Introduction
Zoom Video Communications, Inc. provides a communications platform that prioritizes video. It enables face-to-face video encounters for numerous individuals across various devices and places via seamless video, voice, chat, and content sharing (Zoom Video Communications, 2023). It focuses on customer and staff satisfaction, a video-first cloud design, market leadership, viral demand, an effective go-to-market strategy, and strong customer support. Eric S. Yuan launched the firm in 2011 and established its headquarters in San Jose, California. Zoom has become one of the world’s major suppliers of video-conferencing services for various institutions (Zoom Video Communications, 2023). The spread of the new coronavirus presented this company with a one-of-a-kind expansion opportunity.
Zoom is now the most popular brand in the video-conferencing industry. In this sense, working at the organization becomes a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for many people. This is because the technical entity offers individuals extensive knowledge of many technological aspects. Today, Iivari et al. (2020), the ever-increasing demand to digitize learning and gatherings is a widely acknowledged Zoom online entity. As a result, Zoom Technologies has attracted considerable attention. Nonetheless, it is essential to recognize that the organization has several strategic concerns and problems that must be addressed by the chief executive officer and his whole management team. By presenting a proactive and competent marketing operation, the firm can overcome the challenge of intense market rivalry. Its distinctive marketing approach will continue to attract both domestic and foreign clients.
Summary of the Project
As of December 2019, there were 10 million daily Zoom users. Nonetheless, Arif (2021) states that by October 2020, the video conferencing network had 300 million subscribers who logged into this digital platform of human connection despite being quarantined at home due to a fast-spreading epidemic. Similarly, on December 27, 2019, the price per share of the company’s stock was 66.64 US dollars (Arif, 2021). Moreover, Arif (2021) indicated that in less than ten months, on October 16, 2020, Zoom’s stock surged to $559 per share.
This company’s exceptional development demonstrates that the worldwide crisis of COVID-19 presented Zoom with a chance for global expansion. Universities and the academic community struggled to stay viable during the epidemic, especially when institutions were compelled to close and face-to-face courses were shifted online, just as several other businesses did to keep operating (Iivari et al., 2020). Since normality has resumed, the organization’s profit will inevitably decline after the introduction of the vaccination. Thence, to maintain its relevance in the post-COVID-19 era, Zoom recommended a sophisticated project marketing campaign management to maintain the company’s prominence.
The marketing project campaign aims to maintain Zoom organization to stay afloat post-COVID-19 after the subscribers were reduced. Since late 2022, normalcy has resumed, and many users are reverting to the previous mode of operations (Zoom Marketing Strategy, 2022). As such, the project is to market Zoom technologies and, in October of 2023, their stocks to emulate those during the height of the COVID-19 epidemic. For example, the organization began using online platforms such as TikTok to show how convenient it is during use. Equally, evaluating the key performance by assessing user feedback in App Store and Play store will be crucial.
The project’s strategy is to grasp the issues that its social communities are discussing and target schools and organizations, and Zoom must consistently engage in social listening. Moreover, organizing calls and sending messages to their intended audiences will be ideal measures to action the firms’ services. On the same note, it will be necessary for the employees to work for 35 hours for seven weeks. Stakeholders of Zoom technologies, such as the manager, will provide the required budget for the whole plan as the project will include external stakeholders in schools and organizations. Thence, by March 15, the project will have commenced and be completed on October 15. Monitoring the project by analyzing the profit margins after a while will be useful for measuring the viability of the marketing plan. Ultimately, reviewing the project and setting future standards realistic to the poorly performed areas will be optimum for avoiding such deficiencies.
Project Management Knowledge Areas
Time
Project time management entails maximizing the allocated time for a project and accomplishing all required tasks by or before the deadline, thereby enhancing project productivity. According to Alvarez Sainz et al. (2019), successful project time management involves managing resources and devoting time resources to project activities, staff, and processes that comprise the overall project schedule. Thus, delivering the project on time and within budget. As with the Zoom marketing management platform, the distant time zone of participants may be challenging. Therefore, project marketers should coerce people to choose the most convenient time zone.
