How business secures integration

 The problem of integration of the consolidated and expanded marketing activity into the total company program is being solved in different ways by different companies. Many companies are using the committee approach. The marketing committee has often taken the place of sales, advertising, product-planning, and other committees previously used.
Members of the marketing committee are not limited to marketing people, but include people engaged in manufacturing, engineering, finance, purchasing and such other activities as may be deemed to have collateral interest. In many companies, the new marketing committee has supplanted the general planning committee and even the executive committee, further emphasizing the importance accorded to marketing in the modern era.
The committee approach, however, is not confined to one over-all marketing committee. Some companies have several small specialized committees, such as packaging, advertising, research, and product planning. Members of the marketing department serve as chairmen and coordinators. Other departments are represented on such committees.
A second common method of integrating and coordinating is the departmental-meeting approach. This is somewhat less formal than the committee approach. The manufacturing department, for example, invites members of the marketing department to attend the regular monthly departmental meeting of the manufacturing department. Such interdepartment meetings are especially favored because of their informality
The value of committee meetings and interdepartmental meetings depends, to a large extent, upon the leadership of the groups. In some companies, members of senior management "chair" the meetings. In some others, they attend as spectators, lending dignity and decorum to the meetings.
A variation of the interdepartmental meeting technique is the after-dinner group meetings. These meetings bring together members of various departments at and above the supervisory level who discuss mutual problems in an informal, social atmosphere.
A third method often used in business today is the mixed training program. Training programs are estab¬lished for the marketing department, but select members of other departments are invited to participate. The exposure of an engineer or a production manager to basic training in marketing gives such a person a picture of the other side of the coin, one he would not otherwise get in years of doing his specialized job.
A fourth method used to attain integration of marketing with the other departments of the business is the joint field operations method. In this method, teams of workers from marketing, manufacturing, engineering, purchasing, and the like, go into the field together for such purposes as testing a new product, observing the sale of a product, or undertaking a joint research project. The team usually consists of junior men from the other departments working with a senior man from marketing. The purpose is to educate all members on market conditions as they exist in the field.