.

Marketing is identified into 3 popular forms - guerrilla, traditional and internet. By far, the most popular type of marketing strategy is traditional media marketing.

We always associate huge costs with traditional marketing mainly because getting a spot in traditional media is expensive. Getting 1/8th of a page in a national paper may well be worth more than what 10 small town businesses would cost if sold in a bundle. Imagine what 10 seconds on national TV at prime time would cost. But with these costs comes maximum exposure.

Another type of expensive but effective piece of marketing is stadium cups. Custom stadium cups and personalized stadium cups works well for the home team and the stadium itself.

Internet marketing on the other hand is getting more and more popular. Practically speaking, internet marketing is cheap, but pierces right through the heart of your target niche. YouTube is a great example of how the internet is highly effective. All you need is a bright idea and a camera phone to become the next YouTube sensation. With the current economy, the cost effectiveness of internet marketing makes it ideal for small and startup enterprises.

There is another way to creatively catch the hearts of consumers and this is through guerrilla marketing. This type of marketing needs proper timing, the right amount of energy and a lot of creative juices. It focuses on close interaction with the consumer. One example is advertising a book. A strategist would give away free books and some cash to 10 people provided that they read it at central park the whole day. Wouldn't passersby be curious why they came across some people reading the same book? These types of low cost strategies make the marketing style ideal for small and startup enterprises.

Searching for guerilla marketing examples? Please visit here.

Few Important Revolutionary Marketing Ideas

The restaurant business is a very competitive business, and especially in the present world where there are new eat-outs and fast food joints coming up in every look and corner each day. In such a competitive market, if you don't satisfy your customers by giving them what they want, then you may not be able to survive in the business. Though, some restaurant owners vouch to say that they satisfy the taste buds of the customers completely, still they need to follow a few important marketing ideas to retain the old customers and bring in new customers. Otherwise, there is a huge possibility of losing on the customers. And, at the same time, the owners of these restaurants who are on the verge of languishing should also think some guerrilla ideas for marketing their business. Old traditional ideas, though, are great, wouldn't match all the time.

Here are a few important revolutionary marketing ideas for best restaurants to survive in the market.

• You can introduce new innovative websites and speak about the food you serve to the customers. You can keep changing the menu often and can update about it on the website.

• You can also create a Facebook page and can invite your customers to become a part of it. You can also introduce digital photo kiosks, a new concept which has come up, and take photographs of customers and put them in your Facebook page. You can also put the same photographs on their page and tag your restaurant's name. This increases your visibility to customers.

• In such social networking sites, you may introduce coupons to customers, which they can redeem in their next visit. You can also ask your valued customers to invite their friends to like your Facebook page.

• You can give a free dish or cake or even a drink for your customers who celebrate their birthday or anniversary. If you have the addresses of the customers in your database, you may send an invite to those customers to spend some personalized time with their family and friends during certain occasions and give them a special offer on some signature dish.

• Blogging is also a great way to engage customers. You can speak about different food items, nutritional value and a whole lot of other valid information about food. It is a part of your online marketing strategy and it helps in adding video ads, banners and a whole lot of other information. Blogs can be an important part of your business and it can drive a huge traffic to the main website. It can also be helpful in churning additional income through advertising.

Please visit here for guerrilla marketing.

Guerilla Strategies in Marketing Promotion

You can actually make money online through internet marketing and advertise it for a low cost. Many private companies try to figure out strategies to improve their marketing business. Some are even spending thousands of dollars hiring marketing consultants.

But if you're ambitious and clever, there are hundreds of ways to get your product noticed and actually make money online without spending or overspending your budget. 

Here are some guerilla marketing ideas you can try.

1. Making press releases
Press release is an effective way of promoting products or services without spending too much money. Create and distribute press releases that are informative and newsworthy, and send them to various printing media like magazines, newspapers, and radio and TV stations. Try to craft an attention grabbing press release using few words as possible. Design a lead sentence that will immediately draw a very convincing piece.

2. Finding creative niche
One common mistake that many internet marketers incur is when they try to give everything under the sun rather concentrating on specific niche market. The secret is simple, concentrate on one niche and avoid scattering your efforts. This way your work will be more organize and you can actually make money online through little effort if you do this.

