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Archive for August, 2010

Skills management is the practice of understanding, developing and deploying people and their skills. Well-implemented skills management should identify the skills that job roles require, the skills of individual employees, and any gap between the two.

Overview

The skills involved can be defined by the organization concerned, or by third party institutions. They are usually defined in terms of a skills framework, also known as a competency framework or skills matrix. This consists of a list of skills, and a grading system, with a definition of what it means to be at particular level for a given skill.

To be most useful, skills management needs to be conducted as an ongoing process, with individuals assessing and updating their recorded skill sets regularly. These updates should occur at least as frequently as employees’ regular line manager reviews, and certainly when their skill sets have changed.

Skills management systems record the results of this process in a database, and allow analysis of the data.

In order to perform the functions of management and to assume multiple roles, managers must be skilled. Robert Katz identified three managerial skills that are essential to successful management: technical, human, and conceptual*. Technical skill involves process or technique knowledge and proficiency. Managers use the processes, techniques and tools of a specific area. Human skill involves the ability to interact effectively with people. Managers interact and cooperate with employees. Conceptual skill involves the formulation of ideas. Managers understand abstract relationships, develop ideas, and solve problems creatively. Thus, technical skill deals with things, human skill concerns people, and conceptual skill has to do with ideas.

A manager’s level in the organization determines the relative importance of possessing technical, human, and conceptual skills. Top level managers need conceptual skills in order to view the organization as a whole. Conceptual skills are used in planning and dealing with ideas and abstractions. Supervisors need technical skills to manage their area of specialty. All levels of management need human skills in order to interact and communicate with other people successfully.

As the pace of change accelerates and diverse technologies converge, new global industries are being created (for example, telecommunications). Technological change alters the fundamental structure of firms and calls for new organizational approaches and management skills.

Employees who benefit

Skills management provides a structured approach to developing individual and collective skills, and gives a common vocabulary for discussing skills. As well as this general benefit, three groups of employees receive specific benefits from skills management.

Individual employees

As a result of skills management, employees should be aware of the skills their job requires, and any skills gaps that they have. Depending on their employer, it may also result in a personal development plan (PDP) of training to bridge some or all of those skills gaps over a given period.

Line managers

Skills management enables managers to know the skill strengths and weaknesses of employees reporting to them. It can also enable them to search for employees with particular skill sets (e.g., to fill a role on a particular job.)

Organization executives

A rolled-up view of skills and skills gaps across an organization can enable its executives to see areas of skill strength and weakness. This enables them to plan for the future against the current and future abilities of staff, as well as to priorities areas for skills development. 

Management styles are characteristic ways of making decisions and relating to subordinates. Different management styles can be employed dependent on the culture of the business, the nature of the task, the nature of the workforce and the personality and skills of the leaders. This idea was further developed by Robert Tannenbaum and Warren H. Schmidt (1958, 1973) who argued that the style of leadership is dependent upon the prevailing circumstance; therefore leaders should exercise a range of management styles and should deploy them as appropriate..

Autocratic

An Autocratic style means that the manager makes decisions unilaterally, and without much regard for subordinates. As a result, decisions will reflect the opinions and personality of the manager; this in turn can project an image of a confident, well managed business. On the other hand, subordinates may become overly dependent upon the leaders and more supervision may be needed.

There are two types of autocratic leaders:

• the Directive Autocrat makes decisions unilaterally and closely supervises subordinates;
• the Permissive Autocrat makes decisions unilaterally, but gives subordinates latitude in carrying out their work.

Paternalistic

A more Paternalistic form is also essentially dictatorial; however, decisions take into account the best interests of the employees as well as the business. A good example of this would be David Brent or Michael Scott running the business in the fictional television shows The Office. The leader explains most decisions to the employees and ensures that their social and leisure needs are always met. This can help balance out the lack of worker motivation caused by an autocratic management style. Communication is again generally downward, but feedback to the management is encouraged to maintain morale. This style can be highly advantageous when it engenders loyalty from the employees, leading to a lower labor turnover, thanks to the emphasis on social needs. It shares disadvantages with an autocratic style, such as employees becoming dependent on the leader..

