The paper Project management and marketing planning aims to make a connection between project management and marketing planning trying to familiarize students, masters and managers or entrepreneurs with what is the marketing plan in the context of effective project management. Readers will learn how to analyze the company's activities, how to identify opportunities and threats, strengths and weaknesses of the business, how to define marketing objectives and strategies to achieve them, how to make a program of actions to be taken and establish methods evaluation and control of activities, how to estimate the necessary expenses. Through this paper, readers will acquire knowledge and skills to operate with notions such as: strategic programming, marketing program, marketing plan, business plan, etc .; to be able to analyze the context of the company's marketing environment; identify opportunities and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses of the business; define marketing objectives and strategies to achieve them; make a program of actions to be taken to meet the objectives set; establish methods for evaluating and controlling activities; estimate the expenses necessary to achieve the objectives. Readers can also learn to use the Microsoft Project computer system to carry out and plan activities in project management.
Project management is becoming an increasingly common way of managing the activities within organizations, regardless of the field of activity in which they operate. The need to achieve objectives, as well as the need to obtain financial resources to meet those objectives, requires organizations to propose concrete projects, materialized in an elaborate documentation, designed to convince both funders and project beneficiaries of the feasibility of that proposal.
On the other hand, even the current activities of the organization, which classically could be included in the management of operations, enter the sphere of project management by using strategic or operational plans aimed at achieving short, medium or long term objectives. Thus, this paper reviews the main stages of a project and connects with the applicability of project management in marketing planning. Also, the possibility of using the Microsoft Project system, part of the Microsoft Office package, in planning and monitoring the project activities is presented.
The book has a high level of practical applicability, being designed so that the reader can design the documentation necessary for a project. In this sense, the description of each stage of project management and marketing planning is accompanied by concrete examples and application proposals, so that the reader can be connected with the concrete requirements of the practical application of those activities.
The paper is structured in three parts and nine chapters, which logically address the issues mentioned above. The first part focuses on the characteristics of project management and the stages of project implementation. The second part deals with the application of project management in strategic marketing planning and in the implementation of short-term operational programs, while the third part deals with the management of projects using information systems. To perform practical activities specific to all three parts of the paper, it is necessary to use a computer with the Microsoft Office software package installed, including the Microsoft Project option. After going through all the chapters presented in this paper, readers will have the basic knowledge about the main activities to be carried out in project management, regardless of the beneficiary or source of funding for those projects.