Analyzing the Current Business Portfolio

In order to analyze the current business portfolio, the company must conduct portfolio analysis (a tool by which management identifies and evaluates the various businesses that make up the company). Two steps are important in this analysis:
1). The first step is to identify the key businesses (SBUs). The strategic business unit (SBU) is a unit of the company that has a separate mission and objectives and which can be planned independently from other company businesses.
2). The SBU can be a company division, a product line within a division, or even a single product or brand.
3). The second step is to assess the attractiveness of its various SBUs and decide how much support each deserves. The best-known portfolio planning method is the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) matrix:
1). Using the BCG approach, where a company classifies all its SBUs according to the growth-share matrix.
a). The vertical axis, market growth rate, provides a measure of market attractiveness.
b). The horizontal axis, relative market share, serves as a measure of company strength in the market.
2). Using the matrix, four types of SBUs can be identified:
a. Stars
b. Cash Cows
c. Question Marks
d. Dogs
Marketing must work harmoniously with other functional areas. In its pursuit of the customer’s interests, marketing may come into conflict with R&D, engineering, purchasing, manufacturing, operations, finance, accounting, credit, and other functions. These conflicts can be reduced when the company president commits the firm to a customer orientation and when the marketing vice-president learns to work effectively with the other executives. Acquiring a modern marketing orientation requires top executive support, a marketing task force, outside marketing consulting help, in-house marketing training, acquisition of strong marketing talent, a customer-oriented system, and other related steps.
Those responsible for the marketing function must not only develop effective marketing plans but also implement them successfully. Marketing implementation is the process of turning plans into action exercises describing who does what, when, and how. Effective implementation requires skills in allocating, monitoring, organizing, and interacting at all levels of the marketing effort. Evaluations and control include annual-plan control, profitability control, efficiency control, and strategy control. The capstone effort in this process is the marketing audit.
Describe what a business market is and how it differs from the consumer market.
1.Describe the buying situations that organizational buyers face.
2.Understand who participates in the business-to-business buying process.
3.Describe the major influences on organizational buyers.
4.Describe how business buyers make their decisions.
5.Understand how institutions and government agencies do their buying.
Marketing Audit
comprehensive,systematic, independent, and periodic examination of company's marketing environment, objectives, strategies, and activities to discover problems and offer solutions

Procedure
1. agree on objectives, coverage, depth, data sources,report format, and time period
2. develop plan
3. gather data
4. analyze data
5. present findings
6. discuss findings