integration

Examples of integration in the following topics:

• Growth through buying out other companies

  • Firms can also integrate vertically through acquisition, i.e. by buying out suppliers or customers to process more steps in the value chain in-house.
  • Vertical integration can sometimes bring advantages of cost or differentiation.
  • Cost advantages can arise either through buying or building up cheaper distribution channels (forward integration), or cheap inputs (backward integration).

• Marketing objectives

  • Following the integrated approach
  • Having integrated at the function level, we next consider integration of the marketing mix elements.

• Managerial Accounting

  • Through integrating accounting knowledge with strategic decision-making, organizations can improve performance, refine strategy, and mitigate risk.
  • Through this integration, organizations can improve their decision-making to strategic value in the form of improved performance and mitigated risks.

• The State of Technology

  • Without diving into too much detail, here are some key building blocks to integrating the state of technology into an organization's strategy:
  • Nowadays, integrating technological tools to execute complex tasks is the norm.
  • These integrations impact every facet of the organization.
  • Having a presence on Facebook, for example, is an external technological force that companies have had to integrate into their process.

• Marketing Information Systems

  • It is true today that in many organization an MkIS is integrated as part of a computerized system.
  • To manage a business well is to manage its future and this means that management of information, in the form of a company wide"Management Information System" (MIS) of which the MkIS is an integral part, is an indispensable resource to be carefully managed just like any other resource that the organization may have e.g., human resources, productive resources, transport resources and financial resources.

• Success factors

  • Have integrative indicators and measurements.
  • Learn from actual results by quickly adjusting and evolving the business model in an integrative way, being coherent, sound and aligned with the company vision.

• Recycling and industrial waste

  • In India, for example, discarded plastic bottles and bags are being shredded, melted and added to roadway asphalt to improve the integrity, water resistance and durability of paved roads.

• Potential external relationship obstacles

  • Additionally, problems and issues may emerge due to the integration of services and systems provided by the vendor.

• Corporate Social Responsibility

  • Dr Lynne Payne of Harvard University has made a major contribution to the understanding of CSR and how it is achieved in her distinction between compliance based organizations and integrity based organizations.
  • In reality, CSR is a product of both compliance (legal and regulatory constraints) and integrity (the internal culture and self regulatory environment).
  • Sarbanes Oxley is particularly interesting given Payne's compliance/integrity construct, in that it requires both integrity structures (such as a corporate board of ethics, and internal protections for whistleblowers) and increases fines for violation of anti-trust and other federal statutes regulating inter-state corporate behavior.
  • How the humans who work and manage these organizations maintain their own integrity within the Utilitarian cultures of the multinational corporation is a chapter of history we are only beginning to write.

• Summary, exercises, and references

  • Several strategies for managing external relationships were presented that focus on the integration of the processes of multiple organizations to create "virtual suppliers" that benefit from rapid information exchange and just-in-time adjustment of sales forecasts and production capacities.
  • Yet efficiency is not enough, as the needs for flexibility and quality assurance lead to ever more integrated networks of organizations, which require strategic perspectives for maximizing profitability.