Democratic

In a Democratic style, the manager allows the employees to take part in decision-making: therefore everything is agreed by the majority. The communication is extensive in both directions (from subordinates to leaders and vice-versa). This style can be particularly useful when complex decisions need to be made that require a range of specialist skills: for example, when a new ICT system needs to be put in place, and the upper management of the business is computer-illiterate. From the overall business’s point of view, job satisfaction and quality of work will improve. However, the decision-making process is severely slowed down, and the need of a consensus may avoid taking the ‘best’ decision for the business. It can go against a better choice of action.
As the autocratic leaders, democratic leaders are also two types i.e. permissive and directive.

Laissez-faire

In a Laissez-faire leadership style, the leader’s role is peripheral and staff manage their own areas of the business; the leader therefore evades the duties of management and uncoordinated delegation occurs. The communication in this style is horizontal, meaning that it is equal in both directions, however very little communication occurs in comparison with other styles. The style brings out the best in highly professional and creative groups of employees, however in many cases it is not deliberate and is simply a result of poor management. This leads to a lack of staff focus and sense of direction, which in turn leads to much dissatisfaction, and a poor company image.

We could perhaps include “accountable hierarchies” as a sub group here. Please see “Elliot Jacques” in reference to this’

Management consulting indicates both the industry of, and the practice of, helping organizations improve their performance, primarily through the analysis of existing business problems and development of plans for improvement.

Organizations hire the services of management consultants for a number of reasons, including gaining external (and presumably objective) advice and access to the consultants’ specialized expertise.

Because of their exposure to and relationships with numerous organizations, consulting firms are also said to be aware of industry “best practices”, although the transferability of such practices from one organization to another may be problematic depending on the situation under consideration.

Consultancies may also provide organizational change management assistance, development of coaching skills, technology implementation, strategy development, or operational improvement services. Management consultants generally bring their own, proprietary methodologies or frameworks to guide the identification of problems, and to serve as the basis for recommendations for more effective or efficient ways of performing business tasks.

Management consulting grew with the rise of management as a unique field of study. The first management consulting firm was Arthur D. Little, founded in 1886 by the MIT professor of the same name.^] Though Arthur D. Little later became a general management consultancy, it originally specialized in technical research. Booz Allen Hamilton was founded by Edwin G. Booz, a graduate of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, in 1914 as a management consultancy and the first to serve both industry and government clients.

After World War II, a number of new management consulting firms formed, most notably Boston Consulting Group, founded in 1963, which brought a rigorous analytical approach to the study of management and strategy. Work done at Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey, Booz Allen Hamilton, and the Harvard Business School during the 1960s and 70s developed the tools and approaches that would define the new field of strategic management, setting the groundwork for many consulting firms to follow. In 1983, Harvard Business School’s influence on the industry continued with the founding of Monitor Group by six professors.

One of the reasons why management consulting grew first in the USA is because of deep cultural factors: it was accepted there, (contrary to say, Europe), that management and boards alike might not be competent in all circumstances; therefore, buying external competency was seen as a normal way to solve a business problem. This is referred to as a “contractual” relation to management. By contrast, in Europe, management is connected with emotional and cultural dimensions, where the manager is bound to be competent at all times. This is referred to as the “pater familias” pattern. Therefore seeking (and paying for) external advice was seen as inappropriate. However, it is sometimes argued that in those days the average level of education of the executives was significantly lower in the USA than in Europe, where managers were Grandes Ecoles graduates (France) or “Doktor” (Germany), though this is very difficult to quantify given the vastly differing management structures in American and European businesses.

It was only after World War II, in the wake of the development of the international trade led by the USA, that management consulting emerged in Europe. The current trend in the market is a clear segmentation of management consulting firms.

