Professional Progress My Professional Progress: I Am

Professional Progress

My professional progress:

I am the Manager, Retail Management, Wal-Mart, San Francisco. I joined this branch when it was newly launched in San Francisco about two years back. I have served the Wal-Mart group in several cities of USA. With little over two decades of retail management experience, in my core roles as Manager, Retail, I have also been associated with traditional marketing roles like public relations, advertising. I was entrusted to run several loyalty programmes for customers from the detail customer database that we have in our Computer Systems and prepared a 'Retail Reporting Roadmap' which helps in evaluating customer data to have importance across the enterprise. From my experience, I have found that customer metrics are crucial measures which are just as important as metrics that measure product, performance of vendor, or channel. (Robinson, 2006)

Customer selling information contained in the data warehouse is capable to take an augmented importance when it is linked with channel and product information. The company has benefited due to my contribution, as my customized plans has been able to provide answers to the following queries (i) which Wal-Mart outlets have the maximum customer retention rate as also lowest and the trend. (ii) Merchandise departments drawing the most profitable customers as also the lowest and the trend. (iii) The stores having the highest conversion rates and the lowest and the trend. (iv) Merchandise categories needing customers to travel the most from their respective homes. (v) The stores drawing bargain hunting customers. (Robinson, 2006)

My short-term and long-term goals:

My short-term goals are to have greater understanding of the evolving nature of retail management which has undergone a lot of changes. This is because within the broad ambit of retail management, several disconnected business processes are present which has to be thoroughly understood to have a holistic knowledge of the entire ecosystem of retail management. Some of these are "(i) Planning and Scheduling (ii) Warehousing (iii) Batch determination (iv) Budget reporting (v) Account management (vi) Accounts payable & accounts receivable (vii) Production management." (Microsoft Dynamics, 2006) I have observed that within retail management, there are a lot of financial activities which is required to be tracked and these are "(i) Accounts payable and accounts receivable (ii) General ledger (iii) Fixed assets (iv) Budgeting and reporting." (Microsoft Dynamics, 2006) Retail management integrates all of these activities and there is also an observed overlay between financial aspects of retail management and financial management itself. (Microsoft Dynamics, 2006) Similar

My long-term goals constitute understanding the overlay between marketing and financial management in greater detail given my long experience in retail management. I plan to gradually shift to financial management as it offers someone to specialize in a particular aspect of the entire spectrum of financial management for instance portfolio management, risk management which as per my perception is somewhat absent in marketing management. For instance in marketing management there is a broad group of roles a manager has to perform and hence at times role clarity is sometimes blurred. But financial management somewhat gives greater freedom as regarding role clarity is concerned.

Expectations from Fordham Business to benefit my future career needs:

It is a fact that learning is the process of acquiring knowledge. I expect, Fordham Business to use make effective use of instructional technology so that it is blended to the process of learning and the acquisition of knowledge. The various characteristics of tools of educational technology also impact the perception of student of the effectiveness of the tool in learning. For example, the characteristics of teaching tools understood to impact learning process cover degree of interactivity of the tool itself. As employees of the present are expected to build, leverage and transform technological information into knowledge to provide solutions to problems or generate outcomes, I am certain Fordham will present a conducive environment in this regard. (Flaherty; Mottner; Clarke, 2001)

The perception of students regarding their ability to land with a job can be dependent of what they think employers are expecting to find in their new recruits, as also what will give students a competitive edge compared to other potential employees. Especially, traditional students will look forward to skills which will place them better off compared to experienced employees in the job market. The ability to land in a job, from my standpoint is that it is function of networking, getting through the course and finally getting the degree. I am certain that Fordham Business through its effective teaching proficiencies in specific technologies and myself possessing certain skills will help in completion of the Financial Management course. Students like me are required to acquire the educational competence for professional survival within the new economy. (Flaherty; Mottner; Clarke, 2001)

With the successful achievement of technological skills and abilities at Fordham Business, I can be able to transfer these competencies to newer problem areas and settings. An illustration of this transfer would be through performance on the job front that includes the ability to give an adequate performance, achieve promotion and be successful. This performance can be impacted by the ability and the degree of proficiency with new technologies as also knowledge which is related to the work and valued by companies after completion of the course from Fordham Business. I am certain that the educational technology tools at Fordham Business is going to improve their capabilities or proficiencies, present a real world knowledge and give access to resources. (Flaherty; Mottner; Clarke, 2001)