Week 9 Blog Post

Before hopping into the required prompts for this week's blog post, I want to express my disappointment that we were not asked to speak about performance metrics in our personal work settings.  I was going to brag and boast that college football programs have it the easiest when it comes to metrics in the sense that we get immediate feedback regarding performance in the form of game statistics, both internally and externally.  By the Monday following a Saturday game, we know how well we performed statistically compared to competitors within our conference and on the national scale.  Also, specific corporations (teams) focus on specific metrics for their dashboard.  For example, team built around their ability to control the clock will look more at time of possession, while a spread offense built around throwing the football will look more closely at passing efficiency.

Just wanted to touch on that briefly, now onto our required topics.

Managing the Marketing Metrics Portfolio: A Second Look

This week we were asked to take another look at the article Managing the Marketing Metrics Portfolio, specifically how it applies to Pharmasim.  As mentioned in the article, I think one of the most important steps to managing your metrics portfolio is by first understanding your business model.  This may seem obvious, but if you lose sight of your served market, you may be looking at the wrong metrics.  When it comes to our Pharmisim cases, we must define who are customers are, what do/will they want, who are our competitors, how do we create, communicate, and deliver value to these customers, and how do we make money in the process?  If we lose sight of our served market definition, we may begin looking at the wrong metrics.  For example, if our served definition is the cold market, our metrics should not be based off of the cold or allergy market.  Although it is a simple concept to understand, it could cause disastrous results if we begin acquiring the wrong information, or even not enough information.

Another important concept that stands out in the article is that the decision on which metrics to include depends on the information needs of each audience.  Since we are acting as the "higher-ups" in our Pharmasim projects, its important for us to understand the same key elements as those in the "C-Suites," as described in the article.  It is essential for us in our Pharmasim projects to understand how marketing efforts are translating into important financial outcomes, the enthusiasm (or satisfaction/awareness) of our customers/end users, and the health of our brand equity and capabilities.  We can find this information in metrics such as market share, marketing productivity, ROI, and many of our survey reports geared towards consumer awareness and satisfaction.

When it comes to our performance metrics established on our dashboard for class, we have decided to come up with the following scoring system:

Cumulative Manufacturer's Sales (10%)
Cumulative Unite Sales (10%)
Gross Margin Percent (15%)
Average Marketing Efficiency Index (25%)
Cumulative Return on Sales (15%)
Share of Unit Sales (25%)

While all of these metrics were agreed upon by the majority of the class, and undoubtedly important metrics within our Pharmasim projects, this is a perfect example that not all companies need to follow the same set of metrics.  While many of the metrics may be viewed as important by all companies competing within the same marketplace, some may be more important to others.  For example, our group dropped the price of Allround and experienced a steep increase in the number of unit sales this past period.  We have since decided to incorporate a premium pricing strategy to Allround, which will undoubtedly lower the number of unit sales, but will hopefully increase net income.  Therefore, cumulative unit sales and share of unit sales will not be as important to us moving forward.  Consequently, manufacturer sales may hold more weight for our group as opposed to another.

Blog Reviews

This week I decided to look at Aleena, Christine, and Andrew's blogs.

Ironically, while I really enjoyed Aleena's blog, from the style, creativeness, depth, insight, and knowledge presented, judging by the fact that her last post was April 24th, I would guess that she is either really struggling with the class or no longer a part of it.  That's too bad because I thought she did a really good job with it.

Christine does a very good job at presenting what was asked of us in class.  What I found interesting with hers was when it came to her sharing her opinions of the Pharmasim project.  Her insight was in terms of how well her team worked together, which was very different from mine as I focused on our performance thus far.  Obviously this is not just an exercise of how effective of a marketing manager you are, but also a real life example of teamwork, which Christine did an effective job at reminding me of.

I thought Andrew did a good job analyzing other people's blogs and sharing his insights on them.  I would have liked to hear more about his insight into Pharmasim and course material, as he brought up some good points, but I would have enjoyed it more if he expanded on them a little bit more.

Sharing Some Pharmasim Secrets

The title of this section may be misleading to most since we are not at the top of the leader board when it comes to the class' balanced scorecard for Pharmasim, but I guess learning what not to do can always help others.

I must say that when you do not get the results you were hoping for, it does make it easier to see what to do and what not to do.  Our biggest struggle thus far has been our pricing strategy.  I realize we went over this in great detail during one of our Pharmasim discussions, that high unit sales does not guarantee profitability, and in case you didn't believe Professor Spotts, take my word for it as well.  We have done a great job at satisfying our consumers with our product, and we have since learned that it is time to accurately price Allround in relation to its effectiveness.  Hopefully Pharmasim will take into consideration that since we had so many unit sales, those who purchased Allround will be happy with the product and will continue to purchase it in the future, even if the price increases.  Wishful thinking? We will soon find out.

I will say though that while the Situation Analysis was very tedious, it was a very useful tool at compiling information and giving us an overall view at our company and the market.  While our performance metrics are not where we want them to be at the moment, the Situation Analysis really helped put everything into perspective for us, as each of our team members all found similar information and came up with similar key issues.