Diary of a Marketing Insight Guy

It’s well known that Sales and Marketing are the cats and dogs of many companies (or dogs and cats, I’m not trying to start a debate about which is which in this post!), constantly fighting with each other and falling out. But what about Marketing and IT? Technology is crucial to most marketers and we turn to our IT colleagues for solutions to help us manage customer lifecycle, campaign execution and many other aspects of marketing activities. Alongside systems deemed business critical in finance and operations though, Marketing is often de-prioritised and left to fend for itself.

IT’s response to requests from Marketing for additional resource often revolves around their need to focus on “core functions”, but what are these functions? Clearly IT has many demands placed on it from across any business. Systems relating to financial management and service delivery will always occupy a high profile position, against those merely generating and tracking demand for a company’s products and services. The tendency among IT organisations is to want to retain ownership of as much as possible, define everything as a project and then submit every initiative to a review board for approval.

Marketing’s requirements are often much simpler than this, and the rising prevalence of hosted and software-as-a-service solutions mean these needs can be met in a much lighter-touch way. IT’s role then becomes that of creating an environment where these solutions can be rapidly selected and deployed, undertaking integration (often only a configuration task) where necessary. Core IT skills such as requirements definition, vendor assessment and selection and project management are still invaluable, but they are relieved of the heavy lifting of creating the environment for a new system and handling the fine detail of implementation.

Clearly the arguments in favour of outsourcing are well rehearsed, but Sales and Marketing represent a particularly good fit for this approach. IT’s “core function” can then become enablement, and the growing contingent of highly capable, technically literate marketing operations professionals can take it from there. There’s no reason that Marketing and IT can’t play nicely; now how to achieve the same result with Sales…

We’ve run many marketing automation projects over the years, both large and small. Here’s a simplified version of the methodology we use, and some hints around getting your project up and running!

1. Project Feasibility - an informal review to scope the potential project and set some expectations. This process might be no more than a short internal meeting, but at this stage you’ll not only be able to roughly size the project, but you’ll also have a good handle on the costs you’re currently incurring. Look at the organisation’s current levels of marketing activity, not only in departments carrying out marketing, but also Sales and other functions. Try and come up with some metrics such as spend (internal, number of activities, overall number of touches), and the programme objectives; customer acquisition, retention, up-sell/cross-sell. Don’t forget softer marketing activities such as newsletters sent by product or customer service groups.

You also need to get a rough idea of the data available, again don’t forget to look out-side the main marketing teams as well as internally. This usually means Sales, Finance (if there is no data warehouse), Customer Services and product management teams.

Add into the mix your organisation’s future needs, growth strategies, new products, desired improvement in customer experiences, structural acquisitions, as well as any predictable internal factors around people or structural changes.

Activity + Costs + Data Resource + Business Objectives are the inputs you’ll need do outline the project scope.

2. Initiate Project - you might have an internal project initiation process or it might be a more informal set of actions. But any successful project will need most of these components in place:

• Business Buy-in - Your project is going to need or catalyse change in your business. Now is the time to get your directors or SVP’s on board. And don’t forget to keep up a dialogue with the guys in IT!
• Project Champion (Board) - Someone with a stake in the project’s success and with enough political weight to fight your corner for resource and support
• Project Manager - A good PM combines a detailed technical understanding with the oleaginous charm of a diplomat and the motivational skills of Madame Whiplash! They can be either from marketing or from IT or both! At times it’s going to be a full time job, so make sure they have the bandwidth.
• Success Definition - Develop meaningful indicators of success; these might include  reduction in costs, improvement in productivity or trends in conversion costs. Keep them simple (at least what you share with the business) and realistic.

3. 1st Stage Requirements Definition and Data Audit Documentation

• A high quality piece of work at this stage is vital to the success of the project; investment in time here will be repaid by a successful implementation many fold. When you start writing the cheques is too late to be finding  figure out that what is being delivered doesn’t meet your needs.
• Clearly prioritise all key features; essential/desirable/optional. On any requirements document the nice-to-haves tend to take up the same amount of space as the need-to-haves.
• Think about phasing; its likely any substantial project will be delivered (and paid for) in a number of stages; prioritise key deliverables, but you also need to work out the optimum structure to meet operational constraints.
• Identify any internal process changes needed, this is another area that is easy to overlook or underestimate. Does this need to be a vendor deliverable or can the business handle it themselves?
• The Data Aaudit doesn’t need to be exhaustive at this stage; but you need to have a very good handle on the inputs the system will need, files layouts where applicable, approximate record quantities, and source system dependencies. In any complex organisation it’s easy to underestimate the number of data sources needed for build and production. On one recent project the estimate was 18. The real number once an exhaustive process was complete? 61!

