IV - FUNCTIONAL STRATEGIES
Functional strategies refer to the translation of the overall strategy into strategies for the various functions. These will often involve shorter-term goals and the time frame for these is sometimes called tactical. It is recommended that you briefly outline the marketing, product development, operations, and finance and these are discussed briefly below.
THE MARKETING STRATEGY:
Having completed external and internal analysis, a management team should set out its marketing strategy. This should consider the 4 C's - customers, competitors, channels and company - and segmenting the market as a result. An important step in this involves the decision about whether to compete in one narrow segment or broadly in several segments. The selection of a specific segment or segments allows customer needs to be defined, and once these are defined the 4 P's for each segment - product, price, promotion and place (distribution) - may be determined.
THE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY:
This is closely related to both the marketing and the manufacturing strategies. How have you made the strategic choices about which market segments will be served, given that it may be necessary to develop new products for these? Decisions must be made not only about why but also when to develop new products, positioning of the new products, the ideal cost so that they can be sold with the required profit margin, how much investment will be required, and whether further product development is a good investment.
THE OPERATIONS STRATEGY:
A production strategy should be defined in conjunction with marketing strategy. Strategic decisions may include setting objectives in capacity, responsiveness, quality and cost. As a result it shoul ...