Aligning marketing and operations for more effective and efficient 'total operations'

As the current financial crisis deepens businesses seek more efficiency in managing their responses to customer demand. For many organisations this presents difficulties as the need to create, or maintain, competitive advantage in declining markets has required greater focus on fit for purpose and time for response; typically this has created a requirement for a coordinated response from marketing and operations management. This paper identifies changes that have occurred in both activities and suggests how coordinated interaction between them can achieve improved value delivery.