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Work experience for university students is important, in order to experience the modules practically. It is well known that students learn more during fieldwork more than reading and being asked about what they read. This paper will discuss what will the project contains, what academic resources will be used for analysis and back up, and finally, the paper will justify why do I think that I am fit for independent work.

In the beginning, the project will contain some information about the firm structure, policies. It will discuss in depth Human Resources department and their work, because HR is a major part in forming a company and keeping the employees around, happy, motivated and efficient.

The project will view the company in general and its mission statement and values. Moreover, part of the legal responsibility, is corporate governance which will also be discussed, criticised and given more effective solutions.

Besides the analysis, some academic resources will be used in order to back up the arguments, like: Articles, books, company's annual reports and finally legal case studies and journals.

I think I can work independently because I am aiming to continue my study with several Masters and phd. Also, the job I have right now helps me stay motivated to work independently and efficiently. Therefore, this effect my own time in studying independently, which will always keep me on track to achieve bigger dreams like having my own security firm.

Answer:

Introduction:

Aim  

Through this report the researcher aims to achieve adequate knowledge regarding his future career step. The researcher wants to grow as a successful entrepreneur through exploring his marketing potential. Though she is discussing a marketing firm but she believes the knowledge will help her to open her own security firm. The researcher is presently working in the UK based marketing agency named Visual Connect.

Outline

The researcher has divided the project in several parts in order to give it a definite structure. The mission, vision, business strategies, objectives and policies to understand the organizational culture that the business professional is part of. The principles, policies, legal aspects, social responsibilities and corporate governance are also discussed as the project’s principle features. The researcher also incorporates her personal experience while working in the company and how her analysis is going to help her to become a successful business professional. This is a marketing firm so a major part of the report focuses on its various marketing strategies in connection with various business theories. The market analysis of the firm and SWOT analysis and the performance analysis of the selected firm will give the researcher a guidance that will help her to open a new security firm.

Work experience and my role

The company

Visual Connect is one of the fastest growing event based marketing companies of United Kingdom. The company specializes in direct marketing campaigns (Visual Connect 2017). The company provides quality marketing solutions for a wide range of clients.

Firm’s structure

Organizational structure is necessary to understand in order to achieve the marketing objectives. Business theories about the firm structure and policies will be helpful to understand the marketing related problems and variables. The structural design of a firm works as an interfunctional relation between marketing strategies, innovation, customer relationship and marketing outcomes. The business theories describe the structure and policies from a managerial perspective. A study of the marketing journals (1990 – 2013) shows that organizational structure has great impact on marketing variables (Lee, Kozlenkova and Palmatier 2014). Market orientation, the interdepartmental and the strategy- performance relationship is driven by the structure.


Visual Connect is a start up marketing agency based in Liverpool (Visual Connect 2017). A diverse marketing team always innovate positive and unique marketing ideas to satisfy the ever changing demand of the market. After understanding the current changes and demand of the market, the company’s first-hand personalized approach helps it to stay at the top. From event marketing channel to tailoring sales to effective marketing strategy everything is at clients’ service. The organizational structure consists of creative and experienced individuals. They always work hard to deliver the best results. The entire process is transparent and measurable to the company’s customers and shareholders. Unique representatives are improving the result everyday which can be experienced by the customers at any point of their service. The company specializes in these sectors of marketing business. About 500 companies from industries of different sectors like finance, entertainment, energy and telecommunications and non-profit are their clients (Visual Connect 2017).

Firm’s Mission

A company’s existence is defined by the company’s mission. It describes what the company is offering to the market and the society. A convincing mission differentiates the company from other competitive companies. It must include the values and philosophy of the organization.  The mission provides the employees, customers and shareholders with a shared expectation. Like any blooming company, Visual Connect offers quality over quantity.  

Goals for 2017 

Visual connect believes that setting a goal is important for everyone as with the main goal, the employees will set their own goals for the company’s profitability. To visit the goals at certain intervals is important to track and update the progress. The company has set a series of goals, which they want to achieve over the year of 2017. The main mission is to create an empire in the sales industry and to help the firm’s contractors achieving massive success. The company is planning to expand their business in countries like Germany, France and Canada (Visual Connect 2017).  

Firm’s objective

The firm has set its objectives clearly. For any company the objectives are steps of success.  The company’s main goal is the profitability. The employees, marketers, salespersons must work passionately ensure the desired net profits for the firm. The proper knowledge about profitability rate and ratios will help him to understand market value and accordingly he can decide upon the rates.

Firm’s strategy

The structure of a firm tells about its floe work function and the strategies decide how the objective will be achieved by it. The following strategies of any organizational structure can help to build a new one or to develop the existing one.

Business strategy

Business strategies include competitive strategies and cooperative strategies. It ensures the firm’s position in the marketing industry or any other specific industry (Wheelen and Hunger 2017).

Functional strategy 

It is the method of achieving the business objectives by maximizing the productivity and profitability. Functional strategy depends on the needs of the organization (Grünig Kühn 2015). This strategy also offers back up to other business or corporate strategies.

