TeleCenter Systems' Users Forum survey and management strategy

Tele Center System's Survival Instincts

The management-research question hierarchy

The TCS Management Group, marketer of personnel staffing software TeleCenter Systems, was planning to organize a Users Forum in their home town Nashville. Before launching any related activities or making major decisions, the company contracted the services of Prince Marketing, a company specialized in marketing activities, which commenced communications with the audience and quickly retrieved a series of useful input. In the immediate aftermath of the survey conducted by Prince Marketing, the organizational dilemma referred to the very input generated by the survey. The questions that follow point out to the characteristics of the survey and those of the TCS Group and its TeleCenter software application, to eventually come to the management decision referring to the means in which the results of the study can be used in the organization of the Users Forum.

The management dilemma: What do they need to know, possess and handle in order to organize an efficient and effective Users Forum?

2. Management question: How can the managerial team come to know and possess the characteristics required to organize a successful Users Forum?

3. Research question: How do the users feel about the TeleCenter Systems software applications, about the company and about the Users Forum?

4. Investigative question: How would Prince Marketing go about in retrieving the necessary information from the audience?

5. Measurement question: How will the Prince Marketing staff go about in measuring the answers retrieved and then transforming them into useful input on how to proceed with the Users Forum?

6. Management decision: What survey information should the TCS Management Group use in the organization of the event and in the making of future decisions?

2. The communication methodology

The TCS Management Group contracted the services of Prince Marketing for the single reason that they ran out of time and found themselves in the impossibility of communicating with the audience and retrieving the necessary feedback from users and customers. Aside time efficiency however, TCS's decision to use an intermediary has other benefits as well. Prince Marketing for instance is a specialized entity which has the expertise, the equipment and the personnel to handle the marketing and the research endeavors at superior levels of quality. They are trained on how to interact with the members of the audience, what questions to ask them and how to direct a conversation to get to the desired points of importance. Another advantage is that the marketing specialized company has an increased ability to process and interpret the retrieved data in a means that generates more value to the TCS Group.

There are however also some disadvantages. For once, the usage of a marketing intermediary will imply additional costs. Then, the marketing company could reduce the quality of the communications between the TCS Group and its audience, as these two parties become further apart with the occurrence of another entity between them. Also, there is a possibility that the company specialized in marketing endeavors finds it difficult to formulate technical questions. Despite these limitations however, the usage of Prince Marketing has retrieved positive and useful results.

Another important aspect of the communication methodology is that of Prince Marketing using telephone surveys. This approach has had several benefits. On the one hand, it allowed for the interviewers to pre-formulate their questions so that they were then able to take the conversations in the direction they desired. Then, the company used specialized interviewers to communicate with the audience. Finally, the marketing organization had the ability of selecting the individuals to be interviewed and then easily contacting them, since virtually everybody in the United States has a telephone (Responsive Management).

3. Preliminary analysis plan

The core scope of the telephone survey conducted by Prince Marketing is that of identifying information useful in the future marketing of the TeleCenter System, as well as the organization of the Users Forum. This virtually means that the ultimate proof of the efficiency of the efforts made by Prince Marketing in the marketing and research endeavors combined will consist of the analysis of the success registered by both product as well as forum. Yet, before reaching that state, the managerial team at the TCS Management Group should focus on analyzing the following:

The number of people interviewed and the relevance of their answers. The managers should as such correlate the results of the study with the information they already have and identify similarities and differences. It is normally expected that, despite the existence of differences, the general trend be maintained

The number of people the research estimated to participate in the forum and the actual number of participants

The necessity for potential improvements and the ability of the research to point out to the exact improvements that need to be made; otherwise put, the ability of the research and marketing efforts to identify new needs

5. The combination of marketing and research efforts

The campaign initiated by TCS had the particular feature of combining marketing efforts with research techniques. While it might seem novel at a first look, marketing is in fact, in a significant part, constructed on research. Marketing specialists research the market and then set the basis for a new marketing campaign or strategy which would best address the specific particularities of the target audience. Still, the decisions made by the TCS Management Group implied a wider use of research in the process of marketing, with a major distinctiveness being offered by the extensive usage of the information retrieved in other fields than marketing alone.

The combination of marketing and research enjoys several benefits, as well as it points out to disadvantages. Some of the most important advantages are:

It integrates organizational efforts at a greater level

It ensures that the other organizational departments, such as it or manufacturing, understand and deliver on the customers' needs and wants

It offers valuable input which is useful not only to the marketing department, but to the managerial one as well

It uses the same personnel team to handle more chores and retrieve more results

Still, despite these advantages, the combination does reveal some disadvantages, some of them including:

The combined efforts retrieve reduced levels of efficiency as they consume more resources and are delivered in more time

They require that the marketing staff possess more knowledge and abilities than initially estimated, implying as such increased costs with training

There is a possibility of loss of data quality, meaning as such that the outcome of the research and marketing efforts could be significantly impaired

References:

Blackenship, a.B., Breen, G.E., Dutka, a.F., 1998, State of the art marketing research, 2nd Edition, McGraw-Hill Professional, ISBN 0844234435

Cooper, D.R., Schindler, P.S., Business Research Methods, 9th Edition

1986, Marketing Research, Vol. 3, Nirali Prakashan, ISBN 9380064020

Telephone surveys, Responsive Management, http://responsivemanagement.com/telephonesurveys.php last accessed on February 16, 2010