Identifying the Role of Traditional Siloed Sectors to Client Requirements
In this task, you will review Crystal Apple’s requirements and set the groundwork for your convergent environment.
1.1 Review and identify the role of the traditional siloed sectors to client requirements
The traditional siloed sectors emphasise on fulfilling specific client requirements and making products specific to them. This ensures better satisfaction of client needs and revenue generation.
1.2 Identify the potential points of integration to unify across an integrated offering
Insert your Brand Interaction Points (BIP) with metrics into the table:
BIP |
Interaction Metric |
|
|
Email marketing |
Ø Enables Crystal Apple to communicate with current and prospective customers. Ø Enables the firm to communicate with a large number of customers simultaneously. Ø Allows the firm to inform them about products, strategies, offers, etc. Ø Enables customers to communicate their expectations, requirements and concerns to the firm. |
Enables the firm to establish its brands strategically in the market. Email marketing saves time and cost besides earning the company new customer bases and more revenue. |
|
Social media |
Social media enables Crystal Apple to communicate with the consumers on a more personalised platform. The customers can like and express their comments on the products and posts of the firm. The marketing department can integrate the feedback of customers to form marketing strategies. |
Enables the company to communicate with customers even without marketing its products. |
|
Tradeshow |
Trade shows enables Crystal Apple promote its products to not only customers but also suppliers and distributors. Thus, more than B2C communication, trade shows enable B2B communication. |
Paves ways for acquisition of supply and distribution chain. |
|
E-commerce site |
Enables Crystal Apple market and sell its products to a large consumer base simultaneously. This paves way for immense revenue generation. |
Enables marketing and selling online. |
|
Public relations |
Ø Public relations enable Crystal Apple to promote appropriate information about itself in the market and counteract negative publicity. Ø Strengthens public image. Ø Boosts goodwill of Crystal Apple. |
Strengthens the goodwill of Crystal Apple. |
|
Print Media |
Ø Enables Crystal Apple promote its product offerings. Ø Enables the company to reach customers who have no access to internet. Ø Crystal Apple can promote specific products targeted at specific segments of the local customers. |
Enables the company to achieve deeper market penetration. |
|
Mobile App |
Ø Enables Crystal Apple to market its products among the tech savvy customer base. Ø Mobile apps enable customers who are travelling view and purchase products of the company. Ø Enables the company to present itself as a technologically strong company. Ø Enables the company to promote and market its products on diverse app-enabling devices like tablets and smart phones. |
Enables the company to present itself as modern and technologically advanced. |
|
Insert your potential points of integration:1.3 Establish the roles of the customer within the convergent environment
Insert your customer drivers and descriptions into the table:
Driver |
Reason for Shift |
Advancement of technology |
Advancement of technology enable customers to view and purchase larger variety of products than available in the local market places and malls. Advanced technology enable companies to advertise and market their products before a larger customer base. It encourages customers to choose from a large variety of products. Business organisations can communicate with their customers on the social media and inform them about their strategies. The customers can in turn communicate their expectations and preferences. Thus, from being mere purchasers of end products, customers have emerged to play a determining role in the production of goods and services. |
Convergence |
Convergence enables business organisations to connect to their customers using several paths like digital marketing and social media platform. Business organisations can gain and simultaneously integrate the feedback of the customers in their production strategies. Convergence in other words enable greater level of company and consumer collaboration in production of goods. Thus, convergences ensure that business organisations are able to sell their products to a large group of consumers and earn more profits in the market. |
Culture |
Cultural perception of consumers play a significant role in their purchase decisions. Consumers generally avoid purchasing products which go against their cultural perception. Again, consumers following certain lifestyle prefer buying products from companies which manufacturing products aligned with their lifestyle. For example, it is the culture of the urban consumers to buy products online and companies give offers aligned with the cultural festivals which a particular urban consumer base celebrate. |
Achievement of sales and CRM |
Business organisations capture and retain data about the customers, their income, their lifestyle, their preferences and other important data during interaction with customers. They maintain this valuable information about customers on customer relationship management software. They then use this database to target appropriate customer base to sell their products and generate revenue. |
List your strategies here:
- Obtaining the knowledge about customers’ expectations.
