Ekaterina --
Even with the excellent background material that you've provided, it's
impossible to give you a marketing plan. However, we can provide some
good checklists; additional background information; and suggestions
for strategy.
If I were consulting for Lynbond, there would be several unknown
aspects that we'd want to poll employees and suppliers to get into the
marketing plan upfront:
? What are the major categories of clean-room supplies?
o How important are services to this business (particularly
garment laundry services)?
o Who are the major manufacturers supplying you (and your competition)?
? How are suppliers qualified?
* how is the purchasing structured?
* where are the costs to the customers (supplier qualification;
inventory management & carrying costs; wastage; potential facility
shutdown)?
The goal here is to get a meaningful plan in place. But it's a living
document, because much of the purpose for marketing will be to create
a list of actions. Some examples would be:
* determine what on a website is important to customers
* identify facilities and contacts for potential sales
* unify the company database on customers and contacts so that sales
and management can assess contacts between customers and Lynbond
* develop partnership opportunities
* build a competitively-oriented plan that focuses on beating the lead competitor
You and the team at Lynbond have to decide what 3-5 things are most
important to accomplish in the next year -- then reset the plan and
set three new objectives this time next year.
TEMPLATE FOR A MARKETING PLAN
-------------------------------
We frequently see requests for business plan or marketing plan
templates on Google Answers. I've always liked the print publications
at the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) website for two
reasons -- they are complete, often going through a checklist of
things to consider. They also include a number of sub-topics in
separate publications, such as market research issues or pricing:
SBA
"Publications"
http://www.sba.gov/library/pubs.html#mt-2
The strategic plan outline is a good place to start, though you may
want to customize what goes in the marketing plan area to get to
specific actions. In this one, a Traveler's Insurance executive
recommends looking at a SWOT analysis to get started (one you're down
to marketing/sales issues, it's time to consider the P's):
SBA
"Introduction to Strategic Planning" (Policastro, undated)
http://www.sba.gov/library/pubs/mt-2.pdf
SWOT analyses are very useful: you can start at a firm level; then
progress to departments (marketing, sales, warehousing, distribution);
then even examine functions within a department (advertising, public
relations, web page, direct marketing). As you do, you'll begin to
develop measures by department that can be tested against industry
benchmarks and examine them for best practices. Here's an alternate
and more graphical way of looking at SWOT:
QuickMBA
"SWOT Analysis" (Bradford, Duncan, Tarcy)
http://www.quickmba.com/strategy/swot/
SBA resources on Internet-related issues are in a separate section,
which is all online. It tends not to be as detailed, but an overview
of issues. However, it does have some sample business plans for
Internet-related businesses:
SBA
"Planning"
http://www.sba.gov/managing/strategicplan/guide.html
WHAT RESULTS DO YOU WANT?
--------------------------
I'm going to make four personal recommendations here and provide some
rationale. Each of the items below should have 3-5 specific actions
that the company can take in the next year to improve its position.
In November/December of 2004, you'll do the same exercise -- but
advance the plan to the next set of goals.
1. POSITION LYNBOND AGAINST THE LEAD COMPETITOR:
It's important to develop a detailed profile of the operating costs;
customer base; and even the management of your competitors. The best
companies are focused on competition -- and even will invent a
competitor to keep the business focused on costs of product
development; penetration of sales channels; percentage of shelf-space
or other metrics.
I'll never forget the week in the mid-1990s that Microsoft made the
decision to enter the Internet browser market. Within a week, I had
calls from Microsoft employees AND suppliers to find out everything
about Netscape:
? who are their key customers?
? who are the key developers within the company?
? how are the key managers compensated?
? what are their license terms to OEMs?
? where does the Netscape cash flow come from?
One of the dangers here is that sales views competition to be whatever
company they lost the last deal to. If you can understand the
strengths/weaknesses of the KEY competitor in every market or every
customer, better offerings can be developed; you can turn their
strengths against them; or develop strategies for unseating them.
Finally, you'll find yourself focusing your own resources on key
issues.
From the background brief, the key competitor either appears to be
Metron (consumables) or CAA if cleaning services are included.
However, trends in the business or segmentation may cause Lynbond
management to emphasize another company. For example, even knowing
nothing about their business, Metron's steep revenue decline from
2000/2001 would have a consultant asking, "What's going on here?"