4. RFI/RFP to vendors (and internal Technology Group) - You may or may not have an internal IT resource who feel they can deliver a Marketing automation/CM project. One way to cut through the politics of this is to ask them to respond like the other vendors – make sure they price internal IT resources realistically.

5. Response evaluation and contract negotiation

• Allow plenty of time for this stage; there’s nothing like seeing the figures on the table to focus the mind, and the vendor will be looking to safeguard their position. A successful negotiation will allow both parties to apportion the risk
• Usually there will be a significant up-front cost for development. A guaranteed contract term will allow the vendor to amortise the development costs over the the period of the contract.

6. Project Plan and Timeline setting - Make this realistic but not too long. You need to be able to keep the momentum going, but its not great to forever be announcing delays. Try and structure the project to allow early wins; for example you may not need every single data feed to start gaining value from a single customer view.

7. Detailed Requirements and Data discovery

• This should be straightforward process if you’ve got a good requirements price, but the vendor should respond to your functional prioritisation, allowing you to make informed choices before agreeing the statement of work.
• Allow plenty of engagement time for Data discovery. You’ve probably lived with this data for a long period of time, but any external consultant or specialist is starting from scratch. You’ll also have to make knowledgeable internal data specialists available to the vendor; if you’ve got complete documentation on all internal systems and feeds, congratulations – that’s a first!

8. Development – Ensure configuration and customisation adhere to the agreed requirements and specification, without suffering from scope-creep (constant additions to the original functionality). Any such development should be minimised and every process or function scrutinised to gauge its real priority and whether “out of the box” functionality will suffice. Conduct regular review sessions with key stakeholders to demonstrate functionality and ensure it is on track.

9. Implementation and migration – Develop data migration and cut-over alongside functional development. Ensuring the right data is available in the new system from day one is critical and users will be unforgiving if it is not. Many CRM implementations fail due to data issues, including data quality. Will you migrate all data from legacy systems, or apply rules and filters? What is the data model of the new system compared to previous ones, will there need to be a mapping process.

10. Training ‘Go-Live’ – Don’t overlook training and plan well in advance of go-live. Avoid the temptation to just let users loose on a new system and learn it for themselves, but develop a proper training programme, with hands-on usage (even if it’s a late beta version) and plenty of exercises and review sessions. Aim to have training deliverables available (documentation, process guides or screen tutorials). Run post go-live sessions to re-cap key functions and answer any questions on general functionality arising as users start utilising the system.

11. Evaluation and On-going development – Conduct reviews to ensure the system is delivering the required functionality. Survey users for their opinion on usability, how much they’re using the system and any key missing functions. Does it make their job easier? Put aside resources to make enhancements post go-live – don’t expect the job t complete at this stage.

The Salesforce.com customer conference in the UK this year took the form of CloudForce, a complimentary day of sessions and vendor showcases, held at London’s ExCel exhibition centre last week. It’s no revelation that Salesforce.com have long since moved on from simply being a salesforce automation developer. Today, they position themselves as “Force.com”, promoting the benefits of cloud computing - multi-tenanted, internet based computer platforms - that obviate the need to install software. Indeed, the “no software” message, and attendant logo of the word “software” with a line through it, was repeated at every opportunity. An amusing moment came when Paul Cheesbrough, CIO of The Telegraph Media Group, made reference to “your software” when joining Salesforce.com CEO, Marc Benioff, on stage during the main session. “Your platform I mean,” Cheesbrough quickly corrected himself, “there is no software.”
“Thank you,” replied Benioff.
“I saw it in your eyes!” quipped Cheesbrough.

The AppExchange platform that forms part of Saleforce.com offers a plethora of opportunities to expand the functionality of the base product. However, the ready integration capabilities of Salesforce.com and the Force.com application platform enable new possibilities, some of which I thought noteworthy. Force.com is particularly interesting, as it opens up the platform beyond Sales and Customer Service management to one that allows developers to create their own applications running on the Salesforce.com cloud infrastructure. To developers, Force.com represents the opportunity to deliver solutions based around the software-as-a-service ethos, without having to build the delivery infrastructure themselves. Adopters of these solutions, for whom not having to install software and maintain their own IT infrastructure is appealing, gain access to applications meeting their requirements that might not otherwise have made it to this delivery mechanism.