3. Search Engine
After building your online store and your website, obviously promoting it is the next important step. There are many types of search engines that can be utilized and most online businesses use PPC engines. PPC search engine can be costly for beginners, a cheaper alternative is by learning how to achieve or optimize an organic search result. This way you'll be able to save lots of money instead of investing from PPC engines. PPC engines are only recommended for advance and stable marketing businesses only.

4. Know your audience and your product
Learn about your product and create information that can build your product's credibility. Credibility builds trust among customers and trust can help create revenues. If you're interested in learning more about your products psychological processes many online buyers go through, there are lots of E-Books and articles that you can try and read. This will help you in building a web page that functions well, which in exchange will help boost your cash inflow.

5. Affiliate your product
Affiliate marketing is one effective way of maximizing product promotion using different web merchants. Of course, in exchange these merchants will also be paid depending on your agreement. Popular way of payment is through commission basis, for each successful product sold under their site, they will receive an incentive. This strategy is very helpful especially if you're having trouble receiving payments from a single merchant, or when one a merchant is poorly performing in promoting and selling your business.

6. Stay on Trend
Internet marketing trend is quick to change. If you've been familiar with online business for some months ago, your strategy may not work today. Stay current on marketing trends. Begin by learning something creative and new. Spend some time learning, reading, and embracing internet marketing changes.

Guerrilla marketing and advertising with automobile wraps

You will find a great deal of enterprise terms we might not totally fully grasp and one of them might be guerrilla marketing. We have an understanding of the concept as well as the definition of the term but why is it important and why need to we know about it? For those who own a company that is not a multimillion dollar corporation then you need to be creative in how you marketplace, deal with expenses, and compete with bigger competition.

Creativity is the key and that's precisely what guerrilla advertising and marketing is, it really is a creative solution to advertise for those who own a smaller business. Every organization is facing some type of monetary hardship right now and also the fact is that the only technique to survive it is to get rid of expenses. The larger corporations go with cutting the labor
force rather than tightening their multimillion dollar advertising spending budget. It seems they're willing to offer you fewer goods and much less service as opposed to run fewer commercials. If any person has ever been curious as to the reason why businesses spend billions of dollars a year in advertising when the majority of it is ignored, particularly commercials, you need to only appear at vehicle insurance corporations as an example. In case you are going to go with an automobile insurance company who could be the first five firms you named? 

 Finally check and see what five businesses invest the most money on advertising?

Marketing and advertising is efficient due to the fact several folks only like to go having an organization who they've heard about just before. That truth won't change and should you be a smaller company you are at a significant disadvantage simply because you're not able to run commercials on Television all day. That's why you need guerilla advertising and marketing and a great strategy to market on a low budget is with car wraps from Custom Skin Wraps. The reason these wraps are powerful is simple, individuals notice them a lot more than anything and you only need to pay for them when. As opposed to ads exactly where you have to keep paying in order for them to be shown, vehicle wraps are only paid for when and they are shown permanently. Even when your vehicle is parked it can function as an individual billboard and grab attention of prospective prospects. This will be the most helpful method to marketplace on a tight budget and it is an awesome solution to get your name out there.

How to Start a Nurse employment agency

Step 1

Review your state's most recent Nurse Practice Act carefully to fully familiarize yourself with nurse staffing regulations, such as nurse-to-patient ratios and limits for on-duty and on-call hours and what duties are within the scope of practice for the Registered Nurses, Licensed Practical/Vocational Nurses and Nurse Aides that you will be hiring.

Step 2

Create a business plan that details how you will organize your staffing lists. For example, by qualifications, experience or availability. Choose nurses when new assignments come in, your fee structures and accounting methods, the procedures for handling client complaints, no-shows and nurses' concerns, and where you will obtain any needed start-up funds.

Step 3

Locate and set up an office for your staffing agency. You will need a place for nurses to fill out forms, as well as a private area to conduct interviews or meet with client representatives. Additionally, there should be adequate storage for paper records and secured electronic storage and backup systems to protect any financial, client or personnel records stored on your computers.