Focus on what's most-important about the competitor but gather every
scrap of data available. Since you're in the distribution business,
it's particularly important to track sales-oriented information:
? Who are their managers? How do they operate?
? What's their compensation structure, particularly for sales?
? How stable is their sales force?
? How are they financed? Who's invested in them (particularly
important if suppliers have a financial interest)?
? Who are their suppliers?
? Where do most of their revenues come from? (By customer, channel or
product line.)
? What are their traditional business terms?
? Why did their business grow (or shrink) in the past 2 years?
? What's their web presence?
o Does it give customers access to proprietary information
(contract pricing)?
o Does it include more detailed technical information than on a
product specification sheet?
o Does it allow ordering?
o What suppliers or partners are linked to it?
o Does it include case history or white paper information?
o Is there a newsletter or periodic communication with customers?
2. BUILD A DETAILED DATABASE ON CUSTOMERS:
Semiconductor fabrication plants are highly-capital intensive, so
luckily have a good deal of visibility. (And as I'm sure that you
know, everybody refers to them as "semiconductor fabs.")
The Semiconductor Industry Association has a list of fabs worldwide:
SIA
"Fab Directory"
http://www.semichips.org/ind_fablocator.cfm?
Clean rooms themselves are not quite so capital intensive, so relying
on information from sales, partners and suppliers should be developed
to identify them.
Identifying key specifiers and buyers at each of these locations will
allow Lynbond to develop a system to develop and track interactions
between the two companies. If an integrated customer management
system isn't already in place, the company may wish to consider one,
as it provides data for analysis of all 7 P's of marketing. Onyx
Software, one of many vendors in the market, does a good job
summarizing the benefits to sales/marketing/support in this brief on
one of its products:
Onyx Software
Onyx CRM Express
http://www.onyx.com/products/crmexpress.asp
3. BUILD PARTNERSHIPS:
Both information about the market and visibility with customers
increases through partnering efforts.
Suppliers can provide information about changes in technology and
overall market conditions. For Lynbond, the cleanroom suppliers and
equipment producers can provide additional information, particularly
leading edge information about new installations. A quick search of
Kompass.UK lists 47 clean room suppliers and consultants -- Lynbond
obviously has to select a narrow group to build a partnership program
-- but it doesn't mean that you can't seek out the others at trade
shows or conferences to swap information:
Kompass
"Clean Room and Controlled Environment Consultants"
http://www.kompass.co.uk/directory/products/item/0/uk/Clean_room_and_controlled_environment_consultants/8452023.htm
You might also want to take a step back further in the equipment chain
to build relationships with semiconductor equipment companies. This
is a relatively consolidated industry, with a half-dozen companies
dominating, including AMC, Tokyo Electron, Nikon, KLA-Tencor, ASML,
and Cymer. A good source for detailed shipment data by category
(wafer processing, assembly, test) is VLSI Research and their public
reference area contains quite a bit of material:
VLSI Research
Home Page
https://www.vlsiresearch.com/
You may also find this slightly dated report helpful from Semiconductor Fabtech:
"VLSI's Top 10 for 2001" (Feb. 12, 2002)
http://www.fabtech.org/industry.news/2002/12.02.02-global-01.shtml
Narrower cuts of data on semiconductor suppliers by country are
certainly available from VLSI Research. Gartner Group and IDC also
track semiconductor equipment spending by vendors and by geography.
You probably have publications to track semiconductor capital spending
but I want to make sure that at least two sources get mentioned.
First, Smith Barney Citigroup's Glen Yeung has a regular publication
called "The Semicap Beat," which covers capital equipment spending
across the industry, keying on the suppliers and fabs. It doesn't
give the focus on the U.K. that you might like, but is good at
tracking major trends. Yeung's latest (Nov. 2) update is ebullient
about the increases in capital spending in the industry citing Taiwan
Semiconductor's plans to increase capital spending by 60-70% and
noting that "our 20% growth target for 2004 could prove conservative."
Management at your company could request a subscription, if they are
Smith Barney Citigroup clients. Alternately, a fee-based service
called Investext (Thomson-Gale) provides online versions of the
reports to many public libraries.