- Taking their preferences into consideration to form appropriate marketing mix.
- Offering high quality products to customers
- Ensuring value creating and high level of CSAT.
- Build lasting relationship with customers.
- 1.4 Confirm and ensure that messages can be unified across an integrated offering
Insert your responses here:
The different departments in the organisation should integrate their operation to ensure that the production takes place according to the preferences of the clients. The marketing department should gain information about the preferences of the customers. This information should be passed to the manufacturing department which should obtain financial sanctions from the accounts department.
The HR department should acquire extra human resources, if required to support the manufacturing. The inventory and supply department should acquire and maintain supply of raw materials. The manufacturing department should use it to produce goods which the sales and marketing department should market in the market. The accounts department should record the revenue received from marketing the products to the customers. This shows that the requirements of the customers can act as unification parameters to integrate the functions of the different departments.
1.5 Identify relevant and current legislation, regulations and policies
Insert your responses into the table:
Legal Requirement |
Summary of Key Provisions |
Australian Consumer laws, schedule 2 of Competition and Consumer Act 2010 |
The Australian Consumer laws regulate the operations of the business organisations, suppliers(other than public limited companies) and acquisition of goods by individuals and corporations (other than public limited company) (consumerlaw.gov.au 2018). |
Financial laws |
The consumers and commercial organisations have to follow the laws and policies set by apex financial authorities like Reserve Bank of Australia (rba.gov.au 2018). |
Environmental laws |
Environmental laws like Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (environment.gov.au 2018). The business organisations also have to comply with licences and permits (business.gov.au 2018). |
Income tax laws |
Laws pertaining to taxes like income tax |
Task 2: Prepare and Apply Convergent Marketing Communications
In this task, you are required to identify, evaluate, select, and create convergent tools and techniques in line with Crystal Apple’s organisational goals.
2.1 Identify and evaluate tools and techniques from traditional sectors to the IMC space
Insert your responses into the table:
Tools and techniques |
Evaluation |
Competition laws |
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission or ACCC is the independent department under the government of Australia which oversees consumer rights, business rights and obligations of consumers, industry regulations and price monitoring of prices of goods and services at which business organisations sell them to consumers (accc.gov.au 2018). The body provides consumers the right to use their consumer rights and demand refund, repair or replacement of products if they are not satisfied with them. |
Environmental laws |
Business organisations and consumers have to comply with the environmental laws enacted by the central government, state governments and local governments. The business organisations are obliged to take steps to reduce their environmental footprints to the extent possible. These organisations have to switch over to green and more sustainable supply chains to ensure that their finished products cause minimum environmental damage. |
Product liabilities |
The business organisations should sell products which are safe for the consumers to use. The consumers are also empowered to file complaint if they suffer any sort of financial or physical due to low quality products (Koopman, C., Mitchell, M. and Thierer, A., 2014). |
Consumer laws |
The consumer laws in Australia provide protection to consumers against fake goods, exploitation of business organisation and so on. The consumers who suffer by consuming a fake product can seek compensation for the same. |
Step2: They can discuss the business needs of the company like their products, what percent of the products do they sell online, their promotional mixes and so on.
Step 3: Choose the most appropriate format for the convergence available.
Steps 4: Train the employees on the policies and procedures before making them available to employees for use.
Step 5: Make the facilities available to employees with approval from their managers and senior managers.
Step 6: Set a deadline within which all employees have to be educated on the new policies.
Step 7: Determine the ways to ensure the effectiveness of convergence tools and techniques training like measuring the improvement of performance they have achieved.
2.3 Create the convergent tools and techniques:
- Should be aligned to the business needs of the organisations.
- The convergence set up should be user friendly and adapted to the needs of the organisations.
- The extent of access of employees should depend on the position of the person under question. For example, managers should have access to their subordinate employees. This would prevent employees of lower level from misusing the system.
- All information should be shared only using the convergence and the users would be required to login to access and send information. This would enable the apex management of companies track unethical sharing of data by the employees.
