FOCUS PAPER

Easy and quality-assured media management

Marketing Process Optimization (MPO)

FOCUS PAPER Marketing Process Optimization

Easy and quality-assured media management by Marketing Process Optimization

While process optimization and (semi-)automation has been established as standards in other business functions, marketing has for a long time proclaimed creative chaos for itself and has experienced difficulties in standardizing workflows and automating processes. It had a hard time recognizing that process optimization does not impose obstacles to creativity but in the opposite, at times of increasing market pressure and requirements, represents an effective means to create more room for marketings essential tasks. This Focus Paper is aimed at introducing the topic Marketing Process Optimization, pointing out where it can be utilized, how it optimizes productivity and what its consequences are for the marketing department.

Marketing the most stressful job on the planet?

Marketing may be the most stressful and least appreciated job on earth! This is what you might feel when thinking about the fact that the merits of the exhausting marketing business are always collected by the sales people in the end and that controlling is always watching and comparing the incredible costs to the value generated. However, seen objectively, marketing departments sometimes make their job a hard time for themselves. No doubt, working in marketing means an extremely high level of flexibility in a surrounding of volatile and sometimes unclear structures. Acting in a market-oriented way enforces short-term changes in tactics and strategies while abandoning the plans so far and quickly putting new measures in place. However, how is marketing supposed to act in such flexible ways if information is not clearly structured and available on demand at any time? A scenario coming up way too often in reality: Texts and graphics are needed for a publication as fast as possible. Actually, this is no big deal, since every marketing department should be able to reuse their existing CI-conform materials. But in fact, this is where the perplexity starts. Are the required materials stored centrally or are they still sitting in some mail inbox, waiting to be filed? If no one finds them in the inbox, they probably are centrally stored already, so the quest for the right file folder can begin. Once the relevant folder is finally found, the next problem is awaiting the marketer: various files without clear names, indicating anything about usage purpose and up-to-dateness. And if it comes even worse, the most up-to-date files have not even been stored yet, but are still on a colleagues local drive so that there is no data access possible at all. Only after investing quite a lot of time for research, the actual work can begin: The contents need to be adapted to the current requirements of the task. If there is not only a need to adapt texts but also graphics, it can become even more difficult. Frequently, the design department or creative agency need to receive a briefing on very short notice and all the marketer can do is hope for a fast response. Of course, the graphical work causes additional coordination effort, since, e.g., the briefing was lacking some important information or there was a mistake due to all the hectic. As soon as all these obstacles have been overcome and the document is final, it can undergo the quality-assuring review
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FOCUS PAPER Marketing Process Optimization

and approval workflows. Usually, corrections are made to the printed document in hand-writing and most of the times there is more than one review cycle. Thus, it becomes almost impossible to keep an overview of the latest changes and corrections or new mistakes or errors occurring. After several reviews and corrections, the document is final at one point so that the publication can be produced and the project closed. Is this for sure? Shouldnt the document be archived properly after finalization before turning to the next task, so that others in the department can reuse it? Wouldnt it save time and money and definitely nerves of everyone could reuse already existing materials and media assets instead of permanently reinventing the wheel? In theory, this sounds selfevident, but in the everyday marketing business, the day is not long enough to provide enough time for proper filing and archiving. Before one even notices, this process step is omitted and the next time, the stress starts again right from the beginning maybe not for the same person, but for a colleague. The claim that marketing is the most stressful job on the planet in this case becomes easily comprehensible. But fortunately, there is a different way to do it. How? With optimized marketing workflows based on marketing process optimization (MPO). This method supports marketing employees to get out of the daily administration of a thousand mini-projects and gain back their time for the essentials in marketing creative and strategic thinking and the creation of successful ideas, concepts and content.

Creativity and Process Optimization How do these two go together?

To most marketing employees, buzz words such as Marketing Process Optimization, Marketing Resource Management and productivity increase may not sound like what they are used to deliver: creative ideas, the implementation of exceptional concepts and the successful management of their brand. Increasing efficiency rather sounds like red pencils, calculators and even more bustle and hectic rush in their daily business. At the same time, marketers feel more and more intense competition in more and more complex markets, due to globalized markets. Simultaneously, new communication channels emerge almost on a daily basis and the personal address of each customer has become a self-evident requirement to their campaigns. The consequence: day by day, their volume of tasks is rising, while their budgets remain constant at best. As a reaction to these challenges, the efficient implementation of concepts and campaigns has become very important to most marketers. Efficiency in this context means to use the right means and media to reach their objectives while keeping the effort as low as possible. This effort cannot be minimized at a constant level of communication quality without thinking about optimized marketing workflows. Marketing Process Optimization refers to a method utilizing automation for the creation process of marketing materials, from the beginning of the workflow up to the material distribution. Its objective is to accelerate operational, recurring routine tasks that use up a lot of time by standardization to utilize the resources available (human resources, budgets as well as media assets) in the most efficient way possible, thus gene-rating more time for important strategic and conceptual tasks. The fact that in September 2008 the first national congress was held exactly about this topic called m|e Marketing Efficiency underlines that MPO for marketers has moved up the agenda from being a nice-to-have and has become a critical issue for the companys as well as the marketers personal success.
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FOCUS PAPER Marketing Process Optimization