Step 4

Begin recruiting qualified nurses and nurse aides to staff your agency. You will need to verify the licensure, conduct criminal background checks and perform a drug screening on every nurse you hire, as ultimately you are responsible for ensuring the nurses you send on assignments are qualified and competent to practice.

Step 5

Contact the human resources departments of local hospitals, long-term care facilities, assisted living homes, clinics and other healthcare agencies to inquire about their temporary staffing needs, promote your services and negotiate interviews and contracts to provide temporary nurses.

Step 6

Hire additional personnel as your nurse staffing agency grows. For instance, find a receptionist to handle calls during the day and an on-call staffing director to take last minute requests during nights and weekends. Consider hiring an accountant to keep your numerous contracts in order and handle invoicing and payroll.

See more information about how to start an employment agency.

How To Start An Excellent New Profession

Looking for employment could be a difficult and stress filled job. No one enjoys getting to get jobs and then hold out to determine when you got it. With the correct assistance, you can make career hunting go far more efficiently. Simply use the information in the following article the very next time you are searching for function.

An excellent financing hint if you're personal-utilized is usually to constantly look at the upcoming and program in advance. It's simple to get distracted by the on this page and from now on, contemplating merely the cash you could make now, but it's much more essential to maintain income arriving in in the future.

You don't want any disputes with coworkers. Having the capacity to function and play nicely with others is very important in the job entire world. A strong reputation is important to your picture at work.

When looking for a job, look into the economic assertions to figure out if the clients are doing well or otherwise not. You should situate yourself within a organization which is expanding, as an alternative to the one that is in the decrease. This is certainly essential to your upcoming as well as the prospective good results you will get on the business.

Into a specific magnitude, be willing to take your great pride. You could really feel you should only acknowledge a definite kind of work, using a particular form of wage. Even so, most tasks are better than no jobs, since you will still get encounter and referrals while functioning. Therefore, be accommodating in what you would like.

Being an older job hunter, you must only are the most essential of your respective expertise on your resume. Don't consist of more than 15 numerous years of practical experience, and don't give days. This information could be supplied upon require. You might also outline for you far more distant experience lightly inside your job cover letter or another part of your curriculum vitae.

Research all you should know about the organization before you apply for a task and go on your talk to. This can display that you have carried out your homework if you are being interviewed and can guide to a lot of significant questions that you may have. In addition, you will definitely get to find out the tradition of the company and what it must provide.

The very best policy for receiving a career in your choice is to keep yourself well-informed sufficiently. Think very carefully about what sort of task holds the very best interest for you, and which line of job you possess probably the most ability to do. In case you have the appropriate accreditations, choosing the career you need will be much easier.

If cash really are getting quick as you may seek the proper job, take into account functioning at the job within a different discipline as you look for some thing better. Are likely nightclub or hang on furniture, for instance.

While you are building a cv, try and consist of some of the key phrases how the task you happen to be applying to is looking for. Occasionally, companies will eliminate resumes based upon these phrases, as it is a really fantastic way to receive the require a conversation using your resume.

Create numerous resumes. Should you be an more aged job seeker with a lot of varied and diverse encounter, examine that expertise to concentrate on the work you are looking for. You don't must collection each and every type of encounter you experienced, and you ought to avoid accomplishing this mainly because it can make your cv very long and hard to your potential employer to kind out.

Here's more information in regards to how to start an employment agency.

Guerilla Marketing and the Key Tactics to New Business Marketing and Advertising

No matter what type of business you own, you are constantly trying to find the best ways to get your name out there and promote your product. In today's competitive marketing world, unless you can drop a million dollars on a 30 second commercial, you need to be more creative and devise your own cheaper methods of product promotion. Guerilla Marketing is just one of the newer unconventional tactics used in marketing today. Most sources define Guerrilla marketing as an unconventional system of promotions that relies on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget. Typically, guerrilla marketing tactics are rare and unconventional by targeting consumers in the most unexpected locations and circumstances.