A second valuable source of information, particularly on the progress
of technology changes going on for 300mm wafers, are the earnings
conference calls or technology conferences of the semiconductor
equipment vendors. The Q3 calls of ASML, KLA-Tencor and Cymer all
discussed the technologies like MOPA (master oscillator power
amplifier), e-beam, and metrology systems -- as well as yield issues
with advanced technologies. Links below are to investor relations
web pages, where you can listen to audios of different presentations,
though it appears that ASML no longer has the earnings call available:
ASML
"Investor Relations"
http://www.asml.com/NASApp/asmldotcom/show.do?ctx=315
KLA-Tencor
"Investor Relations"
http://ir.kla-tencor.com/
Cymer
"Investor Relations"
http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ticker=CYMI&script=2100
An alternative is to use transcripts of earnings calls, from a company
like Call Street to track key semiconductor vendors' trends:
Call Street
Home Page
http://www.callstreet.com/callstreet/index.asp
There has been so much written about partnering that it's hard to
highlight a single "best practices" article. However, International
Data Corp. (IDC) has some interesting publications on the web and has
a good way of looking at expanding a company's network:
IDC
"IDC's Partner Segmenation Model" (Graham, undated)
http://www.channeledge.com/pdf/insights/IDC_partner%20segmentation_24045%5B1%5D.pdf
However, you may be best identifying who in the clean-room supplies
segment has done the best job of building partner relationships and
model what you're planning after their most-successful programs.
Remember that you have a lot to offer any of these potential partners:
? increased visibility through Lynbond marketing & sales activities
? expediting of critical supplies
? access to a network of supplier & customer contacts
? cross-marketing via website
Partnership marketing takes advantage of Metcalf's law which says that
the value of the network equals the SQUARE of the number of users:
Southwest Missouri State University
Metcalfe's Law (Boyd, Dec. 4, 2003)
http://www.mgt.smsu.edu/mgt487/mgtissue/newstrat/metcalfe.htm
The principal of Metcalf's law happens to be used by the Google search
engine, giving higher value to web pages with lots of links to others
in the community. Which brings us to use of the web page itself.
4. DEVELOP THE WEBSITE AS A STRENGTH:
An entire thesis can be written about the advantages of a web presence:
? low-cost distribution of information
? direct contact with customers
? re-enforcement of product, price, position, presence, people, promotion, process
? availability on a 24x7 basis
? significantly lower transaction costs
Actually the book has been written by Patty Sebybold and Ronni Marshak
and covers dozens of ways that companies have been able to use the
Internet at the tactical level to decrease costs and dramatically
increase customer interaction:
"Customers.com: How to Create a Profitable Business Strategy for the
Internet and Beyond," 1999
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375410406/103-2387616-0145456?v=glance&st=*
One of the key analyses should be your own assessment of the Lynbond
site and competitor's sites. Consider first the services offered in a
matrix, including ordering and depth of technical material.
In order to help your own analysis you may wish to assess the
most-important web analytics or web metrics against other
business-to-business sites. You may be doing some web analysis work,
but here are a couple of references that will help you set up
numerical objectives. Note that there are many web analytics
consultants; some of which have excellent tutorials and case histories
on the web:
About.com
"Using Web Metrics to Improve Your Site" (Bonnici, undated)
http://marketing.about.com/cs/internetstrategy/a/webmetrics.htm
E-consultancy.com
"Web Measurement & Analytics"
http://www.e-consultancy.com/publications/web_measurement/
Amazon.com
"Web Metrics" (Sterne, 2002)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0471220728/103-2387616-0145456?v=glance
One company that takes excellent advantage of the Internet for its
marketing and support is Phoenix Technologies, the BIOS and firmware
supplier.
Phoenix Technologies
"Home Page"
http://www.phoenix.com/en/home/
Phoenix has major operations in Europe, the U.S., Japan, Taiwan and
Korea, so demand for technical and product information is there 24
hours per day. By 1997, Phoenix had made it a policy that ALL
marketing material be available in electronic format -- in fact it
moved to create everything in electronic format. Even BIOS code
itself -- and its documentation -- is available online, though
customers are given password-protected space so that proprietary
information is protected.
Inasmuch as you're dealing with vendor documentation that may not be
in electronic format, you can still convert it to a PDF or DOC format
with the vendor's permission and make it available on the web. The
Google robot will search DOC, PDF, PPT, PS, and XLS files.
Google search strategy:
SBA website
"clean room" + suppliers (and note that Google allows you to limit
searches to U.K. domains via advanced searches)
"VLSI Research"
"customer resource management"
partnering + marketing + "best practices"
"web analytics" + marketing
"web metrics" + marketing
Best regards,
Omnivorous-GA |