The convergence
Task 3: Engage with Experts and Maintain Relationship
In this task, you will hold a meeting with an industry expert to gain feedback on your convergent tools and techniques created in Task 2.
3.1 Identify sector and technology specific experts
Insert your responses into the table:
Specialist |
How can assist |
Marketing |
· Provide information about consumer preferences. · Provide information about the marketing strategies of consumers. · Provide knowledge about new products in the markets. · Provide information on new probable markets. |
HR departments |
· Acquires, trains and retains human resources. · Acquires employees according to business forecasts. · Performs important functions like training of employees, mentoring them, appraising them. · Ensures that the company employs employees according to laws and policies. · Contributes towards maintaining healthy organizational culture. |
Accounts experts |
· Records all financial transactions. · Allocates funds towards different functions like production and marketing. · Prepares future cash forecasts. |
Legal experts |
· Ensures the business organization complies with laws and legislations. |
Quality control |
· Ensures that the firms makes superior quality products. |
Information technology experts |
· Ensures proper use of technology in the operations of the company. |
Insert your networks and descriptions into the table:
Expert and Business Networks |
Description |
Consumers |
Gain more information about their expectations and needs. |
Employees |
The company should provide them with benefits and career development opportunities. |
Shareholders |
Provides them with positive return on investments. |
Suppliers |
Pay them dues on their invoices on time |
Apex management |
They make management decisions |
Insert your screenshots here:
3.3 Engage the use of sector and technology specific expert
Ask appropriate questions to them stakeholders.
3.4 Improve convergent tools and techniques in consultation with the expert
The tools and techniques of convergence should be adopted according to the needs of the business.
Task Outcome Sheets
The Outcome Sheet below is for the simulation tasks that the student is required to complete. Assessors, tick ‘S’ if the student achieved a satisfactory outcome for an assessment task and ‘NYS’ if the student does not meet these requirements. Also, you are required to write comments on the quality of this evidence under the ‘Comments’ column. For your judgement on the student’s overall performance, tick ‘Satisfactory’ if the student achieves a satisfactory outcome for all of the tasks or ‘Not-Yet-Satisfactory
References:
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. 2018. Consumer rights & guarantees.
Business.gov.au. 2018. Environmental legislation licences and permits.
Chen, S.C., Teng, J.T. and Skouri, K., 2014. Economic production quantity models for deteriorating items with up-stream full trade credit and down-stream partial trade credit. International Journal of Production Economics, 155, pp.302-309.
Consumerlaw.gov.au. 2018. Australian Consumer Law.
Crilly, D., Hansen, M. and Zollo, M., 2016. The grammar of decoupling: A cognitive-linguistic perspective on firms’ sustainability claims and stakeholders’ interpretation. Academy of Management Journal, 59(2), pp.705-729.
Department of the Environment and Energy. 2018. Department of the Environment and Energy.
Dyllick, T. and Muff, K., 2016. Clarifying the meaning of sustainable business: Introducing a typology from business-as-usual to true business sustainability. Organization & Environment, 29(2), pp.156-174.
Guerrero, J. and Director, C.P., 2017. Issues and alternatives.
Koopman, C., Mitchell, M. and Thierer, A., 2014. The sharing economy and consumer protection regulation: The case for policy change. J. Bus. Entrepreneurship & L., 8, p.529.
Ng, A.C. and Rezaee, Z., 2015. Business sustainability performance and cost of equity capital. Journal of Corporate Finance, 34, pp.128-149.
Reserve Bank of Australia. 2018. About New Payments Platform | RBA.
Schaltegger, S., Hansen, E.G. and Lüdeke-Freund, F., 2016. Business models for sustainability: Origins, present research, and future avenues.
Simic, A.D., Vojnovic, B. and Grujic, D., 2015. Corporate social responsibility and consumer protection in the Republic of Serbia. ????????? ???????? ?????????, (6), pp.315-325.
Wu, J., Al-Khateeb, F.B., Teng, J.T. and Cárdenas-Barrón, L.E., 2016. Inventory models for deteriorating items with maximum lifetime under downstream partial trade credits to credit-risk customers by discounted cash-flow analysis. International Journal of Production Economics, 171, pp.105-115.