Artisan vs. Manufacturing Approach to Marketing

The challenge with Marketing these days starts right from when the kids come out of school having graduated fresh from the marketing program at the local college or institution of their choice.  Having interviewed a number of Marketing School Graduates it amazes me how ill prepared some of them are from a technology perspective and how immature their view of what marketing should be.  Marketing is heavily digital these days involving a heavy reliance on Content Management Systems, Email Marketing Tools and CRM systems.  Yet many Marketing Graduates have little to no practical experience in these areas.  Good Data Quality and Data Cleansing Strategies are typically just as important as what your Creative Strategy is going to be for a particular campaign.  Yet again schools spend very little time on these nuts and bolts of Marketing which we all have to deal with whether we like it or not.  Rather Marketing Schools fill their graduates minds with visions that they are going to be involved in the creative of the next product launch for Coca Cola or Microsoft as soon as they graduate.  Which is likely not the case.  At least not within the first few years of graduation.

Really this all relates back to a core shift that needs to happen in terms of the philosophy of how to approach marketing.  This shift needs to start at the local Marketing education programs and move out into industry from there. 

Artisan vs. a Manufacturing Approach to Marketing - A Fundamental Change in the Philosophy of what a Good Marketing is. 

Now there is no doubt in my mind that all good marketers should have a creative streak in them.  Any content produced should look innovative, professional, fresh and thoughtful.  But the challenge is that most marketers approach each new task as a complete new project with all the content unique to that project.  Everything they deliver they consider to be unique. This is the "Artisan" way of Marketing.  Sitting in the corner chipping away to create that next statue of David. This is what they've been taught in school.  A classical example of this is the conference event.  The marketer registers for the conference event as a one off, generates unique offers and programs for that event, the event is executed, may or may not be successful and then all the content that is generated is filed most of which is never used again.  The problem in this example is that you are getting no economies of scale.  Each activity is generated uniquely.  Sure the Marketer gets that feeling of satisfaction about what they've created but because everything is unique to each event there are no efficiencies and the effort to generate those "Impressions" or "Leads" that every marketer is chasing is huge. 

Now my suggestion is that Marketers should approach what they do as a "Manufacturer".  The goal being to have standard processes, high level of automation and to reuse as much of the content they produce as possible.  To me the Manufacturing Approach to Marketing means...

1. Avoid the big one off events.  If you do have to do events make as much of the content reusable as possible.  Have standard formats, standard email templates, standard marketing collateral that you use over and over again.
2. Focus on Digital Marketing.  Aside from the fact that Digital Marketing has the benefit of being more targeted it also allows you to build once and use many times.  The website you build or the YouTube video you create can reach many more interested parties that the one off Marketing Event that had a few hundred people participate.
3. Increase the Use of Technology to Improve and Automate the Process.  Use CRM Systems, EMail Marketing Systems and Content Management systems that allow you to have standard templates to reduce the time.  Focus on using automated Workflows and Customer Experience Maps that allow you automate much of your interactions with your target audience.  Marketers need to get comfortable with the use of technology.  Being able to write work flows or generate complex data queries needs to be as natural to them as breathing. 
4. Having a Standard Approach to New Offers.  Everyone in every industry comes out periodically with new pricing offers or new packages trying to entice customer to buy and give them a compelling event.  If you are going to produce new offers have a standard process for creating them and have a regular cadence as to how they are released out into market. 
5. If you are going to run events do smaller ones.  Rather than do a one off event think about doing the Events as a Series.  Don't do one webinar, do a regular schedule of webinars.  Do a series of the same event but in many different geographic locations or do a number of similar events based on a theme with slightly different content. Finally and most importantly...
6. Every time you start a new campaign ask yourself the question "How can I make this repeatable?".  What can I do to apply a build once use many times approach?     

Henry Ford proved that the Assembly Line was much more effective than the individual work stations.  Marketers need to learn this lesson that was learned in other components of business almost a century ago.  Their job is not to create the statue of David but to build an assembly line that allows them to create as many impressions or leads as possible with the ever decreasing budgets they are being faced with.    Volume and efficiency wins out over creativity these days.  It has to.

