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  • Digg It - Seven Common Marketing Problems Solved by Marketing Operations

    Corporate marketing groups - especially bandwidth-challenged small-to-mid-sized departments - can be so focused on tactics and fire fighting that they jeopardize their marketing investment. There is a tendency to overreact to events, to tackle symptoms rather than underlying fundamental problems and to jump at the opportunity to please the boss. Many times, this kind of tactical knee j
    According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product
    erking may be fatal.

    Without great marketing, companies won't flourish, especially those in highly competitive markets. Yet the chaotic nature of emerging or dynamic growth companies and the tendency to place the marketing burden on too few individuals is a setup for failure. Promising companies may be left in the dust, or at least handicapped at the starting gate.

    Marketing
    ; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

    Examples of combination products may in
    Operations is emerging as an important discipline for improving performance and measuring ROI in admired technology companies (like Intel, IBM and Amazon) who have refined and fine-tuned their marketing organization with an operational focus. Given the demands that these organizations face today, an innovative approach is central to solving critical issues like results measurem
    lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

    ent, bandwidth constraints and creativity limitations, and building value-added outsourced supplier relationships and effectively managing budget. Many of the best practices, efficient processes and systems approach from large company Marketing Operations can and should be applied by emerging companies that are serious about their marketing investment. Here's why:

    PROBLEM #1
    here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

    Ill-defined metrics

    Today, more than ever, corporate marketing departments need to justify their existence. The need to measure results is unavoidable. However, the instincts and skills that make an outbound marketing practitioner great-action-orientation, verbal and written acuity, persuasiveness, the ability to build strong relationships- often don't translate into an abilit
    d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

    Combination pro
    y or willingness to scientifically and objectively evaluate success. Add in broken systems and the organization's unwillingness to pay for marketing evaluation, and it's no surprise that many marketing departments are unable to define meaningful success metrics.

    SOLUTION

    Marketing Operations ensures that the right processes are in place to establish meaningful metrics at the
    ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc
    front-end of marketing process, enabling the measurement of success at key intervals, and as each program concludes.

    PROBLEM #2

    Slammed resources

    The prevailing attitude of "doing more with less" can leave key people discouraged, overwhelmed, near burnout, and eventually, circulating their resumes. The consequences for organizations are costly mistakes, high turnover, and co
    easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi
    lapsed programs when key people leave, and missed opportunities to leverage the "ugly-stepsister-Cinderella-in-waiting" programs that never get off the ground because of a lack of ownership.

    SOLUTION

    Marketing Operations addresses these resource limitations by ensuring workload is effectively allocated, roles are clearly defined, interdependencies are understood, team members
    nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically
    feel satisfied with their jobs and the programs and additional resources, whether through additional headcount or outsourcing, can be successfully justified to executive management.

    PROBLEM #3

    Sketchy institutional memory

    Marketing is dependent on accurate information, a historical view into past successes and failures, and the ability to recognize patterns that link seemingl
    and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ
    y unrelated data points. Unfortunately, knowledge in many marketing organizations is scattered all over the company. It's in the heads of individual workers, on shelves, on people's hard drives, in long forgotten filing systems. When people leave, a big piece of organizational knowledge goes with them. Information loss is a huge productivity killer for marketing teams. Lost i
    ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi
    sight that must be regained or reacquired wastes previous marketing investments.

    SOLUTION

    Marketing Operations facilitates knowledge sharing, an enduring repository of information and greater decision-making based on fact, as opposed to hunch.

    PROBLEM #4

    Constrained creativity

    The best creativity comes from many brains working together in collaboration. A consequence of the
    ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

    Following aspects would a
    age of the "individual contributor" director is constrained creativity. When the entire creative burden falls mostly on one outbound marketing person, the ability to think out of the box can be severely impacted. Creative synergy results from many minds thinking as one.

    SOLUTION

    Marketing Operations enables the creative process to benefit from the synergy of team.

    PROBLEM #5
    dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

    Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
    Which combination prod


    Failed supplier relationships

    Most successful companies can point to strong, long-term marketing supplier relationships as integral to their success. Likewise, a pattern of failed supplier relationships is often an indicator of marketing department failure, rather than poor vendor performance. Unfortunately, companies that have had consistently bad relationships with outsour
    cts are meaningful and rational?
    Which therapeutic categories to select?
    Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
    Do combin
    ce suppliers often react by seizing control and bringing everything in house. While this strategy may provides the illusion of control, it lets marketing managers deflect blame for failures, rather than teaching them how to manage their outsource suppliers by taking responsibility for the results. In addition, this strategy won't scale with the growth of the organization.

    SOLU
    tions increase the patient compliance?
    What would be the developing cost?
    How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen
    ION

    Marketing Operations helps set realistic expectations and mutual accountability between suppliers and the organization, increasing the effectiveness of outsource partners by empowering them to act as an extension of the internal team.

    PROBLEM #6

    Lost discretionary budgets

    Use it or lose it. Misuse it and lose it anyway. Many corporate marketing departments are leaving di
    t?

    As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel
    scretionary budget on the table or allocating it to the wrong initiatives. This discretionary marketing budget "Catch 22" occurs because:

    • It's very time consuming to manage the budget effectively, especially in companies with broken financial systems

    • Each marketing spend-decision creates more work for the one-person or small- team marketing department in terms of project
    ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

    Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust
    management, measurement, supplier management, etc.

    • Doubt persists about the ability to successfully justify the expenditure to management

    • Focus is instinctively on high-visibility marketing activities and C-level executive "requests" over fiscal management (marketing people are more inclined toward marketing than finance)

    SOLUTION

    Marketing Operations facilitates imple
    y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products
    enting the system support infrastructure and financial management discipline needed to protect precious marketing budgets.

    PROBLEM #7

    Narrow marketing mix

    Many companies align their fate with the success of too few marketing programs. Whether it's lead generation, public relations, trade shows or advertising, the over- reliance on any one particular program can derail a company
    .

    As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de
    -especially if a key program unexpectedly loses momentum. In the meantime, programs that could have had strong leverage never get a chance to prove their mettle and are forever relegated to the "B" list.

    SOLUTION

    Marketing Operations puts the means in place to launch potentially high-value marketing programs that would never otherwise get out of the starting gate.

    The Bottom
    elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

    Companies that provide selfless information through particip
    Line

    In a nutshell, Marketing Operations is an organization's best bet to:

    • Ensure that success can be measured and replicated • Leverage systems and processes to enable consistently excellent performance

    • Encourage great marketing departments to stay together

    • Allow the marketing organization to flourish, despite the unexpected, but often inevitable, loss of a key employee


    tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

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