The main objective in any type of marketing plan is to get your product and name in front of as many potential customers as possible. In the past the thought process was to spend the majority of your marketing budget on television and radio commercials, print, or billboard advertisement. However nowadays in a world that fast forwards through commercials or constantly checks caller ID to avoid telemarketers, tactics such as guerilla marketing need to be implemented in any successful marketing plan. Here are just some examples of guerilla marketing tactics that may useful to any business looking to gain attention without breaking their budget:

1. Planting Your Business Card: People love to browse through magazines so why not stick your business card in any magazine that is related to your customer base. In other words, my company sells car parts, therefore putting my business card in any type of car magazine assures me that anyone who opens that magazine and sees my card fall out is a potential customer. Besides book or magazine stores, planting your business card in unique spots such as restaurant menus, bus windows, park benches, or anywhere your card can attract someone who is seated for a long period of time is a great place to start.

2. Tissue Pack Marketing: purchasing small tissue packets with your logo or product on them is a fool proof way to have people hold on to or keep your information because it is useful to them. Every time they pull out another tissue they are reminded of your product, not too mention every time they give a tissue to someone else it creates a buzz and spreads the word.

3. Utilizing Magnets: Even the most satisfied customer will forget who you are unless you can somehow constantly remind them of your service. Therefore giving away business card size magnets with every order will allow a satisfied customer to stick your information on their fridge or desk as a reminder to use you again. It is very minimal in cost, but also very effective! While you're at it to take guerilla marketing even further keep a stack of magnets with you at all times and stick them on any metallic areas that would draw a good customer base......nothing illegal of course!

4. T-shirt Marketing: Get a T-shirt made with your website's logo or website on it. Give away these t-shirts to deserving customers, not only will you have a happy thankful customer, but now you just created your own walking billboard.

5. Bumper Stickers: Stickers are always great because they can go anywhere, not just on your car. Bathroom stalls, benches, signs, street poles, etc... Get creative with where you place them. Areas where people will be situated for long amounts of time are a great place to start!

6. Blanketing the Web: Marketing is all about reaching and contacting as many people as possible, therefore joining any and all social networking sites can get you in front of thousands of people in a very short time. Sites such as Facebook,MySpace, or any social blogs are key networking sites where the snowball effect can result in your customer audience expanding on a daily basis. The key to social networking is constant contact as well as constant content. Stay in touch with your customers, and never stop adding content.

There is no limit to the unconventional tactics of guerilla marketing, and almost any idea is worth looking into. People love creativity when being pitched a product, and the marketing ideas that seem to create the most buzz are not from old school conventional marketing but out of the box pitch techniques. It is a fast pace world where people no longer find the time to sit through commercials or look through newspaper ads. You need to use new and creative tactics without breaking your marketing bank in order to turn your small business into a large player

Ford Motor Company - Case Study

Background (General Facts)
Ford Motors is one of three leading automotive manufacturing companies in the United States. Based in Michigan in 1903 by Henry ford and grew to reach revenue of $150 billion and more than 370,000 employees by 1996 [1]. In the 1970's, the automobile market for the major auto makers - General Motors (GM), Ford, and Chrysler- was crunched by competition from foreign manufactures such as Toyota and Honda. In 1999, Ford acquired the Swedish Volvo model in an attempt to compete in the foreign market and expand to other regions. Furthermore, Ford launched a full organization re-engineering business process plan called "Ford 2000" aiming at reestablishing the company's infrastructure. The process meant reduction in their Vehicle Centers (VCs) to only five covering the operations that spanned 200 countries. It also meant cutting redundancies and requiring Information Technology (IT) to be the driving force and the link between Ford centers worldwide.

In building Ford's IT infrastructure, the company focused on implementing a setup that supported the TCP/IP communication protocol based on the U.S. department of Defense requirements. At those days, Ford internal network was meant to serve files transfer unlike most companies that used the network mainly for email communications. Throughout the 1990's, Ford developed a cost effective Global Enterprise Network Integration (GENI) process to link all its locations compromising on the type of the connection and the cabling in favor of full coverage. During the same time, Ford started building its Web Farm, which was basically a set of hardware and software managed by a team for building Ford's public website. The work started by publishing documents for technical references and moved to more advanced images from a live auto show. As a result, the website received 1 million visits a day in less than 2 years after its official launch. Throughout the end of the 90's, Ford established its web services by increasing the amount of information published, building more intelligent and standard web application in 12 weeks period, purchasing more Netscape browsers for setup on its users' machines, and creating a B2B server to allow the suppliers secured access to Ford's Intranet.

