MM5011 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT & INNOVATION COMPUMAT : Math That Cant Add WIDYA WARDANI | 29112003

Lesson learned from case Compumat, Math That Cant Add are: 1. The innovative environment should be maintained in every sector incl. education In this case, it is described that one main problem of Compumat acceptance is not the students but the teacher. Its simply because teacher tend to keep his/her traditional way of teaching and doesnt want to do any innovation on the way they teach. Actually its not just because the limitation of teachers themselves, but actually because they are not accustomed to innovate. Their daily routines run with same way everyday. To solve this problem, head of school has a duty to create creative environment. He/she has responsibility to encourage the teacher to be more creative which can give good impact for the students. 2. Build Customer Awareness & Do Customer Education are most important phase in selling new product Compumat is a great product. Customer admits it. But why Compumat is not success at all? As mentioned in the case, the challenge of compumat penetration is not in the size of the market nor the product itself, yet the business model and sales strategy. The failure of compumat penetration is the consequence of company has not yet developed appropriate distribution channel nor has it advertised its product. Except for school that its salespeople have visited, Compumat is unknown as a supplier of educational products. The business model and pricing strategy next are the factors need to be considered. Compumat is perceived as expensive product. As the main customer is education sector, pricing becomes an issue that makes the potential customer think twice before using compumat. This service and pricing model need to be reevaluate to design price model that would be perceived as not as expensive as before. 3. Innovative Product is not always easily accepted by others Overall the case shows that innovative product is not always can be easily accepted by others. To turn it to a perceived-valuable product which has selling value, therere some marketing steps need to be done. This becomes challenge for any entrepreneur who creates an innovative product as the result of creative thinking. So, the problem is not in the product but how to build the strategy to make it accepted in the market. In current situation of many businesses, this condition is faced by many products. In fact, the product is great invention with innovation that may help peoples life. But its often that people dont understand what value that the product delivered and if it worth to pay for the

Compumat | Widya Wardani - 29112003

product. One closest example to me about the product failure related to lack of customer education and product awareness is Groovia by Telkom. Groovia actually is a great product. It provides high technology television that allow customer to save TV program, rewind it whenever he/she wants as well as order a video in service called video on demand. It helps people who dont have time to watch TV program in a given schedule to postpone it to their freetime. In its launching, Groovia is lack of customer education as well as its business awareness. People dont understand what value added that Groovia brings to their life as well as if it is worth enough to pay for some money to get that value. Due to its lack of customer education, later Groovia failed to expand its market penetration and its future development consider postponed until unlimited time. Compumat case is closely related to the implementation of marketing concept. The core marketing concepts can be shown in picture below:

The picture above shows the core marketing concept cycle while markets become one important entity as the input of the idea based on their needs, wants and demands as well as an object to the product sales as customer. Compumat in this case decides to launch a new product with not directly order by customer. They identified customer needs based on the situation and problem analysis. The advantage of this kind of product development is compumat become a pioneer and it can make Compumat trademark for this kind of product. Otherwise, the weakness of this strategy is company need to do more effort in customer education. To cover customer education, company has to know what factor can influence buyer behavior as shown in picture below:

Compumat | Widya Wardani - 29112003

The picture clearly shows that theres some factors influenced buyer behavior are individual aspect of buyers themselves, interpersonal, organizational and environmental factor. Besides customer education, pricing strategy is also one aspect to be considered. As innovative product, Compumat adopted Value-Based Pricing. Price generation based on value-based pricing is shown below:

Customer

Value

Price

Cost

Product

The picture shows that value that is felt by customer will drive the price of product. This is different with concept of cost-based pricing which cost of product will drive the price. Costbased pricing is shown below:

Product

Cost

Price

Value

Customer

Compumat | Widya Wardani - 29112003