Nevertheless, there is also equipment that can aid in project time management and ensure projects are finalized on schedule, for example, using a calendar to track metrics during the project. Failure to adhere to time consciousness can delay the completion of a project or cause costs to exceed expectations (Sainz et al., 2019). Among the things that should be prevented are assigning contradictory characters to group work and not having a clear and flexible project plan.
Costs
Project cost management aims to maintain expenses within the allocated budget by estimating, planning, and managing costs throughout the project’s life. A project must meet the criteria and scope, and its implementation must be top-notch to be deemed successful. Consequently, one of the fundamental foundations of project management is project cost management. Tonchia (2018) underscored that setting up a financial foundation makes it easier for project managers to assess the present state of their project expenses and adjust course as necessary. Therefore, a marketing campaign for Zoom will be projected by a concise budget plan, which will protect the project’s scope that covers the cost in case of a security breach. Cost management will be intrinsically linked to an organization’s capacity to succeed in current and future initiatives.
Quality
Project quality management is creating quality criteria for a project’s outputs and implementing quality assurance procedures to ensure those requirements are satisfied. Baker’s (2018) research accentuates that project management quality is what the customer or stakeholder requires from the project’s deliverables. Additionally, specific devices will be required for quality management in marketing campaigns. The project manager provides the most efficient project planning, timing, and recording solutions for quality management (Pistner, 2022). The marketing plan for Zoom Technologies the PM proposes a high quality and clear this will maintain real-time oversight of project activities, assets, and objectives.
The project scope will help establish quality planning, quality control, and quality assurance procedures to maintain quality standards throughout the project’s execution and completion. Hence, quality planning information will be included in the planning section, along with metrics for tracking quality while overseeing the marketing project (Pistner, 2022). This includes a quality checklist to gather and arrange the criteria that must be met throughout the project. Quality control will involve establishing quality requisites for project deliverables and testing, verifying, and disclosing to ensure that they are met (Pistner, 2022). Moreover, the primary function of quality control will be to guarantee that rules are adhered to and that the required performance standards for the project are met.
Conversely, quality assurance will be organized and systematically implemented operations within a quality system to ensure that the quality criteria for a product or service are met. Alternatively, project managers will monitor the execution of a project quality management strategy by ensuring client satisfaction and cajoling them into continue using Zoom since, without client contentment; quality cannot exist. Even if a delivery fulfills all of the customer’s or stakeholder’s requirements, there is an issue if the process itself is not good (Pistner, 2022). Therefore, all the processes involved will be open and transparent
Risk
Project risk management will recognize, assess, and react to any risk that develops during a project’s life cycle to keep the project on track and achieve its objective. Risk management is not a purely reactive activity; it should be included in the planning phase to identify potential project risks and determine how to mitigate them. For example, the entry of competitors such as Google Meetings and Microsoft Teams. Thus, to begin risk management, it is essential to have a clear and exact understanding of the project’s deliverables. In simple terms, project risk management will be a comprehensive project charter that includes the project’s vision, goals, scope, and deliverables (Willumsen et al., 2019). In this manner, risks will be detected at each project phase. Then a team should be included as early as possible in identifying any potential dangers.
People
Project managers must encourage and inspire the team under their guidance; they further lead from the front and explain instructions to every team. Nevertheless, excellent team management needs personal growth with professional knowledge (Kerzner, 2018). Development, however, might require time and expertise to construct, so adopting various techniques include acknowledging and compensating, recruiting strategically and appropriately, aligning objectives and deadlines, and fatigue among employees and clients.
Recruit Strategically and Appropriately
Instead of continually concentrating on managing their present staff, project managers should perhaps concentrate on strategically and intelligently hiring new personnel. While people concentrate so much on leading a team and internal affairs, the corporate world neglects to appreciate the value of developing a good team throughout the recruiting process. Team building is not something that managers can accomplish immediately (Kerzner, 2018). Furthermore, it is not a procedure that terminates after a fixed amount of time. It is a continual, ever-running process that demands input and thinking from the project manager. When recruiting new staff, completing the study and conveying demands to hiring supervisors will be necessary.
