Mgmt 361 - Maritz Inc Company Profile

Week 7 Final Project

MGMT 361

Part 1 Company Profile

The Science and Art or People and Potential, this is the brand promise Maritz Inc. says accompanies their name. ("Every Business Has A Story to Be Told.") Maritz Inc. is the parent company of Maritz Research and has been around for over 100 years. ("Every Business Has A Story to Be Told.") Maritz Research focuses its efforts by discerning "what's preventing truly outstanding customer experiences, and identify the root causes of problems, and empowering your front line employees to solve these problems and drive improvement-right to your bottom line". ( "Every Business Has A Story to Be Told.")

To accomplish these objectives, Maritz Research has 700 full time marketing research consultants working every day all over the world. ("Every Business Has A Story to Be Told.") In fact it's these talented employees that set them apart from the rest of market research companies, they consider their intellectual capital as their competitive advantage. ("Every Business Has A Story to Be Told.") This all sounds real good, but what type of stuff specifically does Maritz do to accomplish these feats?

They use two approaches, Research and Business Solutions. For the research, Maritz offers clients several capabilities, which include data collection, analytics, reporting, and project management. (Customer Experience Research) Because each client comes to them with specific questions they want answered, Maritz Research customizes each of those capabilities mentioned above, in order to provide answers for their specific needs. (Customer Experience Research) For business solutions, Maritz Research uses a variety of measures to help clients understand what their target audience should be, customers perception of their brand, how much a potential customer would be willing to pay for products, and what consumers are saying about their clients products. ("Business Solutions.") Having this information is critical when making multi-million, or even sometimes multi-billion dollar business decisions in order for their business to be competitive in an ever-changing business environment. ("Business Solutions.")

Maritz Research as a whole seems to have corporate HR issues handled, and offer competitive wages and benefits for executive employees. However, when I've compared what I'm learning about this session with HR and compared to the specific call center I work for, they have some very real problems. Which in my opinion, would serve them well to address sooner rather than later so when the job market becomes strong again, Maritz could become a desirable place to work, and they could put themselves in a much better position to be compete for talented employees.

Part 2 Problem Areas

1. Finding personnel that have the proper skills necessary to do the job.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (July 31, 2008) "Projected Growth in Labor Force Participation of Seniors, 2006-2016, Maritz in all of sudden looking down the barrel of this real statistic which says the age demographic in the 16-24 year olds will be cut nearly 7% by 2016, but the age demographic of workers 75 years or older will increase by a staggering 84%. (Cascio pg 13) This creates a real problem with finding enough people who can work a computer, something still relatively new to our civilization, and our older demographic has just not received the same type of education with computers as the 16-24 year olds.

2. Not enough separation between supervisors and callers.

Although I truly believe in the theory of having a balance of powers between the managers and laborers, there has to be a separation, and a respect for managers. Managers must feel comfortable giving whatever type of feedback they need to, in order to improve overall productivity or quality. To not have the confidence from the front line supervisors to give negative feedback jeopardizes the jobs of everyone.

3. Maintaining quality employees because of restrictions on budget for benefits.

This is a real problem at the call center I work for. When the turnover percentage is the same in front line supervisors as it is with callers, it's very difficult to establish a precedent consistent for all employees.

4. A number of employees are not capable of separating home life with work life, creating undue drama around the office.

When you work at a place with 300 people, the last thing you want to have at work is everyone's home drama. It creates a volatile work environment not conducive with productivity.

Part 3 Consultant Recommendations

1. Analyze recruiting practices, and update them. I believe Maritz already has a good system of hiring. They have potential employees report to job service on Wednesdays, while there, they are asked to fill out an application, and wait