One such example is a complete accounting application from financial software developers Coda, called Coda2go. Based around their on premise solution, Coda2go runs entirely on the Force.com platform and integrates closely with Salesforce.com itself. I wrote recently about the considerations of integrating sales order processing within the sales and marketing “data ecosystem”, where I made reference to the point at which an Opportunity is closed and an order booked. With Coda2go, this process, together with resulting invoicing, is practically a one-click undertaking. Once the Opportunity is ready to be booked as a sales order, which would typically involve manually switching to a different system, all of the order details are picked up from Salesforce.com, transferred to Coda2go, invoices created and the rest of the accounting process put in train. I can’t speak to how good a financials solution Coda2go is, but this looks pretty neat!

Closer to marketing home, Cognos (now part of IBM) and QlikTech were offering Salesforce.com enabled versions of their analytics solutions. As well as enabling more sophisticated analysis, visual representation and dashboards than native Salesforce.com, these solutions will work across multiple data sources, holding out the prospect of unified marketing and sales reporting and analysis. Joining marketing data such as campaign execution, response and leads with converted opportunities and closed deals, the nirvana of true, operational marketing effectiveness reporting comes a step closer. Of course a variety of process implications still need to be considered, but at least data visibility is improved.

Finally, and firmly within the marketing realm, a couple of email campaign solutions and a data collection system caught my eye. Genius.com and ExactTarget both offer solutions for creating and despatching marketing emails with all the features you would expect, including HTML templates, personalisation, tracking and reporting. Naturally, this is integrated with Salesforce.com in terms of data management and reporting, making straightforward but relatively sophisticated email marketing very easy. Clicktools allows the creation of surveys, landing page and forms, enabling rapid generation of marketing response mechanisms, as well as questionnaires and so on. Between all of these solutions, it seems possible that best-of-breed marketing campaigns consisting of outbound email and rich landing pages with response tracking can be created relatively easily and inexpensively, without needing full scale and costly marketing automation solutions.

So, there you have my quick round-up of highlights from CloudForce ‘09, all without reference to meteorology or having my head in the clouds. Doh! Too late.

This week saw the annual IDM Lunch taking place once again, an opportunity for members to meet, catch up and discuss current issues over lunch, followed by a keynote address. The calibre of the speakers is always high and this year was no exception, with “worldwide business and technology strategist and best-selling author” (according to the IDM) Don Tapscott occupying the slot this time.

Tapscott’s presentation set out to highlight some of the reasons to embrace rather than disdain “Generation Y”, to whom the Internet is second nature. Rupert Murdoch described them as “digital natives”, against those of a slightly older disposition for whom the Internet arrived at a later stage in life and therefore making them “digital immigrants”. This generation are “bathed in bits” and have a completely different approach to media consumption and social interaction. This of course is characterised by Facebook, Twitter and My Space, but also, critics assert, lack of attention span, insularity and general dumbing down.

Tapscott rejects this description though, and as a Professor of Management at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, among other roles, and having recently completed a $4m research programme in this area, I guess he should know what he’s talking about. The general thrust of Tapscott’s counter-argument was that far from leading to the atrophy of the skills needed in modern business, online technologies foster them. The collaboration, team work and leadership engendered and developed online create individuals far more likely to be effective knowledge workers in the future.

Tapscott also highlighted the attitude of Gen Y to email and a memorable way of characterising it. Email is regarded as a more formal means of communication than instant messaging or social media sites; in other words, something for the oldies to use! Though not a new observation, Tapscott’s research turned up the following gem: when asked when email would be used by today’s teenagers, the response was “when writing a thank you letter to my friend’s parents for having me to dinner.” The art of letter writing may well be on borrowed time…

You can enjoy the rest of Tapscott’s observations in more detail by reading his latest book, Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World, so I won’t dwell further here. The other element of his presentation which interested me though was actually his opening gambit. Demonstrating that great minds think alike, as I had suggested this only moments earlier to my neighbour at the table, he asked for a show of hands as to how many Twitter users were in the audience. Of perhaps the couple of hundred delegates, about a third professed to using Twitter, which was a little higher than I might have expected from a relatively senior audience. (Although given the IDM’s strap-line “Digital, Direct, Data”, perhaps this was just the digital contingent.)