David Goad is the Managing Director for eSavvy – Microsoft Dynamics CRM Gold Certified Partner. eSavvy is an award winning Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner staffed by some of the most experienced solution and technical architects in the Microsoft partner channel. We build and deliver relationship management solutions based on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform for large enterprises as well small and midsize businesses in Australia.

Best Practices in Organizational Change Management

Change Management is one of the most forgotten and/or underserved components of most Business System Implementations these days.

Organizations still tend to focus on the technology and direct costs without sufficiently understanding the impacts on the business or the indirect costs of sufficiently facilitating the changes that are about to occur.

Change Management isn't just about training rather it's about taking a holistic view of providing the customers of the solution (i.e. the business) with the tools they need,through a multitude of channels, to do their job successfully.

When considering setting up a Change Management program for a business system implementation all of the following tools should be considered under the following general categories...

Prepare Me

• Staff Briefings - so they can ask questions
• Fact Sheets - so they can read and understand what's coming
• Road Shows - to make sure the message gets out to all the branches

Tell Me What I Need to Know

• Business Process Flows - As-Is and To-Be. Allow people to understand how their current processes changing
• Functional Workshops - To work through all the design issues
• Audience Impact Analysis - Understand how peoples roles will changes and their work loads will shift

Show Me what to Do

• Instructor Demonstrations - This is the classical in class training
• Instructor Guides - Capture the IP so that the training can easily be repeated
• Training Classes - Schedule a number of them so people can attend around business commitments

Let Me Do It Myself

• Exercises - Give people the ability to do self learning at their pace
• Training Systems and Data - Give them an environment where they can try different things and make mistakes

Help Me

• Work Instructions - Detailed how-to guides
• Quick References - So they can look something up
• Online Support - Someone to call if they can't figure it out
• Cheat Sheets - so that they can easily refer to something
• Evaluations - so they have an idea of where there skill level is at

When you actually do the training remember these three guiding principles. Good Training Plans are ones that...

• Provide training that is Specific to their Business;
• Are Incremental in their structure so as not to bombard people with too much information too fast; and
• Are Continuous training is essential. Sending a person out to one course is not the way to go. Retention is best when the training is done over a period of time and their are frequent refreshers.

At the end of the day don't let a really good technical implementation of a business system be perceived as a failure because you didn't pay enough attention to Change Management and Training. I can tell you from my experience it happens all too often!! Give your customers the tools they need. A once off training course is not enough!

David Goad is the Managing Director for eSavvy – Microsoft Dynamics CRM Gold Certified Partner. eSavvy is an award winning Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner staffed by some of the most experienced solution and technical architects in the Microsoft partner channel. We build and deliver relationship management solutions based on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform for large enterprises as well small and midsize businesses in Australia.

Marketing Best Practices

Like any other business issue or problem you can break down Marketing as a business function into three key components...

- People

- Process

- Systems

... and all three components should be considered when setting up the marketing capability for your business. The problem is these days that business quite often leave out at least one of these categories from their thinking. Because of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) , Marketing was also one of the first areas to be cut in terms of funding. As the GFC subsides and businesses start to build up their Marketing functions again they should have a re look at how they build that capability and make sure that they cover off all the components under People, Processes, and Systems as they begin to reinvest...

People:

From a people perspective your should consider...

- Selection: Are you treating the selection of your marketing staff correctly? Do you see these resources as being strategic or are they glorified administrators. Do they have the seniority, creativity and also bottom line focus that a successful marketer needs.

- Job Definition: Have you made it clear to them what you expect? Is you goal generate business marketing or awareness or some combination of both?

- Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Are the KPIs that are set relate back to the job definition. Are they SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Time based)? Have you set specific goals in terms of Lead Generation and qualified what a "Good Lead" is? Do you use the BANT criteria (Budget, Authority, Need, Time Frame) to generate a "Marketing Qualified Prospect".

- Remuneration: Is there remuneration tied to their KPIs. I don't think variable compensation is used heavily enough in marketing organizations.

- Performance Feedback: Is your feedback that you are giving to your marketing team, direct, honest and bottom line focused. You are not paying them to generate pretty PowerPoint but to generate results.

Process:

From a process perspective your should consider...

