There are two views of business development floating around in the market place. One relates business development as the functional view and as a sub-set of the marketing; other view speaks of it as the organizational growth process. Here are few points in support of both views:
Business Development as Function of Marketing
You come across number of high flyers who don visiting cards broadcasting as business development managers. The trend began with the boom in the IT industry and with dotcom revolution. Even today IT companies have specialised people handling marketing under the job name of business developer. Academic and professional organizations which are forbidden to use the word and title of marketing as a matter of courtesy and ethics open up business development divisions ostensibly to handle the same mundane function of sales and marketing. Hardly have we seen a new venture without a business developer prominent in their HR profile. So we have a situation where business development has been placed under marketing with a stated goal of bringing more business, customers and relationships. A new vocabulary consisting of such jargons and phrases as business pipeline, capture management, competitive intelligence, business leads and probability of winning bedazzles us more than ever.
Business Development as Organizational Growth Process
A macro view of identifying business development with as much new business as organizational wide growth process is slowly gaining currency in business and management literature. This view incorporates the following step-up approach, in defining business development:
1. Business Development brings in new relationship along with added sales growth
2. Existing relationships are milked more in order to improve business prospects
3. Building of strategic alliances is the cornerstone of any business development activity
4. Creating more opportunities for sales must reflect back on the organization whereby new products and processes are introduced to optimize such opportunities
5. Every growth opportunity is identified and analysed so that the optimum one yielding commensurate return for all functions in an organization is selected. Thereafter, proper strategies are formulated with a view to ensure seamless implementation
6. Business Development must aim for incremental rise in market activity that sustains the growth momentum in corporate management, marketing, HR, production/operation as well as in finance
7. Finally, business development must garner long term value by employing internal strengths to capitalize on external opportunities.
Muthu Ashraff
Business Adviser
Mobile : +94 777 265677
E-mail : cosmicgems@gmail.com
Web : http://www.cosmicgemslanka.com
Blog : http://cosmicgemslanka.com/blog/
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