How to Get IT to Help You

Here are five easy ways to get IT to help you during implementation of your marketing automation project.

1. Define and document your business requirements - IT deals with a lot of white noise. Differentiate yourself by having full documentation of what you need and when you need it.

2. Have a technology plan - It's not IT's job to seek out technology to solve your problem.

Define business requirements
Evaluate technology on your own

Urgent: Build a Lean Marketing Factory

During the past 15 years companies have invested heavily in automation, process optimization, and strategic sourcing in every divisional line except marketing.
_____________________________________________________

Today, enterprises are in yet another phase of process optimization in order to either realize ROI or maximize ROI from these large automation rollouts like CRM. While ROI is still questionable for a large number of rollouts, what is very apparent is that the drive to extend the enterprise to the customer remains both a priority and a necessity in today’s competitive customer-centric environment.

CEO’s have been driving the concept of being customer-centric for years, and while technology has allowed customers open access to helpful data through self service applications, it has not improved marketing operations and the enterprises capabilities to brand across all of these new customer touch points. Companies have become very adept at optimizing manufacturing processes, managing product lifecycles, focusing research and development, and maintaining strict quality control. The result of these advancements however is a double-edged sword.

Companies may gain the benefit of effective ERP solutions in relation to lean manufacturing, but they lose the recognized benefit of product delineation which has historically differentiated each company’s brand. As a result, companies can no longer focus on traditional marketing strategy used to illustrate the features and benefits associated with products and services.

Today, companies need to develop brand by managing the customer experience; ultimately building a two-way, equitable relationship with buyers. Enterprises now recognize that long term profits are tied directly to their success at creating better and more-enduring customer relationships, and are now shifting their focus to technology investments, process mprovements, and outsourcing strategies that can help them meet the challenge of becoming a scalable customer-centric organization.

However, the challenge is significant. According to Gartner Research by 2007 fewer than 20 percent of marketing organizations among Global 1000 enterprises will have evolved enough to successfully leverage customer-centric value-added processes and capabilities. Gartner also predicts that the companies that are successful in evolving their processes and leverage modern marketing technology will see 30-50% better ROI then their peers and competitors due to increased revenues, and decreased costs. Migration toward customer-centricity is not simply a marketing initiative, it is imperative. And the migration yields profound consequences for how marketing departments need to function. According to a Gartner research article titled, Marketing Resource Management Is Key to a Successful CRM Strategy, CEO’s are directing their marketing departments to lead the customer-centric enterprise, while somewhat paradoxically CFO’s are demanding that marketing departments measure results in order to eliminate waste and to analyze ROI.

This is a difficult task, as a customer-centric enterprise has multiple areas of visibility, and customer touch points. The obvious touch points include: marketing, sales, and customer service. Not so obvious touch points include: human resources, research and development, finance, sales channel, distribution, and supply chains. To be effective, marketing operations must evolve from focusing on products and transactions and tactical day-to-day activities into high-value business processes that add value to customers, enhance brand, and are aligned with the overall enterprise goal. However, according to Gartner Research most marketing organizations face several challenges in accomplishing this evolution:

• More-demanding customers who expect offerings and communications to be increasingly aligned with their needs, preferences and lifestyles.
• The ability to support a growing number of marketing activities to drive the customer-centric enterprise. This ability, however, should have a limited impact on other parts of the enterprise — or the extended enterprise, where execution is critical (for example, call center, store or branch, Web site, partners) — while concurrently facing increasing pressure to justify marketing resources and expenditures.
• Dealing with a variety of loosely coordinated marketing silos (for example, corporate, communications, products, customers, channels, fields, markets) that lack sufficient focus on collaboration around key, high-value processes.