- Strategy: Is it clear to your marketing team which markets you are going after. Have you prioritized. Is the message that you want to convey to your client base both on a Micro and Macro level clear to them? Do they understand what is a good deal or good customer vs. a not-so-good deal or customer?

- Campaign Prioritization: Do you use "closed loop marketing" analysis which estimates the payback to your individual marketing investments to understand what has worked and what hasn't?

- Campaign Execution: Are the processes to drive a campaign well laid out with clear roles and responsibilities and easy access to the requisite resources?

- Data Quality and Lead Quality: Are their processes in place to ensure that your marketing folks are getting good qualify data for them to execute their campaigns against. Once the campaign is executed is the correct Lead information being trapped. Are you focusing not just on leads but on other data that can be used for future campaigns?

Systems:

There are different levels of sophistication here from the "Crop Duster" to the "Jet Fighter" to the "Rocket Ship" that from a systems perspective could be put into place. The key though is do you have the people and processes in place to support the systems and then select the right systems for your organization. Marketing systems these days can provide...

- Data Quality by providing automated de-duplication detection and elimination

- Automated Content Management which is important for Marketer productivity. Huge amounts of time can be consumed by marketers doing basic things around preparing web pages, generating EDMs (Electronic Direct Mails), preparing brochures, etc.

- Marketing Automation in terms of campaign execution. Generate EDMs from templates, automatically distribution them and track responses. Integrate your web site with your lead generation and your CRM system. Track the campaign planning tasks. Track lead generation and manage lead allocation.

- Take your marketing systems to the next level with Automated Lead Nurturing and Lead Scoring eliminate the Sales persons little black book and the need to diarize tasks. Take work off your sales team by having leads which are "not ready yet or are immature" and having them managed by your systems automatically interacting with the leads in relevant ways until the Lead has a sufficient score to say they are ready and waiting for human intervention.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM combined with certain Add-ons can provide all of the above but you need to look at what your business needs and have a plan to build your marketing capability incrementally as your business grows.

The important thing to do is consider the People, Processes and Systems as you build the Marketing capabilities within your business.

David Goad is the Managing Director for eSavvy – Microsoft Dynamics CRM Gold Certified Partner. eSavvy is an award winning Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner staffed by some of the most experienced solution and technical architects in the Microsoft partner channel. We build and deliver relationship management solutions based on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform for large enterprises as well small and midsize businesses in Australia.

Best Practices in Customer Service and Call Centre Process Design

Call Centre and Customer Service Processes can be very complex. Ask yourself the following questions...

- Ever deal with a customer service person and have to give them the same information over and over again?

- Have you had trouble getting through to the "right" person in a call centre?

- Ever not want to call a centre/ customer service person but we forced to do so because you couldn't easily find another more self service way of doing what you needed?

- Been frustrated because you've had to call a customer service/ call centre line only to get a different representative every time and each time to have to educate them on the history of your case?

- Been passed around from one call centre person to another and after talking to 2 or 3 people still you haven't gotten what you've wanted?

... these are all symptoms of poor customer services/ call centre business process design that we've all had to deal with. The fact that these type of call centre and customer service organizations have been in existence for years and yet most people wince when you suggest having to call one indicates that we are still a long way away from perfecting the "science" in this area.

In dealing with development of call centre and customer service business processes there is no secret road map or easy path to success. But there are a few common sense concepts that you can apply when designing your process and some process goals you can work towards achieving which if you do achieve them you will certainly reduce costs and improve the overall perception of service.

At a high level the following are the key components of any best practice customer service and call centre processes and a model you can use for process design…

Profile

Understand the person you are interacting with. Obtain and be able to present more information to the call centre/ customer service agent about the person they are talking with. Make sure that you business processes and systems trap that information as you interact with the person that you become a learning organization. Collect information to map their buying behaviours and interests.

Segment

Automatically differentiate the process depending on the person calling and understand what they want. Develop this segmentation as part of your profiling process. Understand the persons worth to you and client/ candidate preference and differentiate service levels accordingly. Not all customers perceive a higher level of interaction as being a higher service level.