In the path towards service cost reduction and bringing more business through the web, Ford worked closely with its competitors in the U.S. market GM and Chrysler to establish what came to be known as "Automotive Network Exchange" (ANX) certificate. The protocols aimed at providing a unified communications standard through the Internet to enable suppliers to provide common technology for all manufacturers. Moreover, Ford focused on making information on its web site more accessible and useful by deploying a team to manage the process of adding and updating information based on an analysis of how humans deal with information. One final aspect of Fords endeavor was to try to build a model through its infrastructure that benefited from the model implemented by Dell computers to improve their supply chain and delivery process. The direct model would not work well for automotives as it would with computers, as a result Ford worked on its retailing network remodeling and identifying what would eventually give it the extra edge in delivery time.

Enterprise Architecture Issues

• Ford's regional expansion to address the competition for market shares demanded cost management for the infrastructure upgrades
• IT infrastructure places limitations on the type of application development based on the platforms
• Easy access to information and prompt delivery of vital data to key individuals requires proper knowledge managementOrganizations reengineering and process remodeling is necessary when adapting new technologies to maintain the cost and increase efficiency
• Supply chain errors and delays can severely affect the progress of the business and the market value of the corporation

Analysis

Infrastructure Upgrade
Since the inception of the Internet in the 1960's, much effort has been made in standardizing how computers connect to it. In 1982, the International Organization for Standards (ISO) realized that during that period many ad hoc networking systems were already using the TCP/IP protocol for communications and thus adapted it as a standard in its model for the Internet network [2]. The main driver for IP convergence, at that period, was the growth in data traffic through wide area networks (WANs) established by local companies. Furthermore, in 1991, the Internet was open for commercial use, and that demanded a reduction in the total cost of operating the network to cope with 1 million Internet hosts that materialized in only 1-year time. Telecommunications companies like AT&T understood the potential and worked on standardizing the network offering voice services over IP networks that managed the separation between voice and data transmission [3].

At the same time, Ford had launched its plan to update its infrastructure, and seized the opportunity brought by the global movement of integrating the voice, fax transmission network with data transmission and expanded its WAN to include its offices in Europe and elsewhere. The financial benefits also came from the fact that Ford adapted the TCP/IP protocol from the beginning and made sure that all its technical infrastructure upgrades adhere to the standards. This made the transition of its system to the Internet as cost effective as it could be.

Web Technologies
Intranets employ the hypertext and multimedia technology used on the Internet. Prior to 1989, when Tim burners-Lee invented the Web [4], most applications used standard development languages such as C and C++ to create desktop applications that were proprietary and dependent on the platform. For example, applications running on a command-based operating system such as UNIX would not run under Windows, and those working for PCs might not work on Apple computers and vice versa [5]. The invention of HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language) introduced a new model for applications that conform to the standards provided by a single program, the "Web Browser". Unlike standard applications, the browser brought a unified interface that had a very fast learning curve. Users seem to require no additional training to work with web browsers. Furthermore, system administrators did not have to spend time installing upgrades on users' machines, since the Intranet client/server architecture facilitated all the updates through the connection with the web server [6].

Since Ford established its Intranet, it was aiming at building web applications through the initial analysis of "Mosaic", the early form of web browsers. The technical department at Ford used web languages to create the first web site in 1995. In 1996, the team started building applications making use of the unified "Netscape" browser that was deployed on all machines at the company, and working on a standard template to cut on the development life cycle. There was a substantial cut in training cost due to the user-friendly interface of web applications. Furthermore, the speed of development made vital applications available to different individuals across the company. For example, the B2B site allowed suppliers remote and secured access to various sections of Ford's Intranet. In addition, the development team created an application as a virtual teardown on Ford's website where Ford's engineers could examine parts of competitors' cars and evaluate any new technologies. The alternative would have been an actual trip to a physical location where Ford tears down cars to examine the parts.

Knowledge Management
While there are many definitions for knowledge, each company might adapt its own based on how it analysis data and information to acquire knowledge. The University of Kentucky, for example, defines knowledge as "a vital organization resource. It is the raw material, work-in process, and finished good of decision-making. Distinct types of knowledge used by decision makers include information, procedures, and heuristics, among others... " [7].

