What is cross functional role of marketing?

Answer 1

Provided the firm does develop a marketing orientation, marketing will

have a role in coordinating all the activities of the firm at every level. Each

department, and indeed each individual, should be carrying out his or her

role with the customer's welfare in mind. The coordinating role manifests

itself in the following ways:

& Information is shared between departments, and interdepartmental

relationships are facilitated. For example, market-oriented firms often

have a single customer database which contains all the information

about any given customer. Non-market-oriented firms often have a

separate database for the salesforce, another for the invoicing

department, another for the shipping department and so forth.

Integrating the databases improves the level of customer service

dramatically.

& Common goal setting. Since everything is driven by customer need,

the firm can set goals which are measured according to customerbased

outcomes. For example, the firm might decide that it needs to

reduce customer complaints by 90% and ensure that complaints are

18 CHAPTER 1: The Nature and Scope of Marketing

satisfactorily dealt with within 48 hours. Since any department in the

firm might be subject to a complaint, this type of target will be applied

universally.

& Clear company policies can be established regarding products,

branding, production, delivery and so forth. All of these impinge on

customer satisfaction, and all of them cut across every department in

the organisation.

& Marketing becomes a service provider. The marketing department

should be offering services to all departments, for example, providing

information about the market to engineers developing new products,

advising the finance department on the best way to approach slow

payers, talking to the delivery people about providing a better service

for customers and so forth.

& Marketing contributes to strategic planning. Strategy in business is

about developing competitive advantage. Marketing offers the

opportunity to develop competitive advantage through superior

customer value, and although there may be other ways of developing

advantage (e.g. by reducing costs dramatically), a good understanding

of customer need is difficult to copy: customers are almost always

prepared to pay more for a better product or service.

& Internal marketing becomes an important aspect of the marketing

function.