Align Objectives and Deadlines
For efficient personnel management in projects, Zoom technologies project managers must also adopt a reasonable timetable for time management. Moreover, project executives must attach precise timetables to each team member’s responsibilities and guarantee that they are followed. Setting a single, definitive timeline for a project may be complicated and may not be the best guide. The complexity of the process may be decreased, however, if jobs are subdivided into distinct levels for each person to handle. In addition, breaking down goals and timetables may assist with micromanagement and identifying resource bottlenecks. This may be especially beneficial for firms with many project management team members and project delays (Stone et al., 2020). These comprehensive management procedures may help decrease mistakes.
Zoom Fatigue among Clients and Employees
One of the biggest issues with online meetings is fatigue. Some project managers and leaders could take advantage of the accessibility of virtual calls and meetings because they are effortless to set up. However, those who work in creative and technical fields like software development, writing, and design benefit from flow states. Their production and productivity begin to suffer when they are dragged into an excessive number of virtual meetings (Udoagwu, 2021). This problem with virtual meetings has an easy fix: Organize fewer meetings. As a project manager, it is feasible may decide to schedule meetings in advance with particular departments on particular days and set a time restriction for meetings.
Acknowledge and Compensate
When workers achieve goals or accomplish anything else that contributes to the success of the business in a certain setting, it is important to acknowledge and honor them in public. Stone et al. (2020) emphasize that these reasons will assist in developing a culture of positivity inside the firm. As such, workers will feel good about themselves when they put in additional effort and go the extra mile for the project team and the company.
Procurement
Management of project procurement entails the acquisition and contracting of items and services that are unavailable to the project team. This comprises contract administration, purchase orders, and internal and external memorandums of agreement. These procedures should be carried out either by members of the project team or by personnel from the organization’s procurement department. Purchasing or doing is one of the most important concerns to address. In other words, determines which tasks will be performed by the team and which will be outsourced (Rane et al., 2020). Tasks that need contracting or procuring items or services might be identified during project planning. This may occur if materials are unavailable or if the project team lacks the necessary competence. It is also conceivable that business or time constraints necessitate an acquisition. The motives, limits, and benefits of contracting a product or service should be described in some fashion.
Project Management Knowledge Area Challenges
One of the strong subfields of project management is project management knowledge areas. This is due to the fact that the aspect contains a wide variety of knowledge domains, tools, procedures, and abilities. Throughout the course of a project, a company or organization will encounter a variety of difficulties. Not only is it a difficulty for the specific company, but it is also a challenge for the project manager and all other stakeholders (Adobe Communications Team, 2023). Based on the company structure and project category, these obstacles will grow but could also get less severe.
Time
Meetings should have a short agenda and be centered on proactive topics like problem solutions, risk identification, insightful assessments, and pertinent progress updates. It is preferable to have an appropriate working group independently analyze a problem if it does not include everyone present, then bring the findings back to the project team meeting. Poor project activity estimation while creating the schedule also results in project failure due to inappropriate plans (Kerzner, 2019). Underestimations might occasionally result in a project manager trying to win over a customer.
Costs
A problem in cost management that may arise in Zoom marketing campaigns is imprecise project cost estimation. Cost overruns and decreased overall profitability might occur if the project manager lacks expertise or does not comprehend the project plan. Similar to this is the project’s resource shortage presents difficulties. It may be difficult to get the necessary supplies and personnel, among others, to finish the project if the project budget is minimal effectively (Adobe Communications Team, 2023). Finally, out-of-date technology project managers should have recourse to modern, user-friendly technology as well as instruments for cutting costs.
Quality
Resistance to Technology
Thanks to technology, businesses may dramatically improve and innovate systems, procedures, and skill sets. Therefore, all of this suggests greatly enhanced quality on the work floor and, ultimately, more efficient business. While intermediate employees and leadership frequently welcome innovations and advancements, higher layers of management frequently reject technology (Bakara et al., 2021). For example, the top management of Zoom frequently perceives that new technologies are superfluous in some cases and take up too much time and money. In this sense, better quality has been hindered by this resistance. Change can be resisted by upper management, whole companies, and outdated systems.