Now, I confess I’m not on Twitter, though it’s on my list of things to do. This result however, somewhat supports my assertion that few of the people I’d like to speak do use the service, making my presence a little futile. However, I’m not closed off to it, and I was only recently enthusiastically assured of it’s great utility by an industry colleague (you know who you are!). In view of the upcoming generation ensconced in this technology though, marketers surely need to take these channels seriously, and start learning how to use them to the mutual benefit of organisations and those they wish to influence. This is a similar situation to the early web, when companies built websites with a limited understanding of what they hoped to achieve. This has the danger of being self-fulfilling, but the web didn’t turn out too badly!

What interests me, to bring this back on topic, is the operational implications of these technologies. How can they be effectively integrated into marketing processes, measured and justified? Or is this counter to the ethos of Web 2.0, where such mercenary and quantitative thinking is counter culture? It would seem a shame if so, as Twitter’s “follow my Tweets” approach strikes me as the ultimate in permission marketing. Where’s Seth Godin when you need him? (Well, try here, here or here!)

Another snippet in support of getting the basics right, this time from well respected Cass Business School Honorary Professor of Marketing Metrics, Robert Shaw. In a letter to the London Financial Times recently, he criticised over-reliance on branding at the expense of executional considerations. In response to an article regarding strikingly similar new slogans from Pepsi and Coke, he said “it is the operationally excellent marketers that have a big competitive advantage over their wasteful, slogan-obsessed rivals.”

I mean no disrespect to my branding colleagues when I say I’m not going to argue with that!

I recently stumbled across quite a nice piece entitled Six steps to better marketing operations management, which talks about the importance of efficient marketing processes and executional excellence, themes regular readers here will recognise. Marketing operations is considered in it’s widest definition, encompassing planning, budgeting and resource management, which is actually quite refreshing when you’re used to thinking in a narrower context of data and process. The article is actually quite old, having been posted in June 2005, but is no less relevant today, and as such I thought it worth bringing to attention here.

Coming from me, this will sound like rampant self justification, as well as a thinly veiled bid for a promotion, but bear with me. Marketing, at least enterprise/business to business marketing, is becoming ever more complex, with diverse activity across web, email, direct mail and myriad other channels. This activity usually takes place in the context of key account management, lead generation and opportunity tracking. All of this adds up to a significant level of detail that needs to be managed in order to successfully deliver on dynamic and sophisticated sales and marketing strategy.

The pertinent point here is “detail”. Consider a recent initiative to comprehensively revise a key account list to be used as the focus for prospecting and account development activity, across Sales and Marketing. “Here’s the initial account list,” said Sales Operations, “start working on matching it to the database and we’ll send the final version as soon as it’s ready.” How many problems immediately present themselves from that simple, innocuous statement?

• Why is the list being created outside of the database in the first place?
• If this is unavoidable, how are the account list and resulting matched list going to be reconciled? How will these accounts be identified in the database?
• How are the changes in the updated list, “once ready”, going to be communicated?

I could go on. In the inevitable rush to implement the new strategy though, Marketing Directors don’t have the time, let alone the inclination, to reflect on these considerations, intent instead on the ultimate objective of executing lead generation activity. The task, then, falls to the Operations team to sort out, which is fair enough. Marketing Directors aren’t there to handle fine detail and are rightly focussing on the bigger picture and the many aspects of a successful campaign.

The point is that if some of these aspects were considered early on in the process, a huge amount of work could be saved across the organisation, from generating the original list of accounts to identifying them in the database and enabling campaign activity. The conversations that put these processes in place though, frequently take place at too high a level for the detail to become apparent, and by the time it reaches the point of implementation, it’s too late to adopt the best approach.

A Marketing Operations Director, or similar role, working at the same level as a Corporate or Marketing Communications Director, would be able to participate in these conversations and strategy development and bring the attention to detail that is needed, even at this level, whilst also contributing to the development of wider objectives. Such is the role of the marketing hybrid, working across marketing and technology, fine detail and the big picture.

Roles like this should exist at a higher level in the Marketing organisation - and not just because I’m angling for that corner office!