MPO without Software Support: The Top 10 Time Killers in Marketing

Have a critical look at your marketing department: how much of your personal work is still value-adding and of conceptional nature? How much time do you spend on routine jobs every day? A study conducted by the University of Mannheim, Germany, in 2006 found out that marketers are spending up to two thirds of their time on operational routine jobs and get lost in the hectic rush of a thousand mini-projects in their daily business. Here is a list of the top 10 time killers in marketing: 1. Data Filing Marketing data are filed on local drives or just left in mail inboxes. The Filing Structure Marketing data are stored in a project-oriented way and cannot be retrieved and reused for similar jobs. Unclear Keywording Documents are not given names that clearly point out their usage and validity; everyone uses files names according to their own logic. Individual Versions Everyone in the department has their own way of versioning media assets. Wrong File Formats or JPG will do Instead of filing source files of graphics to be able to make the conversions necessary later on, marketing receives just the currently required format by the creative agency. Data filed at agencies Agencies do not hand over media assets and new ones are created because no one knows that similar or the exact same ones were already created long time ago. Corrections and Approvals Media Assets created enter seemingly endless correction and review cycles. The corrections are mostly made in hand-writing on printed documents, which is a source of error and entails even more correction cycles until document finalization. No information available about new media There is no notice about newly created media for all department members so that they can reuse existing materials. Carrying on errors after project finalization Mistakes or errors discovered after final approval are oftentimes not corrected in the data and the update is omitted.

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10. We are all human Nobodys perfect, thus errors are something that simply are made and can never be completely excluded.
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Software-based Process Optimization: The other departments have shown how to do it

Already years ago, the rather numerical and fact-based departments such as finance and controlling, as well as the very cost-intensive areas such as production and materials logistics implemented ERP software to improve their workflows based on standard software and to automate recurring administrative tasks. Also the sales departments are online: They use the support of CRM software to prevent redundant work and optimize the sales process. The last area that has been having difficulty in using software platforms to support their workflows until not long ago is marketing. For where the focus is on creativity, software-based Marketing Process Optimization seemed to completely misfit. MPO based on standard software means nothing but to map communication-oriented and creative marketing processes in the smart utilization of state-of-the art information technology and to manage these processes in a way that costs as well as time-to-market are reduced and the consistency of the communication is increased. Such systems are known as Marketing Resource Management (MRM) or Marketing Management Systems (MMS). The usage of such an MRM or MMS connects the steps of the marketing value chain from planning, creation of media and their distribution to suppliers and target groups up to controlling and metrics as well as the measurement of strategic brand values. And how does the software do this?

It automates the complex process of creating, distribution, localizing and producing communication media. It shortens the workflows in the creative supply chain and reduces efforts and costs for the creation and media management. It integrates the processes of media production, collateral stock and advertising materials logistics. It saves costs in reviews and correction cycles by intelligent, CI-conform templates as well as by separating content and design (Cross-Media-Publishing and Web-to-Print). It provides a central platform to store, retrieve and manage all kinds of media assets and addition-ally ensures proper media usage (who, what for, in which quality and format). It increases the efficiency of campaign management and produces faster time-to-market cycles.

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Figure: Exemplary Marketing Platform of the furniture company liveIN

How do we find the suitable software solution?

Before selecting an MRM vendor it is important to know that not the functions of a system and the flexibility of a vendor are the key criteria for your choice. It is the ability of the system to perfectly map your companys specific marketing workflows in the software. Thus, before implementing a system, it is integral that the marketing department is aware of its own processes and structures. Only based on this awareness the selection of the right software is possible. Since your company is not supposed to be forced into the corset of certain software, but the software is to conform to your requirements in order to support you in the best way possible. You should also cease the opportunity to think about existing structures and processes when implementing a new system, thus maximizing the optimization potentials. The software provider of your choice will certainly support you with this process and you will benefit from their know-how in MPO.

How can we start the end-to-end optimization of our marketing processes?

