Operational Marketing Problems

From our work with leading organisations all over the world, we see the operational problems and issues that are commonly present in the marketing department. These problems and issues normally fall into the following categories.

Strategy

• Existing program and campaign management processes are not connected to the marketing plan. Once the marketing plan is written it becomes a document that is not referred to again.

Management

• Marketing management have no holistic view of all marketing initiatives, activities, campaigns and programs.
• Marketing management have little process metrics or information to facilitate effective planning and resource scheduling.
• The marketing department is organised into silos which, with poor operational systems and infrastructure, makes collaboration and learning difficult.
• Selecting the correct priority of tasks for key marketing staff is difficult to assess due to information not being centralised or easy to access.
• Meaningful audit trails are lacking in the process.

People, Organisation & Culture

• A lack of pro-active process management puts significant strain and reliance on individual marketing team members which leads to overworking, stress and a lack of job satisfaction.
• Considerable knowledge resides in specific individuals' heads. Most organisations we see would experience difficulties should these individuals leave the company.
• Employing new (and rotating existing) marketing staff is long winded and difficult due to a lack of centralised and accessible knowledge.

Information

• Critical operational marketing information is often delivered too late in the process for other departments to action their sub-processes. Late delivery of information results in wasted budgets (e.g. a print run becomes urgent and therefore print cannot be leveraged).
• Historical information on previous marketing campaigns, programs and activities is difficult to locate and use.
• A significant amount of non value added time is spent taking information out of one document or spreadsheet and putting it into another.
• Large amounts of rework exist in certain parts of the process due to a lack of information, collaboration and proactive process management.

Technology

• Operational marketing data is often distributed throughout the organisation in numerous systems, spreadsheets and documents and as a consequence it is difficult to navigate and locate information efficiently and effectively.
• Existing operational marketing systems require significant duplication of effort and re-keying of data. Errors are generated as a result of this.
• Existing operational marketing systems are not effectively integrated together.
• Existing operational marketing systems are cumbersome to use, requiring many screens to be completed for a process to be complete.
• Existing operational systems make assessing the effectiveness and value for money of suppliers difficult.

Process

• Operational marketing processes are often not scalable. Any increases in activity normally severely strain teams creating the potential for process failure and expensive mistakes.
• The statuses of programs, campaigns and activities are not pro-actively tracked or monitored.
• Many routine operational marketing tasks were still paper based and labour intensive.
• The last minute "rush to complete" creates mistakes and expensive rework in terms of time and materials.
• Operational marketing processes are normally iterative and dynamic with little documentation and process metrics.
• There is a lack of formal appreciation and understanding of process failure points (e.g. a file is delivered on Monday not Friday, creating a week's delay in the process).
• Approval processes and controls present in marketing processes are largely manual and informal and put the onus on the individual completing the task to avoid making mistakes.
• A significant amount of non value added time is spent on re-keying data to keep systems synchronised rather than on higher value added activities like analysis and quality control.