TABLE OF CONTENTS About this chapter
Control mechanisms aim to translate strategic plans into specific actions. The purpose is to ensure that behaviour, systems and operations conform to corporate objectives/policy. Marketing managers need to be aware of a range of control variables: financial measures, budgets, performance appraisal and benchmarking.
After reading this chapter, you will understand:
Basic control principles.
What makes control systems effective.
Management and financial control.
Applying performance appraisal.
The use of benchmarking in a control system.
The term control has received a bad press. The phrase smacks of coercive action, limiting freedom and keeping costs to an absolute minimum. The reality is somewhat different and managers should consider the control process as simply a mechanism to protect your strategic plans during implementation. Murphy's law states that If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong . Hence a control system detecting and pre-empting the inevitable problems that accompany implementation is a valuable asset.
Control can be defined as attempting to guarantee that behaviour and systems conform to, and support, predetermined corporate objectives and policies. Such hard edged views illustrate the importance of linking behaviour to overall strategic direction. This is a fundamental reason for having control systems.
The basis of control is the ability to measure. In essence it compares what should happen with what actually happened or is likely to happen. Given the importance of measurement, a tendency exists to measure what is easy to quantify rather than what is important. Project...
