The relation between Marketing & Supply Chain Management ( M )

Collaboration 

Collaboration can be defined as the process which involve the adaptation of a high level of purposeful cooperation of each partner in order to attain a trading relationship overtime which is bilateral that’s means the partners have the power to shape the nature of the future direction overtime. The mutual commitment of partners to the future is something essential in the collaboration as well as the power relationship balance play a vital role in the collaboration.  Obviously the collaboration could have some disputes between partners so managing those disputes is critical so the supply chain management should design the duties and function between partners as it essential to success so the strategic integration between marketing and SCM as well as the local marketing talent is very important to the Multinational firms.

Four important characteristics define the firms that succeed in developing global supply chain network in order to control and manage the total supply chain costs and enhance the quality 

1) Corporate Global vision:

The primary question on this point lies on “ does the multinational firms create an effective global vision which the main and primary driver for investing resources and effort in seeking global supplier and customers?

On this point if there’s no ideal vision of what the firm is focusing and trying to achieve in their global marketing strategy and this vision should be well understood to all the firm’s subsidiaries in different markets will result that the managers in all subsidiaries will get confused in doing their activities.  Coordinating business unit strategies between all the firm’s subsidiaries is very complex so what about coordinating the business unit strategies with the external suppliers, as the multinational firms are seeking to expand their global operations as the effective vision as a primary force for developing a global supply base, so this take us to the idea of the multinational firms should integrate their local branches or subsidiaries in different markets in the strategic decisions and make them deiced what are the strategic business unit that should be conducted in their local markets and for sure under the headquarter consultancy otherwise the multinational firm should deploy a lot of headquarters which can identify the firm strategic decisions and strategic activities and this also require high costs and high tanning as well as the employee in different headquarter should be well understood and realize the local culture and business environment and people demographics of the country that doing business within but on a practical way not suffice to study reports through internet or reports from the managers from the different branches of the firms because as the research mentioned; the best persons that can realize well the people demographics and culture of the local market are the persons who are living in the local market.

2) Management structure and systems 

The question on this point lies on: does the multinational firms organized to promote on an effective way the coordination through different global strategic business units? 

 Successful multinational firms have invested a lot of money and efforts in order to enabling the firms structure system to deploy the firm’s global vision through different ways and actions such as Global community council and reporting systems in order to deploy and ease the communications among different subsidiaries in different countries, also the international procurement officers (IPO) and sales officers should be in contact and make a strong relationships with governmental agencies to promoting its global strategy as well as to gain effective experience and knowledge regarding the traditional sourcing as well as the sales opportunities and  country regulations and procedures as well as the multinational firms can gain an opportunity to improve total cost models for decisions making and one of the main important benefits is that the multinational firms can gain a valuable information regarding to providing sourcing and demand information to global production design sites so  including the local marketer in those operations can facilitate performing all of those activities also the main important that the local marketer should be involved in determining the supply chain design and the multinational firm’s headquarter should adopt its global supply chain according to the local marketer recommendations. 

3) Configuring the global supply base

The question on this point lies on “Are sourcing and sales strategies developed to optimize the mix of global supplier/ distributors and local suppliers/distributors when the multinational firm sets up production units in new country or region, by the way almost of successful multinational firms often has discovered and the researcher used the word  “has discovered” because of in the global marketing strategies there’s no something fixed but the rapid change always exists and considered as one of the main challenges of the multinational firms, so discovering and investigating the concepts and the nature of the global business and environment is variable, for any case they has discovered that some mix of global and local suppliers / distributors is the optimal however the mix may occur some changes in their multinational firm’s supply chain but the benefits is greater than change in some of the multinational firms supply chain strategy specially they can gain a valuable experience from the local suppliers. So the local marketer plays a vital role on this point. 

4) Supplier development

The question on this point lies on “ how could the multinational firms treats its global strategy to reduce costs among different markets and how it can ensure the suppliers capabilities in the competitive & manufacturing strategies and align all the activities? 

Supplier development approach are different from country to another or region to another according to specific sort of problem encountered, to develop a global supply chain strategy require a fundamental shift in the way of thinking in doing business, one of the main drivers on the decisions about marketing is to understand well the total cost of the ownership across the entire global supply chain through understanding and realizing the cost drivers among well understanding and realizing the drivers of cost that underlie total cost, managers will have the availability to implement a strategic design to reducing cost.

From the four characteristics above we can conclude that, the world economy is becoming integrated and interdepend which driven by global market forces, as well as global costs forces and the technological forces should be one of the most priories also the political and macro economic forces all of those changes effect the way of multinational firms think on doing business globally so the integrating marketing and global supply chain with local marketing talent is very important.  Also As the supply chain management usually involves a plethora of countries, as it comes with plethora of a new difficulties, to manage the global supply chain well, you have to think well on reducing costs and one of the main important factors to reducing costs is local labors.