MarketingInformationSystem(MkIS ) in corporate communication

A marketing information system is a platform for collecting, storing, analyzing, and distributing essential marketing data received from internal and external resources. It provides marketers and other?experts with easy access to accurate data that helps them make informed decisions?directed at?business growth.

A marketing information system (MkIS) in corporate communication refers to the systematic collection, analysis, storage, and dissemination of marketing-related data and information within an organization to support decision-making and strategic planning in the area of corporate communication. Corporate communication involves the communication efforts made by an organization to establish and maintain relationships with its stakeholders, including employees, customers, shareholders, media, and the public. An MIS in corporate communication helps organizations gather, organize, and utilize marketing data and information to effectively communicate with their stakeholders and achieve their communication objectives.

Here are some key aspects of a marketing information system in corporate communication:

1.?????Data Collection: An MIS in corporate communication collects data from various sources, such as market research, customer feedback, social media, and internal communication channels, to gather information about the organization's stakeholders, market trends, competitors, and communication performance. This data can be collected through surveys, interviews, observations, and other research methods.

2.?????Data Analysis: The collected data is analyzed to identify patterns, trends, and insights that can inform corporate communication strategies and tactics. Data analysis can involve statistical techniques, data visualization, and other analytical tools to make sense of the data and extract meaningful information that can guide decision-making.

3.?????Data Storage: The analyzed data is stored in a central repository, such as a database or a data warehouse, to ensure easy access and retrieval when needed. Proper data storage ensures that the information is organized, secure, and available for future reference and analysis.

4.?????Information Dissemination: The MIS in corporate communication facilitates the dissemination of marketing information across the organization, providing relevant data and insights to decision-makers in different departments, such as marketing, public relations, and corporate communication. This enables informed decision-making and coordination among different communication efforts.

5.?????Reporting and Dashboards: MIS in corporate communication often includes reporting and dashboard features that provide visual representations of marketing data and information, such as performance metrics, communication outcomes, and stakeholder feedback. These reports and dashboards help communicate the results of corporate communication efforts to stakeholders, including executives, managers, and other team members.

6.?????Decision Support: An MIS in corporate communication provides decision support by leveraging the data and information collected and analyzed to guide strategic planning and decision-making in corporate communication. This can include identifying communication opportunities, evaluating the effectiveness of communication strategies, and optimizing communication tactics based on data-driven insights.

7.?????Feedback and Monitoring: A marketing information system in corporate communication also includes mechanisms for monitoring and collecting feedback on communication initiatives. This allows organizations to assess the impact of their communication efforts and make adjustments based on stakeholder responses and feedback.

The marketing information systems and its subsystems

Limitation :

Kotler and Philip have said that "both primary and secondary researches offer loads of the data and information needed for the marketers, whereas the secondary data sources are relatively superior in quick provision of data at lower cost. Simultaneously, a firm cannot find all the data required by itself, but sometimes can be done with the help of secondary research. However, researchers must assess those data collected from both primary and secondary data sources to enable the accuracy, updates and fairness. Each primary data collection method – observational, survey, and experimental – has its own advantages and disadvantages. Similarly, each of the various research contact methods – mail, telephone, personal interview, and online – also has its own advantages and drawbacks.

Developing Information

The second and most important step in marketing information system is to develop or collect information. There are various techniques adopted by different companies for collecting data and information.?The techniques of collecting data may vary from company to company according to their specific needs. The common methods of data collection are as under:

§?Observational research

§?Survey research

§?Focus group interview

§?Personal contact method

§?Sampling research plan and

§?Questionnaires

Distributing & Using Marketing Information

The gathered information has no value until it is used to make better marketing decision making. So the information should be timely available to managers and other top level management who make marketing decisions and deal with customers. This can only be happen by regular performance reports, intelligence updates and other information collected by research studies.

All businesses are operating under conditions of risk and uncertainty. The success or failure of any firm or company depends on many factors like economic situation, the changing tastes of customers, the extent and nature of competition and competitive activities and more. Business decisions and especially marketing decisions, are actually the decisions about the future of a company.?The management of successful companies always focuses on each of the aspects of their business in order to make achievable decision. Marketing is usually that area of a company which requires lots of attention. Company sales depend on marketing so company must use adequate solutions for the more effective promotion of their products. For this purpose companies rely on marketing information system. Marketing information system allows a company to use all relevant information for developing its marketing strategies more effectively.