Organizations go through different activities to manage the amount of information they collect to form the knowledge base of the company. Activities include creating databases of best practices and market intelligence analysis, gathering filtering and classifying data, incorporating knowledge into business applications used by employees, and developing focal points for facilitating knowledge flow and building skills [8].

Ford was excited about the traffic it was receiving on the Web site and everyone was publishing all the material they have on desk on the Intranet. Nevertheless, there was a growing concern about the usability and usefulness of the material people were adding. As a result, Ford created a "Knowledge Domain Team" to build complete information in nine areas that were identified as vital to the business. The process Ford took was based on surveys and specialists input in how people perceive information, and what is considered vital and what is distracting in the structure of Ford's website. The aim behind the initiative was to reduce the time individuals spent in searching for information through proper indexing of the website content, and making sure that what was important could be accessed in due time, and what is trivial did not overwhelm the researcher with thousands of results.

Business Re-engineering
In the area of organization's re-engineering process innovation is the set of activities that achieve substantial business improvements. Companies seeking to benefit from process innovation go through the regime of identifying the processes, the factors for change, developing the vision, understanding the current process, and building a prototype for the new organization. History shows that organizations who define their processes properly will not have problems managing the issues and developing the change factors [9]. When introducing technology, business redesign is necessary. The industrial fields have been using Information Technology to remodel processes, control production, and manage material for generations. However, it is only recently that companies recognized that the fusion of IT and business would go beyond automation to fundamentally reshaping how business processes are undertaken [10].

When foreign companies were allowed to compete in the U.S. market, Ford understood that to succeed in business in a competitive arena it needed to implement strategies that competitors find difficult to imitate [11]. As a result, Ford bought Sweden Volvo to enter the European market, and partially owned Mazda to have a competitive edge with Japanese cars1 [12]. To achieve that it re-engineered its production development activities and global corporate organization and processes for dramatic cost reduction. Furthermore, it understood that expansion requires collaboration and alignment, and thus planned to establish the IT infrastructure through a WAN that connected all the offices. In the process of innovation and re-engineering, Ford has set policies to manage the cost of establishing the network, built models for continuous implementation, and organized global meetings to align all parties with the process. Adding to that, when it came to managing the website, Ford facilitated an awareness campaign for all the branches to understand that Ford is using the web to collaborate and research and adapting information technology as a way to maximize its business value. The goal for Ford was to maintain its leadership in the market and to do that in the most efficient and cost effective method that is there.

Supply chain management
Supply chain management (SCM) is about coordinating between suppliers, manufactures, distributors, retailers, and customers [13]. The basic idea that SCM applications revolve around is providing information to all those who are involved in making decisions about the product or goods to manage delivery from the supplier to the consumer [14]. Studies show that reducing errors in supply chain distribution, increases revenue, enhances productivity, and reduces the order-to-fulfillment period [15].

Ford often compared its supply chain process to that of Dell's, in an attempt to close the gaps in its own process and reach the level of success Dell has reached. The difference in the distribution model between Dell and Ford lies in the middle link of using retail shops. Since Ford cannot skip retail as a focal distribution point, it worked on establishing a network of retail shops that it owned. Ford made sure shops are not affecting each other in terms of sales, and gave them all a standard look and feel to establish itself in the consumer's market as a prestigious cars sales retail company. Furthermore, extensive re-engineering initiatives were undertaken to enhance Ford external network by eliminating the correlation with smaller suppliers. In that way, Ford made sure that key suppliers have access to forecasting data from customers' purchasing trends and production information to enable a faster order-to-delivery cycle. Ford vision was to create a model that allowed flexibility, predicable processes and delivered the product at the right time to the right consumer.

Conclusions
Ford is an example of how traditional organizations can mature to adapt what is current and maximizes the business value. The process that Ford went through necessitated the continuous support from management. In addition, it depended on alignment between those involved as a key for success. The correlation was not restricted to internal staff; it extended to cover competitors to reach mutual benefits, to work with suppliers to maintain similar grounds and adequate infrastructure, and to create training programs to educate all on the vision and organization's objectives.