Push those customers who are lower value to you and/or prefer less interaction to your self service channels (IVR, web). Reallocate those resources to provide higher levels of services to those who need/ want it. Develop processes to proactively call those people who need/ warrant the higher levels of service.

Interact

Manage and plan the interaction types based on the process, profile and segmentation. Automate the processes as much as possible and minimize search time and data entry time. Eliminate double entry and double ask where possible. Allow the person to easily self select the business process/ procedure that they need. Match you agents questions, inputs with the persons stage in the buying cycle. The goal here is to minimize the time to resolution in a call and make the process seem seamless to the person.

Personalize

Make every interaction, every session and every campaign feel personal. Lack of personalized service is often the reason sighted for avoiding the use of call centres. By having/ maintaining good quality profiles of your customers and presenting the information in the right way to your customer service/ call centre people it will allow them to personalize the interaction with the customer and provide a higher perceived level of service.

Clearly there is a lot business process design and implementation effort required to achieve the above. Supporting Technologies and and emphasis on effective Change Management are also important considerations. But the above methodology can provide you a guide as you lay out your plans for process improvement over the next few years.

David Goad is the Managing Director for eSavvy – Microsoft Dynamics CRM Gold Certified Partner. eSavvy is an award winning Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner staffed by some of the most experienced solution and technical architects in the Microsoft partner channel. We build and deliver relationship management solutions based on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform for large enterprises as well small and midsize businesses in Australia.

Customer Retention: Survival Strategies for a Recessionary Environment

Everyone knows and understands that you need to save money and cut costs to survive in recessionary business environment. But what other things should you consider and have as part of your tool kit of tactics and strategies to employ?


Well in this article I would suggest that Customer Retention should be a key focus area for most companies and that there are a number of tactics under the banner of customer retention that you can employ.

Studies show that even in good times acquiring new customers can be 2 to 3 times more expensive than retaining old ones. In bad times like these with sales cycles lengthening as people give any potential expenditures more scrutiny, this difference in cost of sale is becoming even more significant.

Clearly this isn't a great epiphany for most people as the market statistic's show that IT spend in support of improved customer retention is increasing or at least continuing. For example one of the fastest growing products for Microsoft last year was Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. Microsoft's latest release of their premier relationship management product grew more than 30% in Australia last year and was one of the top three fastest growing products for Microsoft globally.


So if you buy into the fact that Customer Retention as a strategy to recession proof your business is something you should be focused on then here are some tactics that you can employ to achieve that end goal...

• Establish a 360 Degree View of Customer: the more you know about your customers the more proactive you can be and the better service levels you can provide. The better the service the more reluctant they will be to try and cut costs by going to another supplier;
• Proactively develop recession sensitive Service Offerings: your customers are being hit by the recession like you are. What can you do to help them through it. What new products and/or services might they be interested in during this period? For example if you are a service firms perhaps there are some lightweight offerings that you can provide to help a customer cut costs? If you a distribution company then what can you do to help them reduce their investments in inventory and improve cash flow? Better service offerings that recognise that times have changed will not only retain existing customers but attract new ones.
• Differentiate Your Service Levels based on Customer Value: If you are forced to cut costs and reduce the services you offer then make sure you are prioritizing the services to those customers that are critical for you to sustain your business. Inversely many customers don't want premium service and actually value lower costs. So by understanding their needs and wants and selective reducing the services that they are not using and becoming more cost competitive this tactic also retains those lower value customers as well;
• Improve collaboration: put tools in place to communicate with your customer more quickly and effortless. Improve your business intelligence so you see the signals earlier. If a customers demand is dropping then be quick to reduce your supply. If they are having financial issues then understand this early and respond accordingly let. If they are fighting to keep their customers by being responsive then be more responsive and proactive to them; and
• Simplify your Service Experience: I'm sure that you wouldn't be surprised to learn that a customers overall perception about a supplier either positive or negative is often heavily influenced by how easy they perceive you are to do business with. When they call you do they get the answer they want quickly? Is it easy for them to find things? Do you shield them from endless paperwork and bureaucracy? These are all process issues which if you address customers will perceive you to be easier to work with and therefore will value you more highly.

Anyways... some things for you to think about as you continue to do battle with this recessionary environment. Whether you are a pessimist or an optimist about where the economy will be in 6 months to 1 years time keeping the customers you've already got is always a good start down the road to business success.