Steps of Marketing Information System

In order to use marketing information, companies have to focus on three main steps of marketing information systems.

§?Assessing Information Needs

§?Developing Information

§?Distributing Information

Assessing Information Needs

First of all marketer should know why the marketing information is necessary? MIS system primary serves the management and company’s employees. However it may also provide information to external partners, such as suppliers, retailers and other marketing agencies. For example Wal-Mart gives their key suppliers access to their information system. Dell creates premium pages for their customers, giving them access to product design and other services information. Company’s managers must know about a new product that competitors plans to introduce. By all this it is clearly disclosed that marketing information system plays a vital role for a company to make on time decision making and effective business strategy.

Markers can get information from:

1.??????Internal Records?can be found in company’s marketing, sale, accounting departments.

2.??????Marketing Intelligence?collect and analyzed publically available data of competitors and other developments in the marketplace.

3.??????Marketing Research?analyzed the collected data for report generation.

4.??????Marketing Decision Support Systems are tools help in marketing decision process.

A?marketing information system?(MkIS) is a?management information system?(MIS) designed to support?marketing?decision making. Jobber (2007) defines it as a "system in which marketing data is formally gathered, stored, analysed and distributed to?managers?in accordance with their informational needs on a regular basis." In addition, the online business dictionary defines Marketing Information System (MKIS) as "a system that analyzes and assesses marketing information, gathered continuously from sources inside and outside an organization or a store.?Furthermore, "an overall Marketing Information System can be defined as a set structure of procedures and methods for the regular, planned collection, analysis and presentation of information for use in making marketing decisions." (Kotler, at al, 2006)

MIS is really becoming very decisive while and before taking any decisions of Marketing, Positioning & Launching in any new markets.

Overview

Reid and Bojanic(2010) claimed that, " The term market research informs relatively narrowerly than Marketing Information System(MkIS) which is altered from the term management information?systemization. Market research indicates that information is collected for a specific reason or project; the major objective is a one-time use.

Benefits of Marketing Information System (MkIS)

1. Prediction of Consumer Demand

2. Identification of Marketing Complexity

3. Facilitates up-to-date Economic Information or Condition

4. Competitor Analysis

5. Up-to-date Information on Technology

6. Proper flow of Information for better Customer Service

?7.?Facilitates Marketing Planning Activities

Marketing Decision Support System ( MkDSS)

It is one of the areas that information systems have sought most of all to affect (with mixed success). Decision making can be divided into 3 types: strategic, management control and operations control.

Strategic decision making:?This level of decision making is concerned with deciding on the objectives, resources and policies of the organisation. A major problem at this level of decision making is predicting the future of the organisation and its environment, and matching the characteristics of the organisation to the environment. This process generally involves a small group of high-level managers who deal with very complex, non-routine problems.

For example, some years ago, a medium-sized food manufacturer in an East African country faced strategic decisions concerning its range of pasta products. These products constituted a sizeable proportion of the company's sales turnover. However, the company was suffering recurrent problems with the poor quality of durum wheat it was able to obtain resulting in a finished product that was too brittle. Moreover, unit costs were shooting up due to increasingly frequent breakdowns in the ageing equipment used in pasta production. The company faced the decision whether to make a very large investment in new machinery or to accept the offer of another manufacturer of pasta products, in a neighbouring country, that it should supply the various pasta products and the local company put its own brand name on the packs. The decision is strategic since the decision has implications for the resource base of the enterprise, i.e. its capital equipment, its work force, its technological base etc. The implications of strategic decisions extend over many years, often as much as ten to fifteen years.

Management control decisions:?Such decisions are concerned with how efficiently and effectively resources are utilised and how well operational units are performing. Management control involves close interaction with those who are carrying out the tasks of the organisation; it takes place within the context of broad policies and objectives set out by strategic planners.

An example might be where a transporter of agricultural products observes that his/her profits are declining due to a decline in the capacity utilisation of his/her two trucks. The manager (in this case the owner) has to decide between several alternative courses of action, including: selling of trucks, increasing promotional activity in an attempt to sell the spare carrying capacity, increasing unit carrying charges to cover the deficit, or seeking to switch to carrying products or produce with a higher unit value where the returns to transport costs may be correspondingly higher. Management control decisions are more tactical than strategic.