I’ve written a lot about integrating sales and marketing databases (posts too numerous to provide links – search on “integration” in the sidebar), but so far I haven’t mentioned the third source in the marketing data ecosystem – order processing systems. Order processing systems are where the sales orders that leads and opportunities (hopefully!) eventually turn into are captured, invoices created and ultimately customer status converted. It may also be known as an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, and also handle financials, human resources and other functions (possibly even CRM).

The reason these systems are important within a marketing operations context is because they are generally the system of record regarding whether an organisation is a customer or not, and what their purchase history is if so. Although the sales and marketing systems should have a view of completed opportunities and closed deals, there is inevitably a disconnect from what was supposed to have been sold and what was actually booked. Put starkly, once the deal is clinched, Sales’ enthusiasm for making sure it is accurately reflected in the SFA system wanes considerably; commissions are likely to be calculated based on what the order processing system says.

Care needs to be given to designing order processing links though. Here are some considerations:

• Is the feed uni or bi-directional? In other words does the marketing database just receive updates of customer status and possibly purchase history. Such feeds are often one-way, as the owner of the order system will jealously guard their data integrity – not unreasonably, as it represents the “real” customer database for the company. However, if there is no feedback mechanism, then it may not be possible to correct issues with the data, such as missing address elements, inconsistent country values or duplicates.
• How does the order system handle accounts and organisations. As a result of the different imperatives of ordering systems (delivery, invoicing, credit accounts), data is frequently held in a way that is inconsistent with that of the marketing database. If different departments of the same organisation, for instance, have made separate purchases, the order system may create separate records which will be perceived by the marketing database as duplicates. Take care in removing these duplicates from the marketing database however; not only might they simply turn up again with the next order system update, but you will loose the account number reference in the marketing database which might be a crucial external reference.
• What purchase history data is available? If the feed is at “account” level (which may not be the same as unique organisations) it may include most recent order, invoice or contract date. That might be enough to derive a “customer” status, such as having ordered within a specified time frame or are within a maintenance contract, but may not include any information on what was ordered. On the other hand, you might be faced with a feed of every order or invoice, which is considerably more challenging to integrate.

Unlike the third rail of an electric railway, which you shouldn’t ever touch in order to avoid electric shock, the order processing systems is generally avoided even though they’re a crucial source of marketing data. Which isn’t to say you won’t get a shock if you try and integrate it!

I was recently introduced to a networking group that is worthy of note. The brainchild of brothers Bede and Tim Feltham (the latter of whom bears an uncanny resemblance to Sir Richard Branson) and calling itself the Marketing Hybrids Network, the group aims to bring together any “individual equally at home in the worlds of marketing and technology”. The term is derived from the 1990 book Database Marketing by Robert Shaw and Merlin Stone, which described the then emerging group of marketers able to bridge the gap between these two seemingly disparate worlds.

Marketing Hybrids meetings take place every quarter and are very informal gatherings of like minded people taking the opportunity to catch up and chat. Bede and Tim appear very adept at securing sponsors, who put a few quid behind the bar of whichever location happens to have been chosen in exchange for a little logo exposure. Apart from that, there are no presentations and no hard sell, so I would very much recommend signing up to anyone working in this space. And you never know who you’re going to meet – maybe even a Knight of the Realm!

When you’re mired in the day-to-day challenges of managing marketing operations and insight activity, it’s easy to let yourself believe that you are alone in facing the difficulties with which you are presented. This is not the case, as two recent experiences have highlighted to me. At the beginning of the IDM Business to Business Conference panel session in which I took part recently (see Executional excellence and Institute of Direct Marketing Business-to-Business Marketing Conference 2008), I asked for a show of hands as to how many marketing data sources existed in delegates’ organisations. As I counted up from one, two, three systems, quite a number of hands stayed in the air, and indeed one of my fellow panellists admitted to probably being in double figures! If you’re juggling multiple data sources, you are not alone.

Another example, along similar lines, is dealing with disjointed sales and marketing systems. Last week I delivered the database marketing module of the IDM Certificate in Business to Business Marketing to a group of marketing professionals keen to show their mettle. The issue was brought up of how to ensure that data in the sales force automation solution at one organisation could be kept up-to-date with the marketing database, held at a service provider. I made a few suggestions, but reassured the individual asking the question that this is not an uncommon problem. If you’re struggling with disconnected data repositories, you are not alone.