Source: Gartner Research- Top-10 Marketing Processes for the 21st Century

The bottom line is that everything has changed for today’s marketing department. No longer can they count on the honed art of manual marketing process and execution. Marketing is now being driven, invited, and pushed, back into the boardroom to discuss Enterprise Marketing Management and Marketing Operational Strategy, as it relates to imporving processes, eliminating waste, investing in automation technology in order to meet the demands of a customer-centric enterprise. Marketing is now challenged with catching up to the lean, automated enterprise. Gartner describes the necessity well:

“Due to increased competitiveness, product and channel proliferation, and greater market, media and interactive channel fragmentation, the complexity of marketing operations has increased. As such, the marketing function must strive for higher degrees of process standardization and automation to drive greater efficiency and productivity, as well as better alignment of resources and activities with corporate objectives. Higher levels of efficiency and productivity are essential so that marketers can dedicate more time and effort to higher-value marketing processes.”

“Achieving greater visibility and accountability of marketing efforts requires enterprises to develop and deploy formal, standardized processes and systems for the planning, budgeting and tracking of marketing efforts.” Source: Gartner Research- Top-10 MarketingProcesses for the 21st Century

The results of these market pressures are that enterprises will invest heavily in marketing technology, and process improvements while reconsidering their portfolio and people resources. Like the ERP and CRM waves before it, Marketing Resource Management (MRM) will lead the technological charge.

“Marketing applications are one of the fastest-growing CRM areas in the IT industry, at an 11.2 percent compound annual growth rate from 2004 to 2009.” Source: Gartner Research Publication -Management Update: Predicts 2006: CRM Marketing Strategies and Technologies Mature

Companies that make these investments in both technology and process improvements will see a greater return.

“Through 2010, firms that leverage MRM capabilities to support customer-centric strategies will achieve 30 percent higher returns through cost reduction and revenue enhancement (0.7 probability).

“By 2007, marketers that devote at least 50 percent of their time to advanced, customer-centric marketing processes and capabilities will achieve marketing ROI that is at least 30 percent greater than that of their peers, who lack such emphasis (0.8 probability).” Source: Gartner Research-Marketing Resource

The necessity for a customer-centric enterprise is driving technology investments in marketing applications and process improvements so that marketing departments can plan, budget, and measure more effectively as they try to meet the demands of the customer-centric enterprise. The ROI is real, and long-term profit considerations are significant enough to have caught the attention of the CEO. Having seen the improvements that automation, outsourcing and process optimization have brought to the legacy enterprise, it comes as no surprise that according to the Chief Executive Magazine survey, when asked their first three actions to improving their company’s marketing efforts, 55.7 percent of CEOs said:

“Increase the efficiency of the marketing organization.”

One result of the current market conditions, is the rise of MRM application providers such as Aprimo, and Unica who have quickly become leaders in the market. Mainstays such as SAP, and Oracle, are now striving to catch up by acquiring or adding features to their CRM tools. Large data analytics companies and ERP extension companies such as SAS and SSA Global are acquiring CRM and MRM providers like Epiphany in order to leapfrog ahead, and gain instant customer share. Finally, consulting companies are developing marketing operations solutions outside of brand, in order to meet the demands of enterprise marketing departments. The market demand for a customer centric marketing enterprise is here, and the positive results of change are apparent and predictable. The question is not if a company builds and sustains a scalable lean marketing orginization, it is a question of when.

Is It Possible to Manage Brand In A Channels Organization?

If you’re attempting to market through a partner channel it’s likely that your carefully constructed brand message has been diluted. Many brands that leverage a channel suffer by being separated from the final buyer by two or three levels. The partner ecosystem tends to reuse the brands material with much less consideration for the voice of the brand or the customer-centric goals of the manufacturer. The partner community is more concerned with their relationship with the customer, not necessarily the relationship of the customer with the brand. This is a problem for a company that recognizes that their success channel or no channel, is directly tied to their ability to create an emotional connection to their brand. So it is a challenge, but worthy of overcoming. Companies that succeed in differentiating the brand through the channel see the following benefits.

• Top of mind in the channel.
• Partner Loyalty.
• Customer-Centricity.
• Increased sales, market-share, partner-share etc.
• Quality Control.

Achieving these goals is not easy, and requires careful planning and execution. The good news is that many brands are succeeding. In simple terms the most successful companies are applying disciplined processes, leveraging centralized tools and automation where appropriate. The end result is a channel that is able to market better and faster, while marketing extends controlled materials that differentiate the brand.