Strategic Marketing

1. Introduction

Learners will conduct a skills audit to evaluate the strategic skills they need to meet current and future leadership requirements and then use it to identify their preferred learning style.

Personal Development Planning, or PDP helps learners think, not only about the learning that has already taken place, but also planning for the future. PDP is a great way to build on all the opportunities university life has to offer, but it is up to you as an individual to decide what you want to get out of PDP and how to set about doing this. This Advice Sheet will help you to:

Recognise what is involved in PDP

Identify opportunities presented to you

Practise techniques to support PDP through action planning

The objective of this report is therefore to identify appropriate marketing objectives and to create a competitive advantage for xxx in the changing IT business services market.

This report will take the described strategic marketing processes in CQT (2011), and as a logic continuation of it, will apply marketing techniques to scan the environment in order to identify growth opportunities for XXX. Then, supported by tools such as Porter Competitive Matrix and Ansoff's Matrix, it will propose a strategic option and strategic marketing objectives. The report closes with a summary of the results.

2. Asses personal and professional skills to achieve strategic goals

2.1. Personal skills

time management eg using time effectively, analysing time spent to improve productivity,

setting SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic,time-based) objectives,

prioritising work tasks, dealing with time wasters,

effective delegation;

stress management;

problem solving; decision making;

effective communication eg active listening, questioning, handling conflict

2.2. Professional skills

Professional skills

counselling and mentoring to support staff with their own learning and development requirements;

coaching skills;

leadership skills;

multi-tasking; using occupational standards to identify competencies; continuing self-development to meet requirements for professional bodies eg learning new skills and knowledge, developing in current and future job roles;

leading and chairing meetings;

delivering effective presentations

2.3. Achieving strategic goals

importance eg to ensure that staff can perform their job effectively, to provide opportunities to meet individual learning needs, to improve flexibility and adaptability when responding to change, to ensure business success, to create a learning culture; methods eg using conceptual tools to identify own strengths and limitations, developing personal networks, management development and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programmes

3. Skills audit

: to assess skills and competencies against organisational and personalobjectives; personal profile using appropriate self-assessment tools, psychometrictesting, personal SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis

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listing strengths, weaknesses, identifying opportunities for improvement or careerprogression, identifying threats to progress; assessment against relevant National Occupational Standards (NOS) and NVQ competence standards; importance of feedback from others eg peers, line manager, customers; methods of feedback egappraisal, supervision, performance review, mentoring; defining the gap, identifyinglearning and development needs to meet strategic objectives

4. Identify preferred learning style

: methods such as learning style inventories andquestionnaires, psychometric testing eg Kolb (converger, diverger, assimilator,accommodator), Honey and Mumford (activist, reflector, theorist, pragmatist),Fl

eming's VA

K/VARK model (visual, auditory, reading/writing, kinesthetic),Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI); criticisms of learning style theories

4.1. Analysis of internal capabilities and SWOT analysis

Strengths

xxx is one of largest YYY IT contractors for consulting services. xxx, as signed by yyy in 2010 which allows to provide more than 100 consultants in the yyy in outsourcing. This contract ensures xxx a constant revenue source for the following years.

In addition, xxx has diversified activities in different sectors and not only concentrates on one industry: It holds contracts within the transportation vertical market.

Weaknesses

Despite xxx, has confirmed its presence the contract, the fact that it has lost the first position , can be viewed as a consequence and symptom of customer dissatisfaction. xxx definitely has to strengthen its customer relationships.

xxx financial performance record has weaknesses in margins, mainly due to occupying resources for software development which is an activity outside xxx' core competencies. This focus on low margin consulting activities can be regarded as weakness.

Opportunities

Cloud must be considered an opportunity for xxx because it is in the domain of its competencies and in the