BUSINESS QUESTIONS

Business Questions

Question 1

Catastrophic failure in any project can be defined as an unexpected and drastic modification in the working distinctiveness of a product, system, or material consequential of entire loss of functional performance. Catastrophic failure may also be cause as a result of malware or software conflicts. Occasionally a single element in a significant position fails, consequential in downtime for the whole system.

In a decade that saw the September 11 attacks followed by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, then the horror of the Virginia Tech shootings, and finally the near-collapse of the financial services industry that initiated a massive global economic downturn from which people are yet to recover. Each of them had to negotiate a stunning variety of images, texts, products, and services addressing the harrowing realities of disaster, crisis, and catastrophe. These negotiations, and the moral condemnations that sometimes accompany them, suggest that the norms concerning appropriate personal, commercial, and political responses to disasters are in the process of shifting, and that a consensus on these matters has yet to emerge (Aradau, 2007, p.115).

Causes and contributors to project success and failure have been understood to a sufficient degree that no project should fail 'catastrophically' if it is well managed but still the risk of catastrophic failure remains due to experiences of new types of issues.

Other incidents of catastrophic failure includes incident of bulk storage industry of Naples, on December 21st, 1985 in Italy when in the operation of filling the tanks, overflow of fuel started from the roof of and flew almost an hour and around 700 tons fuel ran away in the secondary container. This incident caused injury to five personnel and a huge damage to facility. With the destruction of pipeline, 24 tanks destroyed by the failure (Clark et al. 2001, p.324).

Question 2

Marketing department has influence over all the four Ps, product, price, place, and promotion. But it does not have control over all of them. Marketing department of Dell has strong influence over promotional activities; they put huge amounts on promotional activities and advertisement which develop a positive image of Dell. Dell's marketing department put a huge sales force, who directly communicates to corporate customers with the strategic help of personal selling. Marketing department at Dell thinks that communication with customer is all about building profitable relationship with customers. Other departments; operation and finance, have slight influence over product promotion than marketing department. The other “P”, the product, on which operations department has the greater influence as compare to marketing and finance continues to develop new products with innovation. Marketing department can have positive influence by continuous identification of needs of customers as the technology is the sector that is more dynamic than others. In the 3rd “P”, price, marketing department has major role to play but marketing department is dependent on finance department for identification of cost for settlement of price, marketing department first determine the need and purchasing power of customer and competitor's pricing strategy so that prices can be decided according ...