September Already, and Only One More Week

    The semester is almost over, and this both scary and exciting. This week was one reading, one video, and all group work. I already briefly talked about our Marketing Revision Plan. We are basically done with it. We are just putting on the finishing touches as of right now. We had wanted it to be done by now, but things come up, and honestly it basically is. The only issues are a section that doesn’t seem to be updated, mentioning some appendices we have in the actually document, and putting our names on it instead of Team 1. They seem like some quick easy fixes. It currently is exactly three pages of reading and then somewhere around 10 pages of appendices. Which is about five appendices. This whole appendix thing has definitely become a friend as it helps you make your point in a short time frame in the meat of the message. I will also say that I thought I knew PharmSim pretty well, but I feel that every time we do an assignment with it, my PharmSim knowledge grows. Hopefully, I have mastered it enough to earn a good grade with my team.

    The reading we did was on managing performance metrics. I definitely wish we had read this article earlier in the semester when we had to submit performance metrics for PharmSim. It would definitely had been helpful in trying to determine metrics for that assignment. The short sum up of that article is that there  are tons of performance metrics that can be used with a company. It is important that the metrics be evaluated yearly as the company grows certain metrics will change. Also, there must be a balance so that a whole picture is formed, without having so many metrics that a company is too bogged down by information and can’t form the picture. Also, the metrics must include all departments so that the picture is better formed. The balance of the metrics is important because if it is soley based say on marketing it could only show that marketing is doing well and not the rest of the company, and also it could show only the good and not the areas that need improvement.

     Our video this week was on variance analysis. This may have helped us earlier in the semester in determining how our company was doing, however, it is something we can use this week and next week. So there is an equation for this and called Net Market Contribution is NMC=MDxMSxSPxCDxM%-ME

MD=Market Demand

MS=Market Share

SP=Selling Price

CD= Channel discounts

MP=margin percent

ME=marketing expenses

This equation brings together volume variance (MD, and MS), margin variance (SP, CD, and MP), and marketing expenses (ME, naturally). The constant of the equation from year to year or from time period to time period is that of the marketing expenses. Everything else a company is looking at how it has changed. The equation can be done the current year and the previous year at least to allow comparison. Or you can do actual results and project results. It is up to the company to decide which one is the better to use.

That pretty much covers it for this week. Next week we should be advancing the last few periods, a class evaluation, an individual analysis memo on PharmSim basically, and our last weekly blog.