Promotion is one of the four elements of marketing mix (product, price, promotion, distribution). It is the communication link between sellers and buyers for the purpose of influencing, informing, or persuading a potential buyer’s purchasing decision.

The following are two types of Promotion:

• Above the line promotion: Promotion in the media (e.g. TV, radio, newspapers, Internet, Mobile Phones, and, historically, illustrated songs) in which the advertiser pays an advertising agency to place the ad
• Below the line promotion: All other promotion. Much of this is intended to be subtle enough for the consumer to be unaware that promotion is taking place. E.g. sponsorship, product placement, endorsements, sales promotion, merchandising, direct mail, personal selling, public relations, trade shows

The specification of five elements creates a promotional mix or promotional plan. These elements are personal selling, advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, and publicity. A promotional mix specifies how much attention to pay to each of the five subcategories, and how much money to budget for each. A promotional plan can have a wide range of objectives, including: sales increases, new product acceptance, creation of brand equity, positioning, competitive retaliations, or creation of a corporate image. Fundamentally, however there are three basic objectives of promotion. These are: 1.) To present information to consumers as well as others 2.)To increase demand 3.)To differentiate a product.

There are different ways to promote a product in different areas of media. Promoters use internet advertisement, special events, endorsements, and newspapers to advertise their product. Many times with the purchase of a product there is an incentive like discounts, free items, or a contest. This is to increase the sales of a given product.

The term “promotion” is usually an “in” expression used internally by the marketing company, but not normally to the public or the market – phrases like “special offer” are more common. An example of a fully integrated, long-term, large-scale promotion are My Coke Rewards and Pepsi Stuff.

Marketing Management is a business discipline which is focused on the practical application of marketing techniques and the management of a firm’s marketing resources and activities. Rapidly emerging forces of globalization have compelled firms to market beyond the borders of their home country making International marketing highly significant and an integral part of a firm’s marketing strategy. Marketing managers are often responsible for influencing the level, timing, and composition of customer demand accepted definition of the term. In part, this is because the role of a marketing manager can vary significantly based on a business’ size, corporate culture, and industry context. For example, in a large consumer products company, the marketing manager may act as the overall general manager of his or her assigned product To create an effective, cost-efficient Marketing management strategy, firms must possess a detailed, objective understanding of their own business and the market in which they operate. In analyzing these issues, the discipline of marketing management often overlaps with the related discipline of strategic planning.

Structure

Traditionally, marketing analysis was structured into three areas: Customer analysis, Company analysis, and Competitor analysis (so-called “3Cs” analysis). More recently, it has become fashionable in some marketing circles to divide these further into certain five “Cs”: Customer analysis, Company analysis, Collaborator analysis, Competitor analysis, and analysis of the industry Context.

Customer analysis is to develop a schematic diagram for market segmentation, breaking down the market into various constituent groups of customers, which are called customer segments or market segmentations. Marketing managers work to develop detailed profiles of each segment, focusing on any number of variables that may differ among the segments: demographic, psychographic, geographic, behavioral, needs-benefit, and other factors may all be examined. Marketers also attempt to track these segments’ perceptions of the various products in the market using tools such as perceptual mapping.

In company analysis, marketers focus on understanding the company’s cost structure and cost position relative to competitors, as well as working to identify a firm’s core competencies and other competitively distinct company resources. Marketing managers may also work with the accounting department to analyze the profits the firm is generating from various product lines and customer accounts. The company may also conduct periodic brand audits to assess the strength of its brands and sources of brand equity.

The firm’s collaborators may also be profiled, which may include various suppliers, distributors and other channel partners, joint venture partners, and others. An analysis of complementary products may also be performed if such products exist.

Marketing management employs various tools from economics and competitive strategy to analyze the industry context in which the firm operates. These include Porter’s five forces, analysis of strategic groups of competitors, value chain analysis and others. Depending on the industry, the regulatory context may also be important to examine in detail.