For those of you interested in more information around Customer Retention please go to www.esavvy.com.au/cr for more information on future training and webinars that we will be running on the topic.

Collaboration: Models, Methology and Tools to Survive a Recessionary Environment

I would define Supply Chain Collaboration as having the people, processes, and technology in place that are required to communicate supply chain information and data both Structured and Unstructured sufficient to achieve a fully Demand Driven Supply Chain Network. Ok... perhaps this is a long winded definition but it is important to properly define where you are going before you try to get there.




First off though why should one care about supply chain collaboration right now in today's economic environment? To answer my own question in today's economic environment people are fundamentally looking towards two strategies for survival...

1) To Reduce Costs
2) To Retain Customers



Improving your supply chain collaboration talks to both of these. In difficult economies you want quick and accurate communication internally and externally being responsive to customers, thereby providing higher services levels and being more "sticky". You also (in a supply chain context) want to reduce the probability of excess stock or incorrect orders. You also want to reduce the time for demand signals to make it through your supply chain and to automate the demand signals from your customers. Everyone one is doing more with less and so you don't want to spent a lot of time trying to figure out the right information. And finally you want to reduce the costs associated with travel, meetings and other forms of communication. So all good reasons to improve the collaboration both within your business and between yourself and your cusomers and suppliers.
So having defined Supply Chain Collaboration and told you why you should be interested the next question becomes for many practitioners "Haven't we done this already?"... considering technologies like EAI, EDI, RFID, etc have been around for a while. What I maintain here is that these initiatives have had only a modicum of success because people have only looked at one component of a truly Demand Driven Supply Chain Network.

To really effectively improve the collaboration in your supply chain which will reduce costs and retain customers you need to look at all the components of collaboration...

• People and Process vs. Technology


• Structured vs. Unstructured

Until recently people have very much focused on structured information and the technology aspects of moving that information about. But more often than not these initiatives have failed because there hasn't been enough business process design to go along with the technology and/or the implementation of the new technology was done in a big bang fashion all at once without resolving the process issues first. Resultant data inconsistancies and/or change management issues with the people expected to use the system have rendered them somewhat impotent.
Also because not enough consideration has been given to the Unstructured Information that is prevalent in so many organizations improvements have been limited. The spreadsheets passed via email, the phone calls and one line queries that seem to make up the majority of our communications. As a production manager many years ago I can remember having my plant radio blaring with someone trying to reach me, the phone ringing and three people standing in front of my desk as people were trying o get a recent status on the production batch that was concerning them. Most of these questions were happening because the structured system was to hard to use, or the date not timely enough or because the person didn't know how to find the information out themselves. The long and the short of it is that these unstructured types of communication will happen regardles so you have to understand how to manage them both from a process and a technology perspective.

So the model for effective Supply Chain Collaboration has to consider Process and Technology, Unstructured as well as Structured.
So if that is the model we use then what's the Methodology to get us there? Well with any systems implementation you have to start with the business strategy. From that you design the process. You can then determine the solutions you need and then finally the underlying technologies. Whilst it may sound simple the biggest issue here is that people often put in technologies ad-hoc without understanding how they support the process and ultimately the business goals and strategy. So you have to start from these first.



Finally in terms of Tools to support the methodology one of my favourite is "Lean". Most people would be familiar with Lean Manufacturing. This has been around for a while. What I maintain is that you can use the concepts from lean when designing the process to support your strategy.



For example taking the seven (7) muda of Lean...

• Transportation (moving products that is not actually required to perform the processing)
• Inventory (all components, work-in-progress and finished product not being processed)
• Motion (people or equipment moving or walking more than is required to perform the processing)
• Waiting (waiting for the next production step)
• Overproduction (production ahead of demand)
• Over Processing (due to poor tool or product design creating activity)
• Defects (the effort involved in inspecting for and fixing defects)

These can be applied to supply chain collaboration...

