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Services Management
Notes This can be illustrated thus:
Marketing programmes required to successfully penetrate the desired market
identifying the key success factors in the service industry and aligning them with
the service firm’s strengths and weaknesses.
4. Analyse the previous marketing strategies used to target the customer groups and the key
indicators of performances or the Key Result Areas (KRAs). Peter F. Drucker identified
eight KRAs:
Market Share
Innovation
Productivity
Physical and Financial Resources
Profitability
Manager Performance and Development
Employee Performance and Attitude
Social Responsibility
5. Perform a SWOT assessment by identifying and evaluating the service firm’s areas of
strengths to leverage on, overcome or dilute its weaknesses, seize the opportunities and
avoid threats or find ways and means to meet challenges. Strengths and weaknesses are
internal component of a service organisation’s process, pointing at its capabilities and
competencies.
Example: 13,500 branches of State Bank of India could be its strength, an indication of
its nationwide reach. This is one of the reasons for GE to go for a tie up with SBI for its card
business. Its large size could also be considered as strength. But its militant employees and the
accompanying poor customer service could be a weakness. Opportunities and threats/
challenges are external components for the functioning of the service firm and always originate
from outside it. Thus, for SBI, opening up of the insurance sector and bancassurance as a
product offer could be opportunities. Life Insurance Corporation of India, from the public
sector and other private insurance players like ICICI and HDFC would constitute threats and
challenges.
Task Perform a SWOT analysis for LIC of India and FedEx.
Outlining Marketing Objectives is the next step for Functional Level Strategic Planning - for
marketing. Marketing strategies should be in synchronisation with SBU goals and the SBU
strategy willy-nilly translates into marketing strategy for the service firm.
Example: If Thomas Cook (SBI owns over 15% of its equity) decides to increase its
profitability by 15% (SBU goal), the strategy could be to reduce costs by 12% – including inside
the marketing department. Ergo, it becomes Thomas Cook’s marketing goals and objectives.
The marketing strategy could be to shift sales accent from its employees to Direct Sales Agents
(DSAs) or Travel Agencies. In effect, the strategy for marketing would be to stress more on
outsourcing of sales, and shift from salaries to commissions.
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