In Competitor analysis, marketers build detailed profiles of each competitor in the market, focusing especially on their relative competitive strengths and weaknesses using SWOT analysis. Marketing managers will examine each competitor’s cost structure, sources of profits, resources and competencies, competitive positioning and product differentiation, degree of vertical integration, historical responses to industry developments, and other factors.

Marketing management often finds it necessary to invest in research to collect the data required to perform accurate marketing analysis. As such, they often conduct market research (alternately marketing research) to obtain this information. Marketers employ a variety of techniques to conduct market research, but some of the more common include:

• Qualitative marketing research, such as focus groups
• Quantitative marketing research, such as statistical surveys
• Experimental techniques such as test markets
• Observational techniques such as ethnographic (on-site) observation

Marketing managers may also design and oversee various environmental scanning and competitive intelligence processes to help identify trends and inform the company’s marketing analysis.

Communications management is the systematic planning, implementing, monitoring, and revision of all the channels of communication within an organization, and between organizations; it also includes the organization and dissemination of new communication directives connected with an organization, network, or communications technology. Aspects of communications management include developing corporate communication strategies, designing internal and external communications directives, and managing the flow of information, including online communication. New technology forces constant innovation on the part of communications managers.

As a manager, one must take a contingency approach to communicating with their employees and communicate on a personal level. It’s the manager’s responsibility to determine if their employee’s personality falls under the following: Reactors, Workaholics, Persisters, Dreamers, Rebels, or Promoters.

Communication management and project management

In project management, communication management must address the following questions:

• What information needs to flow in and out of the project?
• Who needs what information?
• When is the information needed?
• What is the format of the information?
• Who will be responsible for transmitting and providing the information?

The weekly reporting method

One simple and popular communications method is called the weekly reporting method: every employee composes an e-mail report, once a week, including information on their activities in the preceding week, their plans for the following week, and any other information deemed relevant to the larger group, bearing in mind length considerations. Reports are sent to managers, who summarize and report to their own managers, eventually leading to an overall summary led by the CEO, which is then sent to the board of directors. The CEO then sends the board’s summary back down the ladder, where each manager can append an additional summary or note before referring it to their employees.

Eventually, each employee will receive a long e-mail, containing many or all of the above-mentioned summaries, from every level of management; reading the full result is rarely a requirement. Curious or ambitious employees are considered more likely to read the result; task-centered employees, however, are not.

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a broadly recognized, widely-implemented strategy for managing and nurturing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service. Customer relationship management denotes a company-wide business strategy embracing all client-facing departments and even beyond. When an implementation is effective, people, processes, and technology work in synergy to increase profitability, and reduce operational costs.

Benefits

These tools have been shown to help companies attain these objectives:

• Streamlined sales and marketing processes
• Higher sales productivity
• Added cross-selling and up-selling
• Improved service, loyalty, and retention
• Increased call center efficiency
• Higher close rates
• Better profiling and targeting
• Reduced expenses
• Increased market share
• Higher overall profitability
• Marginal costing

Related Trends

Many CRM vendors offer Web-based tools (cloud computing) and software as a service (SaaS), which are accessed via a secure Internet connection and displayed in a Web browser. These applications are sold as subscriptions, with customers not needing to invest in the acquisition and maintenance of IT hardware, and subscription fees are a fraction of the cost of purchasing software outright.

Phases of CRM

The three phases in which CRM can help to support the relationship between a business and its customers are, to:

• Acquire: a CRM can help a business in acquiring new customers through excellent contact management, direct marketing, selling and fulfillment.
• Enhance: a web-enabled CRM combined with customer service tools offers customers excellent service from a team of trained and skilled sales and service specialists, which offers customers the convenience of one-stop shopping.
• Retain: CRM software and databases enable a business to identify and reward its loyal customers and further develop its targeted marketing and relationship marketing initiatives.