• Use tools to minimize the time in meetings and travelling to meetings
• Be role tailored and present only the data required specific to a role to take the necessary decisions
• Eliminate unnecessary approval steps with dynamics work flows. If a person doesn't add value to the decision process then pull them out of it
• Address information that is not timely or that generates a dependency
• Avoid providing more detail than is required
• Provide search tools to reduce time spent searching for info
• Use automated validation and other tools to reduce incorrect information

So in summary then these are the models, methodologies and tools I would propose to improve the collaboration within your enterprise. If you use them wisely they should help you to reduce costs and retain customers which should help carry you through the current tough times.

For those who are interested I'm presenting this topic during the SMART conference in June. You can find more details at http://www.smartconference.com.au/program/day-one and just look for my name!

David Goad is the Managing Director for eSavvy – Microsoft Dynamics CRM Gold Certified Partner. eSavvy is an award winning Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner staffed by some of the most experienced solution and technical architects in the Microsoft partner channel. We build and deliver relationship management solutions based on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform for large enterprises as well small and midsize businesses in Australia.

IT Projects - It's Easy to Get it Wrong but what do you need to do to get it Right?

Experience shows us that when delivering an IT project it is easy to get it wrong (as the diagram to the above attempts to illustrate humorously). Customer expectations are often mismatched to the documented project scope and are often not grounded in what is possible or even probable.




One of the first key things for a Project Manager to do is to educate the customer on the Project Management Triangle. This simple graphic is intended to illustrate to customers the trade offs between Cost, Scope and Time. In theory and in practice there is always a trade off between all three. If the project scope increases then both the time and cost would likely need to increase. If the time is compressed with the scope staying the same then likely you would need additional resources and therefore the cost increases. As it's simplest level then Project Management is the science of effectively making these decisions and trade offs between Time, Cost and Scope and getting the customer to the end state that they desire.


Over the last several years Project Management has evolved from an Art Form to a Science. These days most successful project managers are certified/ trained on project management. I myself am one of 300,000 Project Management Professionals certified by the Project Management Institute (PMI). But there are other methodologies that are equally well developed (e.g. Prince II).



The improvement in Project Management Methodology has shown a definite impact in the perceived success of projects. For example a PMI study showed that the % of projects perceived as successful increased from 12% in 1994 to 36% in 2004. One of the top three factors listed as contributing to this increased success was improved project management methodology with defined processes and procedures. Many of the established project management methodologies have very well developed processes and procedures. The map to the left shows the processes and procedures covered by PMI. Having a certified project manager is no guarantee of success but following a well established methology whichever one you choose can only help.

But aside from the theoretical I think there are several practical things a Project Management and/ or Project Director can do to ensure that his or her project is successful. One of my more favourite authors (Paul C. Tinnirello) which publishes for PMI came out with his own secrets of success for Projects which I have adopted as my own. What follows then is his Nine Factors of project Success...

1. Senior Management Commitment - Make sure they are willing to do what it takes to get the project done. Clarify your limits up front
2. Adequate Project Funding - Have you had a healthy budgeting and scoping process?
3. Well Done Requirements & Specifications - Be clear on what it in-Scope. Scope drift is the single biggest cause of failure within projects
4. Comprehensive Project Plan - You'd be surprised the number of large scale IT projects that people attempt to management with a one page spreadsheet. The more detail the better
5. Commitment of Stakeholders - Make sure the business and IT want this project.
6. Project Status Reporting - Always over communicate. Tell people when you have a problem as early as possible.
7. Critical Risk Assessment - Understand the potential failure points in your project and plan preventative actions.
8. Project Contingency Plans - Understand what happens if you can't make your schedule or your budget. Practice the Project Management Triangle with your client
9. Willingness to stay the Course - Establish early a willingness to Stay the Course on the part of the business as there will be tough times.

So in conclusion if you want my advice around how to make an IT project successful then ...

• Educate the client on the Project Management Triangle;
• Make sure you have an experienced Project Manager that is Project Management Certified and uses a well established methodology; and
• Consider the Nine Factors of Success when setting up a project.

David Goad is the Managing Director for eSavvy – Microsoft Dynamics CRM Gold Certified Partner. eSavvy is an award winning Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner staffed by some of the most experienced solution and technical architects in the Microsoft partner channel. We build and deliver relationship management solutions based on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform for large enterprises as well small and midsize businesses in Australia.