Risk
Inability to Accurately Forecast the Future
No matter how much preparation a project manager performs, it is impossible to accurately forecast the problems that may arise. Only information about earlier occasions that derailed a project can be included by managers (Van Staveren, 2018). Zoom managers must do their best to put together the past if a firm has never had a risk management plan created. The most someone can do when predicting the future is speculate, and this is not necessarily sufficient.
People
Engagement Issues
A disengaged stakeholder may be a customer, a CEO, a board member, a supplier, or another team member. Essentially, disconnected individuals do not contribute to the project’s progress and have the power to sabotage it at any time. As the project manager, it is their duty to maintain all the stakeholders informed of the project’s goal and to maintain their interest in it. Therefore, this will thrive Zoom technologies for the greater good in achieving engagement benefits.
Procurement
Internal Communication Issues
The role of procurement teams is distinct inside enterprises since it is not directly related to any one unit and does not have access to all of that department’s data. Additionally, it is challenging to aggregate expenditure data since it sometimes originates from several systems. The procurement team cannot make wise expenditure choices that will serve the business as a whole if it is working in isolation and making purchases without feedback and important data points from various teams. The best value is produced by procurement teams when they collaborate with all pertinent stakeholders and are aware of all areas of spending (Rane et al., 2020). Establishing a positive working relationship with internal partners to encourage cross-functional cooperation and endeavor to sustain a thorough grasp of stakeholders’ demands over time.
Project Management Knowledge Area Strategies and Suggestions
To increase overall productivity, time management experts advise utilizing a customized planning tool. Planners, calendars, phone applications, wall charts, index cards, pocket diaries, and notebooks are examples of personal planning tools. Based on Yaqub (2020), project managers will be freed to concentrate on the objectives by writing down their chores, schedules, and things to remember. The secret is to utilize one daily planner regularly after PMs have found one that works for them. Moreover, always enter their details on the planning tool when utilizing one. Making notes elsewhere that must later be transmitted is ineffective and time-consuming.
Keep Track of Expenses and Perform Metrics
In this section, Zoom marketers should compare the costs of their expected baseline and the actual amount spent on a budget. At the conclusion of each financial quarter, calculate metrics, then contrast the actual expenditure incurred to their budgeted amount. In order to get back on track and stay within their budget, they will probably need to take some action if the numbers are significantly off. Thus, the suggestion is that ensure that monitoring important key performance indicators when managing projects. According to Kerzner (2022), it will improve the efficacy of key performance indicators (KPI) and productivity management by allowing project managers to concentrate on the most critical factors. The significance of a KPI can be determined by analyzing its contribution to the project.
Continuous Improvement
In continuous improvement, strategies include a consistent initiative to improve to enhance services, products, and procedures. It expedites workflows for marketers because it is the most common method employed by senior managers to decrease operating expenses. It enables faster workflows that save both time and money, permitting top management to reduce time and effort waste (Kerzner, 2019). In addition, continuous improvement reduces project expenses and helps avoid overruns. In environments where teams cannot consistently engage in quality management, successful executives organize rapid improvement events. Therefore, becoming directly engaged in continuous improvement is a crucial objective for a business. When Zoom Company improves repeatedly, it undergoes performance improvements. Additionally, its organizational flexibility and capacity to seize new opportunities improve. Thus, it is suggested that the organization should adopt a robust, innovative approach. By using novel and distinctive methods, businesses may surpass their rivals. As they find and propose creative solutions for the business, people might obtain a competitive edge.
Accepting Risks
In accepting risks, it is possible that the most beneficial course of action is not to make an effort to get away from something but rather to just accept what is happening. Zoom marketers accepting a risk could be reasonable, for instance, if the likelihood of the hazard occurring is small or if the potential for adverse effects is not severe. It is also vital to consider the circumstances of the risk, whether or not it is an urgent concern right now or whether it will affect your company’s long-term strategic vision. Hence, in this context, it is suggested that utilizing checklists of possible hazards and assessing the possibility that these events will occur on the project is a more structured method to mitigate and optimize potential risks (Van Staveren, 2018). Some businesses and sectors build risk checklists based on prior project experience.