Challenges

Despite the benefits, many companies are still not fully leveraging these tools and services to align marketing, sales, and service to best serve the enterprise.

Tools and workflows can be complex to implement, especially for large enterprises. Previously these tools were generally limited to contact management: monitoring and recording interactions and communications. Software solutions then expanded to embrace deal tracking, territories, opportunities, and at the sales pipeline itself. Next came the advent of tools for other client-facing business functions, as described below. These technologies have been, and still are, offered as on-premises software that companies purchase and run on their own IT infrastructure.

Often, implementations are fragmented; isolated initiatives by individual departments to address their own needs. Systems that start disunited usually stay that way: siloed thinking and decision processes frequently lead to separate and incompatible systems, and dysfunctional processes.

Facility management is an interdisciplinary field primarily devoted to the maintenance and care of commercial or institutional buildings, such as hospitals, clinics, hotels, resorts, schools, office complexes, sports arenas or convention centers. Duties may include the care of air conditioning, electric power, plumbing and lighting systems; cleaning; decoration; groundskeeping and security. Some or all of these duties can be assisted by computer programs. These duties can be thought of as non-core or support services, because they are not the primary business (taken in the broadest sense of the word) of the owner organization.

It is the role of the facility management function (whether it is a separate department or small team) to coordinate and oversee the safe, secure, and environmentally-sound operations and maintenance of these assets in a cost effective manner aimed at long-term preservation of the asset value, and also other janitorial duties such as making sure the environment is properly cleaned and sanitized for its tenants. In those cases where the operation of the facility directly involves the occupants and/or customers of the owner organization, the satisfactory delivery of facility-related services to these people will be an important consideration too; hence, the term “end-user satisfaction” is often used both as a goal and a measure of performance.

The term facility management is similar to property management although not exactly the same. While both manage the day to day operations of a facility the property such as cleaning, maintenance and security, similar to Janitors, one must not confuse it with such a title. The property manager has an expanded role which includes leasing and marketing activities whereas the facility manager role focuses on existing tenants who usually are owner occupants. An important feature of facility management is that it takes account of human needs of its tenants in the use of buildings and other constructed facilities. These softer factors complement the harder factors associated with the maintenance and care of engineering services installations.

According to Atkin and Brooks, an important concept in the facility management field is that of outsourcing, where the owner enters into an arrangement with external organizations to provide one or more services in preference to their being provided through internal arrangements. The reasons for this action can vary, including lack of in-house resources, lack of expertise and pressure to reduce costs. Unfortunately, confusion can exist because of the close association that facility management has with outsourcing. The two concepts are not synonymous; rather, outsourcing is one means for providing facility-related services to the owner organization.

Facility management is performed during the operational phase of a building’s life cycle, which normally extends over many decades. As such, it will represent a continuous process of service provision to support the owner’s core business and one where improvement will be sought on a continuous basis. It is essential that decision-making in the preceding design and construction phases is therefore properly informed about operational requirements if the facility is to provide optimal support to the owner’s business. In this connection, facility management can be seen as an integral part of a coordinated and controlled process of design, engineering, construction and operations. Where a facility is provided on a turnkey basis, for example design-build-finance-operate (DBFO), the consortium responsible for the delivery of the physical asset and then operating the core service will need to understand implicitly the day-to-day demands in managing that facility. Under such arrangements – typically public-private partnerships (PPP) – owner-operators must fully integrate operational thinking into early design decision-making.

A major challenge facing facility owners is reducing demand for energy for economic reasons, but also because energy consumption goes hand-in-hand with carbon emissions. Reducing energy during the operational phase of a facility’s life similarly reduces carbon emissions. When considering that 30-40% of a country’s total carbon emissions is attributable to buildings and other constructed facilities, it is clear that operations and, hence, facility management have a significant role to play

Product management is an organizational lifecycle function within a company dealing with the planning or forecasting or marketing of a product or products at all stages of the product lifecycle.