Corporate strategy 

It includes the firm’s decisions and actions to achieve competitive advantages and more profitability. This is an approach to allocate investment capital resources (Babafemi 2015). The effort to expand the company in diverse sectors is always in work here.

(Source: Author Created)

SWOT Analysis

Strength

Event Marketing

The company always believed in personalized and unique customer interactions to be the key of its success, therefore, it applies face to face marketing approach through different channels like: events, door to door and business to business. Currently, it is an event based firm, however, if the client asked to switch channels it is possible because of the experience that the employees have within the field. As mentioned, there are further stages after Account manager such as campaign managing which the manager get to manage campaigns with larger teams and they get to discuss with the client and make changes that are necessary to materialize a successful brand.

Brand loyalty and awareness

According to Bohns, having a face to face interaction is 34 times is better than any other form of marketing (2017).The company’s personalized approach encourages the customers to become loyal and come back again and again for the same or better quality service. The aim is to spread good words of the industry to connect as many clients as possible with every campaign.

Weakness

Direct face to face marketing

The company is engaged in face to face marketing interaction policy in which the management representative communicates with the clients directly. Visual connect is a firm specializes in outsourced sales and marketing giving services to various clients like telecommunication, charities, lifestyle and communication. Their main focus is in direct marketing. They follow the face to face approach with the client’s ideal consumers. This personalized interaction allows them a long lasting close relationship with the brand and the consumers. This eventually results in brand awareness, large profit and increased customer acquisition (StonE and Woodcock 2014). This direct marketing policy does not help the organization to reach a large number of clients and also if the client is inattentive the message could fail to reach him. As the company is growing gradually only limiting itself to a single method of marketing policy would not be sufficient in near future.  

Limited Manpower

The company is facing presently the main challenge regarding its limited manpower. Though most employee show interest in the performance related pay but the new employees do not get it easily. As a result the management is facing difficulties in employee retention. The company has limited manpower and that is the primary reason it is getting difficult for the company to utilize its strength factors fully.

Opportunities

No-Win-No-Fee Policy

The industry of marketing is evolving rapidly, so if the company adapts newer technologies like internet it can highly develop its profitability. The company is engaged in the no-win-no-fee policy which is a successful policy to appeal large number of clients. This helps the company to achieve the control its damages with the help of willing solicitor (Fenn, Grembi and Rickman 2014).

Face to Face Marketing

The face to face marketing is highly effective in building a close relationship and trust with its clients. The marketing representative listens to the client attentively and responds accordingly this helps the clients to build the trust upon the company. The client provides feedback fast and the representative analyzes and evaluates this in order to come up with better options.  The client sees this as personal service and a good service will lead him to refer it to other clients.

Contribution to the Society

The company might engage with social work and activities that will add to the company’s reputation. The firm’s production of a material needed by a large section of the society not only ensures huge profit but also serves the need of the society. Company’s tax should be paid fairly. Maintaining the social responsibilities will help the company to have a positive impression on the clients as well. More number of clients will join the company and the company will gain more profitability.

Threats

Competitors

There are other companies in UK that like McConnell’s Marketing Agency or Appco Do applies similar face to face marketing policy that is creating great challenges for Visua Connect to maintain its superlative position in the industry of sales and marketing.

Negative Impact of Performance Pay

Different clients of Visual Connect pay commission fees differently for different representatives. However the company policy of performance pay often does not work in favor of the clients. The hard work for the performance pay might lead them to switch to other competitors of Visual Connect if they offer more money to them.

SWOT Analysis

(Source: Author Created)

Performance Pay effect from employee perspective

The performance pay is the payment that an individual employee receives from the management through various modes based on his or her evaluation of performance. Visual Connect promotes the PRP or performance related pay to motivate its employees to perform better and enhance the organizational performance related culture. Since 1980s effective organizations have been applying this strategy to motivate their employee in a useful way (De Spiegelaere, Van Gyes and Van Hootegem 2016). Visual Connect is following a similar path.

The Structure of the Payment

The employees under certain job grades experience pay progression at certain interval. This keeps the enthusiasm of the employees alive and they perform more efficiently. However the pay progression that is regular only happens within certain pay brackets that the management decides. The employees feel satisfied as they get paid the basic pay without any delay and the increment based on their performance.

Role of Performance in Pay Progression

The management has set certain evaluation steps that help the employees get the performance ratings. Depending upon the performance rating the management of the company decides the limits and rates of the progression (Thompson and Hatfield 2015). They employee in the organization works and competes with other for better performance scores which eventually offer company more workforce and profitability.

The Role of Time

Though Curve Theory suggests that the initial payment should be more during the learning phase but the management follows a more conventional organizational practice. The management increases the payment with the staying period of the employee, therefore employee efficiency also plays significant role in the pay progression.