Ford technical progress came at a time where the Internet was yet to reach its full potential. The introduction of Fiber-optic cables in the late 90's and the substantial increase in bandwidth would have helped Ford and cut on the cost in endured connecting its own offices. Furthermore, the ISP services that provided hosting servers were limited to only few players, which explained why Ford preferred to manage its own web server and maintain the overhead of the 24 hours uptime and backup.

From this case study, I understood the level of commitment large firms have to maintaining their position in the market. These companies know the revolving nature of business in the sense of how easy it is to fall back if they did not keep up with the change. The Ford process also shows the need for quick and resourceful thinking when faced with situations that might seem to be unfavorable. The way Ford ventured into the foreign market by acquiring local manufacturers was a strategic decision that did not only enabled Ford to merge with different technologies, but it also saved it the additional cost of establishing production centers in Japan and Europe.

Recommendations

• Maintaining leadership in the market requires innovative organizations willing to reengineer to succeed.
• IT fusion with the business means restructuring and remodeling to understand the role IT would play to meet the business objectives
• Planning and modeling is vital when coordinating work with large teams.
• Constructing websites is not about content; it is about understanding what adds value and how humans interact with information.
• Knowledge management is a plan that companies need to develop as part of their initial business process modeling
• It is not wrong for large firms to try to adapt to successful processes implemented by other firms.

References

1. Robert D. Austin and Mark Cotteleer,"Ford Motor Co.: Maximizing the Business Value of Web Technologies." Harvard Business Publishing. July 10, 1997. harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/common/item_detail.jhtml;jsessionid=WDARNHINBSYKSAKRGWCB5VQBKE0YOISW?id=198006 (accessed July 30, 2008).
2. Computer History Museum, Internet History 80's. 2006. computerhistory.org/internet_history/internet_history_80s.shtml (accessed July 30, 2008).
3. Darren Wilksch and Peter Shoubridge, "IP Convergence in Global Telecommunications." Defense Science & Technology Organization. March 2001. http://www.dsto.defence.gov.au/publications/2400/DSTO-TR-1046.pdf (accessed July 30, 2008).
4. Computer History Museum, Internet History 80's.
5. H. Joseph Wen, "From client/server to intranet." Information Management & Computer Security (MCB UP Ltd) 6, no. 1 (1998): 15-20.
6. R. Boutaba, K. El Guemioui, and P. Dini, "An outlook on intranet management." Communications Magazine (IEEE), October 1997: 92-99.
7. Joseph M. Firestone, Enterprise Information Portals and Knowledge Management (OXFORD: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2002), 169.
8. David J. Skyrme, "Knowledge management solutions - the IT contribution." ACM SIGGROUP Bulletin (ACM) 19, no. 1 (April 1998): 34 - 39, 34.
9. Thomas H. Davenport, Process Innovation: Reengineering Work Through Information Technology (Watertown,MA: Harvard Business Press, 1993), 28.
10. Thomas H. Davenport "The New Industrial Engineering: Information Technology and Business Process Redesign." Sloan Management Review 31, no. 4 (Summer 1990): 11-28, 12
11. Gary M. Erickson, Robert Jacobson, and Johny K. Johansson, "Competition for market share in the presence of strategic invisible assets: The US automobile market, 1971-1981." International Journal of Research in Marketing (Elsevier Science) 9, no. 1 (March 1992): 23-37, 23.
12. Austin and Cotteleer, "Ford Motor " , 2.
13. Henk A. Akkermans, et al. "The impact of ERP on supply chain management: Exploratory findings from a European Delphi study." European Journal of Operational Research 146 (2003): 284-301, 286
14. Thomas H. Davenport and Jeffrey D. Brooks, "Enterprise systems and the supply chain." Journal of Enterprise Information Management 17, no. 1 (2004): 8-19, 9.
15. Kevin B. Hendricks, Vinod R. Singhal, and Jeff K. Stratman. "The impact of enterprise systems on corporate performance:A study of ERP, SCM, and CRM system implementations." Journal of Operations Management 25, no. 1 (January 2007): 65-82.

Want to know what is supply chain management and how it will help your business productivities? Talk to Alenu IT Solutions today!

Other related articles:

• Role of Business Intelligence and Analytics - link
• Importance of Supply Chain Management in Modern Businesses - link
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