Product management (inbound focused) and product marketing (outbound focused) are different yet complementary efforts with the objective of maximizing sales revenues, market share, and profit margins. The role of product management spans many activities from strategic to tactical and varies based on the organizational structure of the company. Product management can be a function separate on its own and a member of marketing or engineering.

While involved with the entire product lifecycle, product management’s main focus is on driving new product development. According to the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA), superior and differentiated new products — ones that deliver unique benefits and superior value to the customer — is the number one driver of success and product profitability.

Aspects of product management

Depending on the company size and history, product management has a variety of functions and roles. Sometimes there is a product manager, and sometimes the role of product manager is held by others. Frequently there is Profit and Loss (P&L) responsibility as a key metric for evaluating product manager performance. In some companies, the product management function is the hub of many other activities around the product. In others, it is one of many things that need to happen to bring a product to market.

Product management often serves an inter-disciplinary role, bridging gaps within the company between teams of different expertise, most notably between engineering-oriented teams and business-oriented teams. For example product managers often translate business objectives set for a product by Marketing or Sales into engineering requirements. Conversely they may work to explain the capabilities and limitations of the finished product back to Marketing and Sales. Product Managers may also have one or more direct reports such as a Product Executive who can manage operational tasks or a Change Manager who can oversee new initiatives.

Product planning

• Identifying new product candidates
• Gathering market requirements
• Determine business-case and feasibility
• Scoping and defining new products at high level
• Evangelizing new products within the company
• Building product roadmaps, particularly Technology roadmaps
• Working to a critical path and ensuring all products are produced on schedule
• Ensuring products are within price margins and up to spec
• Product Life Cycle considerations
• Product differentiation
• Detailed Product planning
• 7 functions of marketing

Product marketing

• Product positioning and outbound messaging
• Promoting the product externally with press, customers, and partners
• Conduct customer feedback and enabling (pre-production, beta software)
• Bringing new products to market
• Monitoring the competition
• more detail on Product marketing

People that hold office management positions conduct special studies and based on the results of these special studies, they develop reports. Apart from developing reports, they also provide input to management on the development of policies and procedures. Office management may also provide paralegal support, and may draft correspondence for management, schedule appointments, etc.

An office manager is an employee charged with the general administrative responsibilities of any given office of a corporation. In small and medium sized companies the task is often given to the corporation’s bookkeeper. In large companies there will often be several offices in several geographical areas, and each one will have an office manager.

Main functions

The office manager is the coordinator of the work system. An office manager is responsible for planning, organization, and controlling the clerical aspect of the organization, including the preparation, communication, coordination and storage of data to support production and other important operations of an industrial establishment. Often they also engage in marketing. Also, their tasks are to monitor the work processes and to evaluate the outcome. The outcomes of work are intended for what can be called the final receiving system, as for instance, client, customer, and other departments.

Furthermore, their role is to coordinate on the front and by issuing various assignments. They usually lead or manage a team of secretaries or administrative clerks. And they take care of the assignment of tasks within the department, but the more complex tasks tend come to their desk.

Positions allocated to usual classification perform a combination of the following office management functions:

• Budget development and implementation
• Purchasing
• Human resources
• Accounting
• Printing
• Records management
• Forms management
• Payroll
• Facilities management
• Space management
• Risk management
• Grants administration
• Affirmative action and equal employment opportunity
• Information technology and telecommunications
• Monitoring the management of health and safety in the company office
• Assisting senior managers in identifying health and safety needs in their departments
• Responsibility for the day to day running of the office
• Liaising with senior managers to ensure that staff in the division have appropriate information technology equipment
• Managing a range of budgets including accommodation, health & safety for company
• Plan, consult and manage office moves for the division and other units within the department

Considering the diversity of functions, someone holding an office manager position is expected to have many talents. Some of the competencies which he or she is expected to possess are problem solving and decision making abilities, integrity, assertivity, flexibility, accuracy and the ability to cope with pressure.