How to Deal with Conflicts Between Marketing and Operations

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How to Deal with Conflicts Between Marketing and Operations

Shapiro recognized several reasons for the conflicts between marketing and operations teams:

• CAPACITY MANAGEMENT AND LONG-TERM SALES PROJECTIONS: Operations teams are constrained in their ability to flexibly adjust the (long-term) manufacturing planning to short term changes in demand factors and marketing forecasts. Short term changes in the physical delivery of goods promised by the marketing team come at the expense of the organization as a whole.

• PRODUCTION SCHEDULING AND SHORT-TERM SALES PROJECTIONS: As marketing is not directly involved in developing production plans, due to their close interaction with customers it is a challenge for marketing to develop precise forecasts.
• DELIVERY AND PHYSICAL DISTRIBUTION: It is also a challenge for the operations team to ensure alignment between the sales / marketing forecasts and inventory availability. Ensuring the maximum quality while producing a large variety of goods in a limited amount of time is difficult. As a result of time constraints, quality issues resulting from systems errors get fixed at a later stage of the product development and delivery process instead of being repaired at the source. This leads to repeat errors and lost time.
• ENSURING QUALITY: From an operations point of view increased variety in operating systems leads to increased inventories; more frequent and costly set ups; increases in processing and distribution requirements; higher costs. These result in higher probability of errors and customer disappointments. However, resistance from the operations team to produce large varieties of goods is often regarded as a source of lost sales volumes by marketing teams.
• BREADTH OF PRODUCT LINE: Marketers like a broad product line while manufacturers want a uniform product line.
• COST CONTROL: Marketing and operations teams have different perspectives on the cost base of production. From a marketing perspective, costs are perceived as a constraint to offer the best prices to company’s customers. From the operations point of view, higher costs are a result of marketing’s irrational promises to customers to deliver a broad variety of goods, fast delivery times, superior quality and new products.
• INTRODUCTION OF NEW PRODUCTS: From a manufacturing point of view, pushes for continuous new product developments and quality improvements require new systems and processes, new skills and personnel to operate these processes. From a marketing perspective, new products are necessary for business growth. However, the demands from marketing put large pressures on the manufacturing and are therefore often regarded as 'unreasonable' by operations teams.
• ADJUNCT SERVICES: Services like installation, field service or repair are perceived differently by marketing and manufacturing too.

⇒ How can one resolve this dilemma between the legitimate interests of sales/marketing and operations/manufacturing? Thanks for sharing your experiences…
Shapiro, B.P. (1977), "Can Marketing and Manufacturing Coexist?", Harvard Business Review, 55, 5, pp. 104-114

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		3 C.L. Kappagomtula Professor, Malaysia
	Agile Manufacturing is the Key to All the Shortcomings Brought out by Shapiro Marketing, Finance and Operations are the triumvirate in the operations management. Each one has to be complementary to the others to realize the goals of the organization. While each of the points for contention between manufacturing and marketing teams are justifiable, yet, they have to find a via media solution to turn the conflict into an advantage. With the deft use of the latest trends, such as agility, distributed and additive manufacturing, Internet of Things, and 'cloud resource', each of the points listed out can be turned into cohesive advantage to the organization. MASS CUSTOMIZATION is the need of the day in the manufacturing sector, and one cannot be ignoring this trend considering global competition.

		0 Vivek Hattangadi Management Consultant, India
	Conflicts Between Marketing and Operations @C.L. Kappagomtula: A well-balanced response so beautifully articulated. You have given a very clear insight into the triumvirate of marketing, finance and operations. Thanks a lot!

		3 Javier Elenes Business Consultant, Mexico
	There is not a A Valid Reason for a Conflict IF Both Work in a Company Fully Oriented to the Market In a company oriented to the market, OPERATIONS reduces cycle times in order to have the ability for a FAST response. (In a company where I was Managing Director, Operations reduced cycle time to 7 days from 120 and the service level grew to 99% from 60%). In a company oriented to the market, SALES AND MARKETING people have deep knowledge of the market (customers, distribution channels and competitors) and act like advisors to the customers, enabling them to make money using their product line, advising them about the right stock (models and quantity) to serve their market.

		1 Y Srinivas Rao, India
	Sales versus Factory Well said the theoretical part of it. But most fights are EGO CLASHES. In third world countries most sales persons are happy if the factory fails on quality or delivery schedule or I&C works as this provides them leverage to manipulate (manage) the customer and make a few extra bucks in the process. Most of the friction crops up if the factory is highly professional.

		2 Paramathmuni srinivas Kumar India
	Collaboration Comes to Rescue Probably collaboration among different entities in the organization and LISTENING to the other's view points may solve the problem. In the process, a semantic web enabled application which gives information with regard to what it means to their department in the organization may be of help. Probably the following features of such product can assist in resolving the conflict issue: - Ability to view context related information - Ability to view different perspectives - Ability to analyze the consequence - Ability to suggest wise course of action - Ability to upgrade - Ability for compliance to codes, policies - Ability to collaborate - Ability to have consistent documentation - Ability to configure - Ability to be transparent.

		1 Carl-Henric Nilsson Professor, Sweden
	Processes Instead of Functions I have worked with operations management as a researcher as well as a consultant. I found PROCESS-ORIENTATION to be an efficient tool to turn the fight against each other (fueled by lack of insight of...

		0 Stephen lane Director, United Kingdom
	Market Orientation If marketing and operations' OBJECTIVES are properly aligned then there is no reason why they cannot be on the same page. Operations have to plan for NPD with realistic time-scales whilst marketing mu...

		2 Omondi, Kenya
	Conflict Between Marketing and Operations Teams There is a tricky balance in this conflict depending on the market environment: The conflict can be HEALTHY if managed well to create pull of products from manufacturing facilities to the market ...

		2 jorge anibal hoyos hoyos Manager, Colombia
	Top- Down and Bottom- Up Coordination is the Key The real problem starts at the shareholders group, which demands results, hoping for financial profit. It continues at the marketing department where those results must come from and finalizes at the ...

		1 Dr. Vishal Dilip Chavan Professor, India
	Leadership with Vision Helps to Diminish the Conflict Visionary leadership is very important to deal with dynamic and versatile culture. If the leader is capable of motivating teams to new frontiers and in the right direction collectively, then there is ...

		3 edward sevume Sweden
	Alignment of Business Activities I have dealt with this problem one time and what I discovered then was the problem of business misalignment of activities where the thinking was along functions without clear lines of communication. ...

		1 Sabine Pitcher, United Kingdom
	And Coexistence Isn't Even Enough That article was almost a light bulb moment. It explains sooo many of my daily struggles. (I'm not Marketing, by the way...) The question of coexistence doesn't even go far enough. The two areas have...

		3 Paula Kokare Project Manager, Switzerland
	Shapiro's Guidance to Avoid Conflicts Between Marketing and Operations Thank you all for your valuable contributions and interesting posts! As already recognized by many of you, the author's own guidance how to solve clashes between marketing and operations teams are al...

		1 Kurt Ludikovsky Consultant, Austria
	Third Element: SALES Interesting discussion. First of all I think a main point is the type of operation, e.g. mass production, investment good. Next I believe - but this might be just a personal perception - that an impo...