This final post in the series on how marketing solutions will fill a role in the organization of the future focuses on the idea of pervasive positive impact. Previously, we've examimed the first two elements of customer intelligence (CI) or integrated marketing management (IMM) solutions that will serve you well into the future - profitability and productivity. To round out this three-part view, I propose you start with this important question:
Do the CI/IMM solutions I choose drive pervasive positive impact throughout the organization?
A pervasive solution is one that is seen as a staple or a “go-to” when needing to solve a marketing/customer/marcom/brand issue across the enterprise. This is one of my favorite topics, because it gets to the heart of the future viability of customer intelligence solutions. Do your solutions provide results and information that can be leveraged across the organization by departments outside of marketing – in order to further the overall prosperity of the business?
Inside of Marketing.
CI solutions, historically, have been placed inside the marketing department. CI, by market and analyst definition, however, refers to a broader category of customer analytics that can be applied not only to marketing, but to other business functions as well (support, service operations, sales, etc.). A term of late, however, that seems to be resonating is integrated marketing management (IMM). IMM, which is slightly different from CI, refers to a CI emphasis placed on the marketing function – and managing the marketing process end to end. Marketing departments are embracing the need to manage the marketing process more tightly, and are bringing external departments into the fray as needed. So if your CI solution isn’t recognized or acknowledged outside of marketing, it isn’t pervasive and is not driving profitable growth across the organization.
Outside of Marketing.
CI solutions are increasingly being leveraged outside of marketing departments because of tighter budgets and the need to use high quality insight and analytics in the same way that marketing does. That development is fortunate for SAS because we have purposely designed our CI solutions to serve two masters – the marketing user and the analytical user. Due to the fact that every solution we design starts with the advanced analytics component in mind, we are able to design interfaces that exploit our analytical capabilities.
How are the marketing and analytical users different? The marketing user can be from any function that aligns to or interfaces with marketing. Examples include brand management, the web team, marketing communications, customer care, the CMO and his/her direct reports. By contrast, the analytical user is any group or department that relies heavily on analytical insight to drive their decision making process. Examples include market research, the consumer insights department, and even new groups that are being created around data scientists and business analytics. Keep pervasive positive impact in mind to future-proof your investment in a CI solution so the it can be applied well both inside and outside of marketing. Two great examples include the Estonian communications provider Elion and Brazilian grocery giant Pao de Acucar.
Why SAS is different.
So when it comes to the future of CI and IMM, let’s leave it at this - every CMO wants to be a rock star. They want to be adored by the CFO, the CIO, and the Board. Anecdotally, it seems that the average CMO tenure hovers around 22 months, so that leaves a couple of years to make big impacts, gain respect and establish credibility. This comes at at time when multiple factors work against the CMO making their mark in that timeframe - marketplace trends, the vendor landscape, and organizations are all changing very rapidly. All the while, the marketers mandate has evolved – no longer are they only responsible for the traditional campaign, protecting the brand, and ensuring a positive customer experience. They are now responsible for uncovering new insights (using data analysis and information management techniques) to drive long term profitable growth for an organization. They have to do this with the same budgets, the same resources, and the same time frames. The CMO has options for how to accomplish this – but where they can gain a competitive advantage is where they can employ IMM solutions that are underpinned by an information and analytics architecture. Turn to the experts if you have a hard problem to solve – someone who has been there, time after time - in different situations, across different industries, spanning several decades.
So that wraps it up - that’s how I see the future of CI and IMM solutions. To help your organization thrive – they have to possess three important characteristics – they have to drive profitability for the entire organization, they have to make people and departments more productive thus improving business processes, and they have to be pervasive – providing results and information that can be leveraged both inside and outside of marketing.
If you would like to know more, feel free to comment here, shoot me a note at jonathan.moran@sas.com, or visit us over at our SAS Customer Intelligence site on the web. Thanks for reading!
