Marketing
Even though Chessington is an international organisation. It has many things it wants to accomplish relating to money. Chessington has made millions since it has been created. To continue to make a profit from what they sell is vital. Their aim is to get more families to attend the park by creating more attractions and this means more profit. Every single year the company of Chessington puts together a marketing plan that covers areas in product, pricing, promotion, advertising, promotions, public relations, measuring the success, new media, use of agencies, corporate hospitality and education. This actually helps Chessington to make a profit in what ever is done worldwide. The marketing department controls this. The marketing department is a small team that work across both Chessington world of adventures theme park. It is up to the marketing department to make sure that the brand identities parks are maintained in all communication both on and off the parks. They do this by identifying the brand identity, target market, and visual representation of the brand i.e. the logo. For Chessington the target market are families with children under 12. To advertise and to make the department function well the marketing department uses numerous things like the Internet, radio, TV etc. The Internet enables the marketing department to get different ideas so they can create different logos for the theme park. I think that these changes may have taken place because it helped Chessington to gain a larger market share, it reached more customers and it kept Chessington one-step ahead of other competitors. Marketing is all about promoting goods to potential, regular, existing costumers. Sometimes sales and marketing are lumped together, but in actual fact they are really quite different functions.
In Chessington there are 4 main sections that are focused on so that Chessington continues to make more earnings.
- Sales
- Operation
- Finance
- Communications
Sales
When sales are undertaken in Chessington, information is entered using a touch screen computer. Processing transactions involving the sale or purchase of goods provided or required by the organisations read transactions and stores them on the computer stores, data Inputs, data Output and data to analyse and read through data.
The Sales department is responsible for selling and marketing Chessingtons products. The sales function is very important to Chessington and the sales department because it is what the company is all about selling goods and creating sales revenue. Marketing is needed to regularly research what customers want and to advertise the company's products. There are also monthly offers which have been offered by the company itself, Every year many different special offers are offered to costumers/families cheaper than retail priced when spending a certain amount of money this is also recorded to see what offers are popular and need to be introduced later on in the year, and which of them need to be promoted.
Operation
The operation department is in control of:
Security
Security is very important in Chessington because it enables costumers to enjoy them selves knowing that they are safe. So it’s for the protection of the costumers and staff. For Chessington to be a reasonable place to be security guards are placed in some area s and cctv are in all of the areas in Chessington.
Finance
The finance department manage the control of money, money flow, costs/payments, payroll and profitability. This role is vital to the company because it keeps track of all that is bought and sold within the shops site and monitors the amount of profit being made. It also keeps track of bills paid into the companies’ accountant. All the data is then stored into the main computer files, where the finance department at the head office can view all the stocks, which come in and go.
The head office uses this information provided to print out wage slips for the employees and then send it back to the site along with the wages.
If the finance department did not keep records of all this information then the company could go bankrupt and would have to shut down. ICT in the finance department is used for financial modelling and forecasting using spreadsheet software, presenting reports and financial documents using word processing and Microsoft access. Spreadsheet software for keeping staff data, producing trial balances, profit and loss accounts and balance sheets using an accounting package, communicating internally and externally using email and faxes to other Chessington links, calculating and paying salaries using a payroll package and Microsoft excel and paying suppliers for goods and services using financial management software.
Buying things like raw materials and machinery parts are needed to manufacture the products Chessington sells. This function is important to Chessington and the finance department because without it the company would not be able to produce any products to put in its mini stores such as cafes, pizza hut, mc Donald’s etc in the first place and would not be able to make a profit. Purchasing uses EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) to produce and track orders for items they want to buy and then send them to the head office. It is also used to send orders and payments to head office as well.
Communication
Communication is the most important factor of ICT usage by Chessington. It is vital for Chessington to be able to send and receive up to date information quickly. A major part of this comes through the use of e-mail. By doing this the process is much more quicker. This is a main solution to success in most modern day businesses. Chessington can use this to send mail quickly to another part of the company or even a customer and get feedback quickly from anywhere in the world, this can be seen in customer service departments around Chessington as this allows the customer to send an e-mail and gain the information needed quickly and also allows the company to help the customer or act on any problem promptly.
Computers that are together in Chessington also play a big role for communication, although this would only be for within the company and could be used on a global scale. For instance networking allows for quick messages to be sent within office blocks, rather than someone having to walk down to another area they can send a message across on the network and the person will receive the future message in a matter of seconds.
Video conferencing is a good way to be in touch with other companies involved with Chessington. It allows the viewing of presentations and lets the company hold a discussion with a group of people as if they were in the same room without having to travel halfway across the world to have a meeting.
I have seen that organisations like Chessington use ICT to help them in what is required y them. For an organisation like Chessington to be able to be successful.
