Key Activities
For the initial year of M&J Catering and Hosting, the process of prioritization will be essential for putting the emphasis on the most critical aspects of the business. These will include marketing, product development, hiring, and web development. Both marketing and web development are highly intertwined due to the fact that a website will be necessary in order for the business to establish an online presence. In a similar fashion, hiring and product development are interconnected because minimum viable product’s plausibility will be reliant on personnel performance.
Customer Relations
The customer base will be monitored and tracked through simple invoicing tools, such as Invoicely.com. The main reason is that no significant investment in the given area is necessary for the first year due to the expected small customer amount. For effective communication with clients, it is important to gain trust, be able to listen correctly and find needs, as well as know the product or services in order to build correct communication (Buttle & Maklan, 2015).
In addition, M&J Catering and Hosting need to determine the type of customer relationship. There are three types of them: conscious, friendly, or human, and situational. Conscious is a relationship in which boundaries are clearly defined, and both parties respect them, and this is the most effective relationship that leads to complete results. In this case, there are no manipulations and fears, which allows one to quickly, efficiently, and creatively complete the tasks of the project.
An ineffective relationship with clients is when boundaries that were negotiated in advance are not respected and violated. Companionship is built on mutually beneficial cooperation, when the relationship does not end after the sale, when we strive to over-satisfy the client and achieve our goals together, helping each other. If a client answers in one line, then a close relationship occurs when the client begins to perceive the employee who serves him or her as a person.
Channels
Content marketing will be used through posting useful, informative content for users on the website, third-party resources, or social media groups. A helpful article can draw the user’s attention to the company, make it a regular reader and visitor of the help, and eventually, a client. It is important to note that good content goes viral, which will boost the popularity increase significantly. It will lead to the fact that people will be actively sharing useful and interesting content. Despite the availability of the method, creating valuable content is not an easy task. The advantages of this approach are increasing brand awareness, creating a positive image of an expert in the chosen field, and the accessibility of the method. Cons are expressed in labor costs and a lot of routine work.
In addition, native advertising will be used, and this is a relatively new method, which is based on presenting ads to users in the form of quality content. The user initially does not even realize that there is an advertisement in front of him or her (Carlson, 2015). He or she watches a video or reads an article that ultimately leads to the need to get to know the brand or product closely. The advantages of this approach are high efficiency and the absence of a negative reaction from the user, like spam. The disadvantages are the laboriousness of creating natural native ads and specific placement formats.
Key Resources
In terms of key resources, the emphasis will be primarily put on personnel due to the dependence of the MVP and product quality in general on staff performance. The product quality management system involves determining the responsibility of all levels of management of the firm’s activities, including top management, for solving specific issues to ensure the high quality of goods and services produced.
The high quality of goods is promoted by the “quality circles” operating at the companies, which activate the participation of employees in the improvement of production and technological processes, in work on the introduction of creative and innovative ideas into production, the development of technical and economic indicators of the goods, as well as increasing the level of skill, qualifications, and industrial culture as well as working personnel.
It is important to analyze the costs of ensuring the quality system of goods, calculating their economic feasibility. Specifically, the total cost of quality assurance falls into three categories: the cost of preventing defects, the cost of the inspection, and the cost of scrap (Elassy, 2015). The company creates special organizational units that are in charge of analyzing the quality of manufactured products, complaints and claims from consumers, developing quality standards, accumulating and promoting information about the quality of products and methods for improving it, studying the requirements for the quality of goods from consumers and working closely with marketing services. Large firms develop quality assurance programs, where the general policy of the firm in the field of quality management of goods is formed, and the unity and continuity of the measures taken are observed.
References
Buttle, F., & Maklan, S. (2015). Customer relationship management: Concepts and technologies. Milton Park, Abingdon: Routledge.
Carlson, M. (2015). When news sites go native: Redefining the advertising–editorial divide in response to native advertising. Journalism, 16(7), 849-865.
Elassy, N. (2015). The concepts of quality, quality assurance and quality enhancement. Quality Assurance in Education, 23(3), 250-261.