Research and Development (R&D) played a superior role in our company. Our company invested millions of dollars in the R&D department, and that was an important factor for our success of both products. Baker was our low tech product and Bentle was our high tech product. We experienced such tremendous outcomes with our low tech product Baker; our company decided to invest some money into introducing another product to the market. We wanted to take a risk and see if we can produce the same outcomes for a high tech product, which we named Bentle.
Our company felt that R&D strategy is fundamental to company growth and to our marketing and production plans. In the marketing field, our R&D department focuses on: .
- The placement of each of our products inside a market segment on the Perceptual Map.
- The number of products in each segment.
- The Age of our products.
- The Reliability of each of our products.
In the production field, our R&D department focuses on:.
- The cost of Material.
- The purchase of new facilities to build new products.
- Levels of Automation for a product.
As a company, we strive for efficiency and effectiveness while providing total customer satisfaction. As our company expanded, we noticed how the role of superior research and development in helping our company achieve greater efficiency and a lower cost structure is twofold. First, our R&D function helped us boost efficiency by designing products that are easy to manufacture. By cutting down on the number of parts that make up our product, our R&D dramatically decrease the required assembly time, which translates into higher employee productivity, lower costs, and higher profitability. With all the money we saved, we can allocate that money towards other departments, such as sales, advertising, and promos. The second way in which our R&D function helped us achieve a lower cost structure is by pioneering process innovations.
