Assignment Six The Voice Of The Market Management Essay

The Voice of the Market
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
The Voice of the Market
Introduction
People demonstrate diverse approaches in performing a specific task and also do it differently when providing solutions to similar problems in different versions. Thus, it becomes crucial to recognize different perspectives in terms of solutions provided as well as implementing strategic roles in the organization. This paper will constitute a summary of diverse concepts and perspectives n the voice of the market in the book, Managing quality: Integrating the supply chain (Foster, 2012, pp.135-151). 
Voice of the Market Meaning
The voice of the market entails the strategic formation; this can be gained from a proper understanding of relationships that exist between the customers and the marketplace. The market place is comprised of critical players who include immediate customers, competitors, potential competitors, potential customers, and the customers of the competitors. The business organizations do introduction new products and processes, which are aimed at satisfying customers’ needs. The centrality of the firms is to find better ways of meeting customers’ needs. These ways can only be actualized if customers, including lost ones, provide crucial information that pertains to the strengths and weaknesses of the firm’s products and processes.
Furthermore, an organization can source data from other competitors; understanding the competitors provides the capability to compete better since there is a better grasp of market dynamics. All these variables constitute the voice of the market. Thus, it means the voice of the market can be assessed through deployments of diverse strategies.
Gaining Market Insights through Benchmarking
Benchmarking involves learning from a better organization, which has mastered the art of success in various spheres. Benchmarking revolves around openness and willingness to shared information in a bid to improve product, processes, or both. An initiator firm, which does benchmark from another one, i.e., target firm, plays a role in validating the target firm approach to its business. Benchmarking assumes several forms that include process, financial, performance, product, strategies, and functional benchmarking.
The process is benchmarking concentrates on observation and scrutiny of the firm’s operations. It revolves around is flows, operating systems, procedures, and process technologies. Process benchmarking is aimed at identifying best practices from benchmark organizations, which are applied in the improvement of the fundamental business processes and general performance. The financial benchmarking is intended to execute financial analysis and do comparative evaluations in an attempt to determine the firm’s competitiveness. The financial benchmarking data can be sourced from published financial reports or disclosures.
Performance benchmarking permits the firm to evaluate its competitive capability through the analysis of other organizations’ services and products. The performance key indicators may include quality measures, productivity performance, cost accounting practices, and market concept, amongst others. Product benchmarking is done when there is a need to design a new product or improve the existing ones. It may entail reverse engineering, analysis of strengths, and weakness of competitor's products. Based on information sourced from competitors’ product profile, the firm can use such data to improve its products through innovation and creativity.
Strategic benchmarking entails keeping a close eye on how other firms compete. Such firms include those that have won prestigious awards. The initiator firm can get mixed strategies from competitive analysis, though it is a time-consuming and costly affair. Finally, the functional benchmarking revolves around focusing on one essential function with the aim of operational improvement. An example of a functional benchmarking area is purchasing.
Difficulties in Monitoring and Measuring Benchmarking
There are challenges when implementing benchmarking activities. For instance, in the financial approach, firms tend to use diverse accounting options; this makes financial benchmarking quite tricky. When we focus on measurements excessively, we are likely to ignore the causative dimension and exaggerate the performance of the management. Comparisons come with even more problems when the U.S firms are compared with foreign ones; this arises from differences in the traditions of cost accounting and accounting principles that exist between such countries. Thus, a significant level of consideration needs to be taken when implementing any form of comparison during benchmarking.
Benchmarking Performance Parameters
Performance parameters or measures are crucial; the decisions made should be based on the sound collection and analysis of data. The performance and data are reflected in the c...