BZR644 Managing Customers and Quality
Duration of learning – 3 months
Credit – 15 points
General information
This is one of four Modules comprising the Manager Professional Programme which is designed to update skills and knowledge and offered by the British Open University Business School (OU Business School), the Europe largest business school.
Module Managing Customers and Quality is a self-contained three-month study course which examines customer relation problems essential for modern managers. This course will help you to increase your knowledge in this fundamental area of management and introduce you to new management techniques that will improve your confidence as a manager.
If you fulfill all academic requirements, the Module will be counted as a quarter of full credit towards the OU Business School Professional Certificate in Management.
Managing Customers and Quality is a part of the Manager–Professional Programme and provides the base for entering the Corporate Manager and the OU Business School MBA programmes.
Description
Managing Customers and Quality focuses on what difference managers can make to the product their organisations deliver to their customers, i.e. how managers can add value to the product. Module will introduce you to marketing concepts starting from customers: who they are, how they behave, the importance of researching, understanding and satisfying their needs.
The Module considers how organisations can add value at each stage of their processes. It concludes with an examination of quality: how managers can measure their influence on the quality of their organisation’s services and products.
Managing Customers and Quality involves four course books. Among main topics are:
Book 1. Understanding Your Customers: segmentation and targeting strategies; marketing relationship and marketing a single purchase; duration of customer relation; internal marketing; customer expectations and satisfaction; marketing mix from customer’s prospects – 4Cs; SWOT-analysis; marketing planning.
Book 2. Meeting Customers’ Needs: usefulness for customers; product, its features and value; product lifecycle and product development; brand and its value; costs to the customers; pricing strategies and setting prices; accessibility to customers; forming effective distribution channels; conflicts and partnerships between channels; informing customers; message and its power.
Book 3. Valuing Your Customers: marketing research; managers and research; external environment: competitor analysis and STEP-factors; Porter’s five-force model; following external environment and forecasting changes in it; customer value and making competitive advantages; value chains; customer’s loyalty and managing customer relations.
Book 4. Managing Quality: the concept and imperative of quality; customers’ needs and expectations; quality costs; quality management models; total quality management – TQM and tyranny of customers; ISO 9000 certification; problems with implementing quality improvement programmes; culture of quality; changing customers’ expectations and their effect on the organisation.
Computing
You will have access to web-site where you find further materials on the Manager-Professional Programme; also you will have access to Managing Customers and Quality special site for students.
This Module has specially developed CD-ROM that you can use to check your understanding of key concepts through tests based on study case analysis and to aid your revision.
When you register you will receive Manager’s Help File which describes key concepts and team-working techniques.
What is included in Module
This Module has its own Study Guide, four course books, interactive CD-ROM, audio cassette/CD and web-pages.
You will need
CD player and computer with Internet access.
Support from your tutor
You will have a tutor with whom you can communicate by e-mail, telephone and who will help you with your study, mark and comment your written assignments, conduct Internet conferences on course topics, offer advice and guidance in your learning.
Tutor will also run face-to-face tutorials which will provide you with useful experience in applying course concepts to case study analysis and in team- working.
Your Regional Centre will be able to tell you where the tutorials are to be held if you need this information before you register. Each Module involves about six hours of such tuition which normally comprise two three-hour tutorials.
Residential Schools
Sessions at Residential School (two and a half days) involve interactive work based on course materials and aimed to provide more profound perception. You will participate in intensive discussions of a wide rang of working contexts and acquire team-working skills.
Assessment
Module has two written assignments and a one-hour examination.
Qualification
Module is counted towards Professional Certificate in Management of the British Open University, however if your aim is to be awarded this qualification, you should complete each of four Programme modules.
Entry
There are no entry requirements, however you are expected to bring some personal managerial experience but you need not to be currently employed as a manager during your study.
Module BZR644 Managing Customers and Quality is one of four three-month Modules comprising the Manager-Professional Programme. You may register for any of the Modules on its own and study them one by one; but if you want to be awarded the Professional Certificate, you will benefit greatly by registration for the full Programme.
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