The Implementation

The increased payment is added with the employee’s basic pay till the employee achieves the maximum increase because of his performance. Once an employee receives the highest payment and performance rating he is promoted to the next pay bracket and the pay progression changes according to the new bracket. In return, company should ensure the deserved incentives and security of the employees. There should be an effective reward management system (Shields et al. 2015). It helps the management to hire right people for the right job. The employees achieve the financial incentive and rewards based on their performance and achievement.  This fair pay increment process makes the employee happy and efficient.

Organizational Culture related to Payment

The organization applies various methods to manage the company profitability and performance related culture (Cummings and Worley 2014). The management evaluates the performance ratings and based on the pay spine decides the payment increment system. The management also considers the sustainability of their performance. The company mainly pays through cash bonus but in the designing phase they keep it mind that it would not cross the profitability limit. The company aims to support the development policy by the pay structure. The organization clearly conveys the message to the employees about what they believe through the pay system. It also highlights which employee it wants to retain and who should improve their performance immediately. Visual Connect has set their PRP transparent and acts as a driving force to change the cultural force to establish an organization that is performance based.

The performance pay effect on Client

The performance pay methods of Visual Connect have a positive effect on its clients. The effective system attracts the right clients and delivers right message to them about the company’s transparent process. It gives its clients the image that the company is driven by employee performance, flexible and cost conscious (Van der 2015).  The clients also realize that the employee commitment is of high level which is potential to bring high profitability and it is safe to be part of the organization. As the clients play important role in the payment by speeding up the payment, therefore if the company keeps up its effective payment performance the clients will also improve their involvement and performance.

Critical Reflection

Working with Visual Connect has been a great learning experience for me. During the learning process one gets to learn many theory-based practices and he has to abide by the set rules. The reality of work culture might differ at times. I also experienced similar during my working period in the external organizational environment. As a marketing professional you ought to be open-minded, creative and calculative at the same time. The decisions one has to make, might appear unnecessary or unsuitable primarily but those are mostly been proven in favor of the profitability of the company and the client.  It is not like that the management professional always face challenges during the application of the theories he had learned, there are times when the theories only help to resolve the issues. The business strategic theories are one of the most effective tools for marketing, which allows him to evaluate his working plan and guides him to the right direction. By effectively applying whatever he has learned will also guide him to his future plan of becoming a personal firm owner.

Conclusion:

Surviving in the marketing industry is not an easy task. In order to success in the market, the professional must apply proper marketing strategies. Many factors had to be considered by him before deciding upon the chosen options. So in the various stages of the process the marketers should make sure that the investment by clients would be minimal but without compromising the quality. Then the subjective and objective evaluation was a constant factor to progress rightly. The leader and his team are bound to deliver best quality services. Whenever problems arise, he has to generate innovative solution by consulting with the concerned clients and fellow team members to make the right decisions. Not only promoting the client’s brand, the firm must continue trying to promote other opportunities for the firm’s future as well.

References:

Babafemi, I.D., 2015. Corporate strategy, planning and performance evaluation: A survey of literature. Journal of Management, 3(1), pp.43-49.

Cummings, T.G. and Worley, C.G., 2014. Organization development and change. Cengage learning.

De Spiegelaere, S., Van Gyes, G. and Van Hootegem, G., 2016. Innovative work behaviour and performance-related pay: rewarding the individual or the collective?. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, pp.1-20.

Fenn, P., Grembi, V. and Rickman, N., 2014. 'No Win, No Fee', Cost-Shifting and the Costs of Civil Litigation: A Natural Experiment.

Grünig, R. and Kühn, R., 2015. Developing the Functional Strategies. In The Strategy Planning Process (pp. 239-246). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Lee, J.Y., Kozlenkova, I.V. and Palmatier, R.W., 2015. Structural marketing: Using organizational structure to achieve marketing objectives. Academy of Marketing Science. Journal, 43(1), p.73.

Shields, J., Brown, M., Kaine, S., Dolle-Samuel, C., North-Samardzic, A., McLean, P., Johns, R., O'Leary, P., Robinson, J. and Plimmer, G., 2015. Managing Employee Performance & Reward: Concepts, Practices, Strategies. Cambridge University Press.

Stone, M.D. and Woodcock, N.D., 2014. Interactive, direct and digital marketing: A future that depends on better use of business intelligence. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, 8(1), pp.4-17.

Thompson, S. and Hatfield, I., 2015. EMPLOYEE PROGRESSION.

Van der Linden, S., Faber, S., Halstead, M. and Altberg, E., Yellowpages. Com Llc, 2015. System and method to merge pay-for-performance advertising models. U.S. Patent 9,202,219.

Visual Connect. (2017). Home | Visual Connect | Event Marketing Specialists. [online] Available at: https://www.visualconnect.co.uk/ [Accessed 8 Jul. 2017].

Visual Connect. (2017). Visual Connect reveals goals for 2017. [online] Available at: https://www.visualconnect.co.uk/visual-connect-reveals-goals-2017/ [Accessed 8 Jul. 2017].

Wheelen, T.L. and Hunger, J.D., 2017. Strategic management and business policy. pearson.

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