Communicate with Customers and Teammates
Communication is vital to the advancement of a project since it helps everyone comprehend the project’s requirements and possible obstacles. Furthermore, communication is also crucial in recognizing customer expectations and adjusting as the project evolves (Kerzner, 2019). Good communication involves discourse that is clear and precise, as well as candid criticism. Nonverbal communication may boost verbal interaction by reinforcing good signals with the language people speak. The vice can promote teamwork in Zoom organization since it is vital to the project since many initiatives demand the collaboration of numerous individuals or departments. Therefore, emphasizing cooperation will keep staff engaged in the potential of operating together. Ideally, it is suggested that without solid leadership abilities, it is the duty of the project manager to guide the team to success. For instance, micromanagement is an ideal skill that occurs when a team leader continually monitors progress, offers comments, and prevents the team from working autonomously.
Set Specific Goals
Once the marketing campaign requirements have been determined, it is necessary to establish a vision of what must be accomplished. The data acquired in the preceding phases may be utilized to identify procurement process hiccups. Organize them in decreasing order based on their effect on the bottom line of your business. Mostafa Ali Benzaghta et al. (2021) underscored that using tools, such as a SWOT analysis, may determine the present status of Zoom procurement operations. To limit discretionary spending, for example, marketers must use procurement software that makes the process visible. Thence, the suggestion is that with the participation of all stakeholders, the project requirements must be precisely defined. By communicating project objectives early on, project managers can eliminate preconceptions about them. This entails engaging in challenging conversations to address management and stakeholder goals discrepancies.
Operational Processes to Maximise Organisation’s Competitive Advantage
Continuous Development of Service Offerings Tendency
Developing new goods and services is the most critical thing a firm must do to stay competitive. As much to IT, inventory management, and operations as to retailing, this is true. Zoom continuously checks its Net Promoter Score (NPS), which may become the highest in the business (How Zoom’s, 2023). In addition, everyone may utilize Zoom’s video conferencing facilities for free for up to forty minutes. Therefore, the strategic orientation acknowledges that additional channels and clients may have drastically different order profiles and needs than other service providers.
Bridging the Manager Talent Gap
Clients have been aided in hiring new managers for at least the last 15 years. Nonetheless, they continue to discover a limited number of experienced multichannel managers for operations, inventory, and IT, amongst other positions (How Zoom, 2023). As a result, the strategic direction will focus on developing the skills of the existing managers and keeping them in their positions. Determine what each individual needs to become productive, and then look for educational opportunities in the area and online.
Managing Inventory
Typically, inventory has been the main asset on the balance sheet for most businesses. To serve multichannel clients while decreasing backorders and overstocks, shipping from various fulfillment centers and storefronts necessitates substantial inventory level increases (How Zoom’s, 2023). In order for organizations like Zoom to generate revenue, they should be able to effectively serve schools and organizations, just like direct companies do. This results in better utilization of labor, customer-facing inventory management systems, and cost-effective goods and services.
Models of Cloud and Subscription-Based Software
Cloud and subscription-based solutions enable modification without requiring the purchase of on-premise software. Zoom software businesses use enables applications such as team chat, VoIP phone, and webinars (Zoom, 2023). As a consequence, cloud-based technologies may enhance flexibility and integrate with overall strategies to boost production, monitor FC inventory, and better manage staff. In addition, they enable the removal of IT operations obligations, and their monthly fees are usage-based. This affords businesses far more possibilities to change systems.
Conclusion
Throughout the globe, the COVID-19 epidemic has ruined countless businesses. However, it presented a unique growth potential for Zoom and other video-conferencing service providers. This is because of the necessity for individuals to avoid physical meetings, which is attributed to the fast transmission of the virus; these services have become significant. Nonetheless, once normality began being restored with the vaccine introduction and the relaxation of COVID-19 countermeasures, the organization experienced significant setbacks. Consequently, earnings started to decline. This initiative demonstrates that the organization has since developed a marketing strategy. In addition, the initiative addressed project management knowledge areas such as time, costs, quality, risk, people, and procurement. Finally, it postulates project management knowledge area difficulties and strategies and suggestions for the project management knowledge area.
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