Operational control decisions:?These involve making decisions about carrying out the " specific tasks set forth by strategic planners and management. Determining which units or individuals in the organisation will carry out the task, establishing criteria of completion and resource utilisation, evaluating outputs - all of these tasks involve decisions about operational control.

The focus here is on how the enterprises should respond to day-to-day changes in the business environment. In particular, this type of decision making focuses on adaptation of the marketing mix, e.g. how should the firm respond to an increase in the size of a competitor's sales force? should the product line be extended? should distributors who sell below a given sales volume be serviced through wholesalers rather than directly, and so on.

Within each of these levels, decision making can be classified as either structured or unstructured. Unstructured decisions are those in which the decision maker must provide insights into the problem definition. They are novel, important, and non-routine, and there is no well-understood procedure?for?making them. In contrast, structured decisions are repetitive, routine, and involve a definite procedure for handling them so that they do not have to be treated each time as if they were new.

Structured and unstructured problem solving occurs at all levels of management. In the past, most of the success in most information systems came in dealing with structured, operational, and management control decisions. However, in more recent times, exciting applications are occurring in the management and strategic planning areas, where problems are either semi-structured or are totally unstructured.

Making decisions is not a single event but a series of activities taking place over time. Suppose, for example, that the Operations Manager for the National Milling Corporation is faced with a decision as to whether to establish buying points in rural locations for the grain crop. It soon becomes apparent that the decisions are likely to be made over a period of time, have several influences, use many sources of information and have to go through several stages. It is worth considering the question of how, if at all, information systems could assist in making such a decision. To arrive at some answer, it is helpful to break down decision making into its component parts.

The literature has described 4 stages in decision making:?intelligence, design, choice and implementation.?That is, problems have to be perceived and understood; once perceived solutions must be designed; once solutions are designed, choices have to be made about a particular solution; finally, the solution has to be implemented.

Intelligence?involves identifying the problems in the organisation: why and where they occur with what effects. This broad set of information gathering activities is required to inform managers how well the organisation is performing and where problems exist. Management information systems that deliver a wide variety of detailed information can be useful, especially if they are designed to report exceptions. For instance, consider a commercial organisation marketing a large number of different products and product variations. Management will want to know, at frequent intervals, whether sales targets are being achieved. Ideally, the information system will report only those products/product variations which are performing substantially above or below target.

Designing many?possible solutions to the problems is the second phase of decision making. This phase may require more intelligence to decide if a particular solution is appropriate. Here, more carefully specified and directed information activities and capabilities focused on specific designs are required.

Choosing?among alternative solutions is the third step in the decision making process. Here a manager needs an information system which can estimate the costs, opportunities and consequences of each alternative problem solution. The information system required at this stage is likely to be fairly complex, possibly also fairly large, because of the detailed analytic models required to calculate the outcomes of the various alternatives. Of course, human beings are used to making such calculations for themselves, but without the aid of a formal information system, we rely upon generalisation and/or intuition.

Implementing?is the final stage in the decision making process. Here, managers can install a reporting system that delivers routine reports on the progress of a specific solution, some of the difficulties that arise, resource constraints, and possible remedial actions. Table illustrates the stages in decision making and the general type of information required at each stage.

Stages in the decision making process

Stage of Decision Making

Information Requirement

1

Intelligence

Exception reporting

2

Design

Simulation prototype

3

Choice

"What-if simulation

4

Implementation

Graphics, charts

In practice, the stages of decision making do not necessarily follow a linear path from intelligence to design, choice and implementation. Consider again the problem of balancing the costs and benefits of establishing local buying points for the National Milling Corporation. At any point in the decision making process it may be necessary to loop back to a previous stage. For example, one may have reached stage 3 and all but decided that having considered the alternatives of setting up no local buying points, local buying points in all regions, districts or villages, the government decides to increase the amounts held in the strategic grain reserve. This could cause the parastatal to return to stage 2 and reassess the alternatives. Another scenario would be that having implemented a decision one quickly receives feedback indicating that it is not proving effective. Again, the decision maker may have to repeat the design and/or choice stage(s).

Thus, it can be seen that information system designers have to take into account the needs of managers at each stage of the decision making process. Each stage has its own requirements.

In conclusion, a marketing information system in corporate communication plays a crucial role in helping organizations collect, analyze, store, and disseminate marketing-related data and information to support decision-making and strategic planning in the field of corporate communication. It enables organizations to effectively communicate with their stakeholders, optimize their communication strategies, and achieve their communication objectives.