Organizing the Marketing Function
Some managements fall into a trap by trying to adopt the organization plan of another company. It is perfectly natural to look at company A, observse that it has been succesful, and conclude, therefore, that its form of organization, applied to our company, will make us succesful. Such a conclusion usually is incorrect.
Even when the products and markets were similar, the personnel, management attitudes, history, size, and the company`s image in the market place were different. And some cases the products, markets, channels of distribution, and needs of customers were different.
This is not to say that one management cannot learn and get ideas from the organization plans of other companies. Of course it can and should. In the cases cited earlier, each company has retained some aspects of the plan it tried to copy. But to try to adapt another company`s organization plan to one`s own company without first thinking through what it needed for success will almost surely result in lost time, money, effort, and people. One of the greatest contributions experienced management consultants can make is in the area of organization planning.
Some companies have made serious mistakes even with this type of help, but qualified management consultants have worked with many types of organization, and they know the steps of analysis that must be gone through to device a sound organizational structure.
Business management is sometimes accused of following fads. Once a new management technique is adopted by a few companies and receives some acclaim, many others rush to join in, often without sufficient thought as to whether, or how, it applied to them. This has been true with decentralized management and with divisionalization. It is certainly true of the marketing concept. Market orientation is so sound in its basic concept that most managements have accepted the idea. However, many have tried to adopt it by making changes in their organizations without firt examining the needs of their markets, the strenghts and weaknesses if their company, and the type of personnel available for staffing positions calling for new skills and responsibilities.