Marketing Operations and Resource Management
Marketing processes enable an organization to efficiently plan, execute and measure its key customer interaction, branding, channel and trade activities. Whereas strategy sets the "why," Marketing Processes and Operations drive the "how" and "when", delivering the tactical components flawlessly and preventing organizational risks of erroneous, poorly timed or ill-planned activities. Through well designed marketing processes, an organization:
- Delivers business results with the effective use of organizational capabilities
- Increases revenue by institutionalizing best practices and programs
- Reduces cost by using optimized business processes
- Improves alignment of the organization to its customers
- Increases employee satisfaction by establishing roles, responsibilities, measurements and advancement opportunities
- Aligns organizational responsibilities to refined business processes
Generally successful companies often think that the same formula - process, procedures, measures and results will apply to a new undertaking. However, this is not always so. It is fast becoming hard to make the argument that what you did yesterday will hold up in the rapidly evolving, globally integrated Web 2.0 world of social networks, online shopping and virtual communities. The past is no longer a proxy for the future of marketing. The Web 2.0 world is new and fertile ground and it must be supported through new processes.
The strategies you design are not self-executing and neither are your marketing processes. While the charge to execute a strategy spawns new technical systems and technical processes, often there is the assumption that processes and people have the capacity to self-adapt and deliver the vision. They don't. It requires tuning and transforming the processes to meet the strategic needs, not shoehorning a new strategy into an old process.
While the benefits of process optimization are manifold, process redesign requires some deep organizational thinking that:
- Uses thorough and thoughtful analysis to transform great concept to great reality
- Derives from a measurable and well understood plan
- Defines value drivers and day to day measures
- Bridges the gaps between understanding and action
- Involves the right people, with the right resources
- Drives the intersect of "get it right" and "get it done - fast"
Effective processes can be automated to save time and money using readily available, affordable marketing resource management tools. Process redesign is the first step in improving marketing operations and resource management for automation.