First of all, think about good opportunities to start MPO, if your current situation does not allow for a proactive start of activities right away:

Compulsion to act due to shortage in resources and cost pressure Establishment of a new brand (to start from scratch) Update / Redesign of the Corporate Design Substitution of various, individual software solutions already in place by one central solution

Marketing Process Optimization means to have a close look at the existing workflows. Once the as is state has been captured, a requirements profile can be created to evaluate, which software can contribute most to the optimization. And how is this accomplished if not by an external consultant? Here is a short guide for the basic milestones to consider:

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FOCUS PAPER Marketing Process Optimization

1. Identify As-is Status The classical W-Questions, like What, Where, Who, Why help to get a first impression of the current status: What processes use up the greatest part of the organizations time? What is the most money spent on? Who is affected by the challenges or changes required? Which consequences do the challenges entail? Which vision do you have for your marketing organization? Once you have a rough overview of the current status and identified the relevant parties involved, the single process steps and their challenges can be evaluated in detail:

Figure: The marketing process chain The following are possible challenges occurring:

Information: Corporate Design and Corporate Identity information is not sufficiently available to all parties involved. Updating this information causes a disproportionately large amount of effort. The information processes about new campaigns and activities are too slow and the information does not always reach its addressees (central and decentralized units). Planning: The process of marketing planning is not standardized and comprehensive. Various planning methods and structures make it impossible to compare and consolidate the plans of different marketing units or teams. A complete overview of all activities is hardly possible at all. Creation: The creation of collateral and media is tedious and the process is error-prone, which leads to insufficient quality. The share in operational, administrative and manually accomplished tasks in the media creation process is by far outreaching the creative part (internationalization, adaptation for local communication units). The brand is not being represented consistently to the target groups according to the CD guidelines. Distribution: The distribution of advertising materials, e.g. to local communication units such as retailers, franchises or branches, is difficult. The workflows are not standardized and cause a lot of manual work. Controlling: Reporting and controlling data are not available on demand. The existing data come from various sources and are not comparable. The basis for ROI and other evaluations of the communication results are missing.

Important: Do not hesitate to get all the process stakeholders together, since the optimization is not a thing that can be done by single persons if all stakeholders are to benefit from it.

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2. Define the Target-State Based on the earlier analysis of the current processes and according to your defined vision, in the second step, the requirements to the future workflows should now be documented. It is very important to know that to document all requirements does not enforce that all requirements are implemented at once. Rather set up a priority list and start with by optimizing the most important, cost-intense challenges. This way you ensure that the expectations of the parties involved are not diverging right from the start and that nobody feels disadvantaged with respect to the priority of their individual process challenges. Important: The Marketing Process Optimization itself must have due priority, since the project means additional implementation effort besides the marketings daily business. Also, define one person as central project manager who is responsible for the complete MPO project in terms of strategic as well as operational issues. 3. Document Software Requirements Document your requirements regarding the software in a formal requirements specification or a similar document. When doing this, focus on the essentials and dont forget to include software components which you maybe do not need right from the start but plan to use in the future to complete your vision of comprehensive MPO. The software vendors very often support their potential clients in these tasks. At times, the documentation of the results or a mind map from your internal requirements workshops are sufficient to communicate the requirements to the vendors considered. 4. Vendor Selection and MRM Implementation After finalizing the requirements analysis and creating a profile of requirements, you should screen the market for suitable software providers and solutions. You should try to get short demo presentations of all software systems you consider relevant and evaluate in detail how your requirements can be fulfilled best. Also, discuss your timing requirements with the vendors considered. After selecting a certain vendor, the implementation and rollout of the platform starts. Usually, there is a pilot phase before the system is rolled out in production. Important: Do not forget that process optimization goes farther than a one-time project. Continue to evaluate your processes on a regular basis and strive for continuous improvement.

About BrandMaker
BrandMaker is a Marketing Resource Management (MRM) system, which provides a broad spectrum of solutions: Offered are solutions for marketing strategy (scorecards as guide rails for marketing) and management modules (for example, software for integrated market planning and budgeting); as well as modules for marketing implementation and for optimization of the creative supply chain (job management, review management, media asset management, a web-toprint module, event planning, and a module for creation of online media). The system has a modular design and is applied according to the individual client requirements. The software is developed and marketed by the company BrandMaker GmbH. BrandMaker solutions are in use successfully in marketing departments of companies of varying size and in various corporate sectors for example at EnBW in the energy sector, Commerzbank AG and DekaBank in the financial sector, at international service providers like Ernst & Young and companies from the producing industry such as ZF Services GmbH. The software company for optimized marketing processes has about 150 employees across Europe. http://www.brandmaker.com
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