O to 90 in Four Easy Steps: A Marketing Maturity Model

Transcription

1 Vol 2.3 O to 90 in Four Easy Steps: A Marketing Maturity Model Aprimo has developed a Marketing Operations Maturity Model that will help shed a light on the path that lies in front of organizations that have made a choice to elevate their ability for marketing to deliver value. Michael Emerson, Aprimo CMO Featuring research from

2 Contents Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 18 Page 22 Page 24 Contents Welcome Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Marketing Management 0 to 90 in Four Easy Steps: A Marketing Maturity Model E.ON Case Study About Aprimo 2

3 Welcome This publication is the eighth in a series of newsletters we have produced featuring research from Gartner. The current issue is anchored by the Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Marketing Management, 2Q08 note (see enclosed note on page 4). With each writing, we affirm our leadership to steadfastly deliver technology and services that define enterprise marketing. In 1998, we set out with a compelling vision and a willingness to take the road not taken by the rest of the marketing technology vendor community. This vision was focused on the notion that a single marketing platform would provide the primary path for all of the activities that connect centralized and distributed marketing teams, a marketing supply chain and the customers that they serve. Both then and now, we called this integrated framework the Digital Marketing Value Chain, that aligns with an entire product category called Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM). As companies begin to invest in EMM, they look for a roadmap that tells them where they are compared with other marketing organizations in the world that are considering or have begun such a journey. Using customer feedback, Aprimo developed a Marketing Operations Maturity Model (MOMM) that is based on the same framework used by the ISO 9000 standards group. This model describes the native state of marketing, the Ad Hoc Level, and progresses through to the highest level of attainment, the Optimized Level. Our Aprimo white paper describes each of the four levels of marketing maturity and defines a set of milestones that organizations should look at to advance to the next level. This quarter also marks a very major milestone in the life of Aprimo our 10th anniversary. We remain grateful to those early customers who put their trust in us as an emerging company that understood the pain and opportunity of marketing inefficiencies. In 2008, we continue on what has been our quest for the past decade, to help our customers put together a comprehensive technology roadmap that looks to eliminate a hodgepodge of point solutions and begin to build a true marketing technology vision. I invite you to read this research note, the white paper on marketing maturity and our case study about how E.ON implemented Aprimo solutions to measure marketing effectiveness and connect campaign management with a comprehensive platform for marketing. Michael Emerson Chief Marketing Officer 3

4 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Marketing Management No leaders or challengers have emerged in the enterprise marketing management market, which remains in infancy. Aprimo, Oracle (Siebel), SAP, SAS and Unica are visionaries; the other vendors are niche players. Carefully assess your marketing requirements against vendor capabilities and EMM vision. Figure 1. Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Marketing Management challengers leaders WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW Enterprise marketing management (EMM) is a platform for the entire marketing department, including all roles, functions and processes. However, few vendors offer the breadth of functionality to meet all marketing roles and processes. Most vendors have relatively good campaign management capabilities, as basic campaign management becomes increasingly commoditized. Marketing resource management (MRM) investments tend to be more diverse, making it more of a differentiator for enterprises that select MRM capabilities as part of an EMM platform. There also are major differences in many of the other capabilities offered, such as lead management, event management, loyalty management, marketing performance management and industry-specific capabilities. Carefully assess the underlying architecture, including platform, database, content/knowledge repository, workflow, business rules and Web services to support openness, integrability, configurability, scalability and flexibility. Users must assess carefully a vendor s capabilities, as well as its vision and product road map, against their short and long-term requirements for marketing automation. Expect to make trade-offs regarding functionality, architecture and usability. MAGIC QUADRANT Market Overview The EMM market remains immature in vendor offerings and user adoption. Traditionally, most organizations have selected marketing applications based on tactical requirements, such as campaign management, MRM, e-marketing and analytics. We see emerging interest in creating a platform for EMM that supports integrated marketing processes across a variety of marketing roles and functions. For organizations that already have invested significantly in a variety of marketing technologies, particularly in business-toconsumer (B2C) industries (such as financial services, retail and telecom), this may involve first consolidating and integrating applications. Enterprises that have not automated their marketing functions tend to begin the process of evaluation from a broader vision and expect a larger set of capabilities from one vendor, including a service-oriented platform with highly configurable, role-based applications. These typically include business-to-business or business-to-b2c industries, such as high tech, consumer packaged goods (CPG) and other manufacturing. ability to execute Oracle E-Business Suite Oracle PeopleSoft niche players Source: Gartner (March 2008) Teradata Alterian Infor SAP visionaries completeness of vision Unica Aprimo SAS Oracle (Siebel) As of June 2008 However, these deployments likely will take three to five years to completely roll out across marketing. Few organizations have implemented a primary EMM platform of integrated marketing functionality. Gartner estimates that fewer than 200 companies have integrated their campaign management and MRM applications across database marketing, creative marketing and corporate marketing functions. Only eight vendors qualify for the EMM Magic Quadrant. Most of these vendors offer modular suites of marketing applications that support a variety of marketing roles and functions, such as campaign management, MRM, customer data mining, e-marketing, lead management, event management and loyalty management. No vendor offers a complete set of functionality for all marketing roles; however, several vendors are developing and acquiring capabilities across different marketing functions. Of critical importance in EMM is the shift from a set of integrated modules built on a common architecture to highly configurable (based on role) functionality components offered as services on an open service-oriented architecture (SOA) with a marketing data model and analytical toolset for measuring marketing performance. Assessing a vendor s vision for this architectural shift to support role-based application delivery is an important criterion for selecting a primary vendor to supply an EMM platform. 4

5 We expect market consolidation to continue among MRM and campaign management vendors, as well as more entrants into this space among other players in the MRM and campaign management Magic Quadrants. Market Definition/Description EMM encompasses the business strategies, process automation and technologies required to effectively operate a marketing department, align resources, execute customer-centric strategies and improve marketing performance. EMM is best-suited for large organizations with 50 or more people in marketing. This includes functionality for campaign management, lead management, MRM and analytics. However, EMM is more than simply the sum of parts (such as campaign management plus MRM). EMM also emphasizes the architecture and platform for role-based distribution of information, content, functionality, data and analysis for performance management. Critical elements of this platform include SOA, composite application functionality, a data repository for structured and nonstructured data, marketing data models and analytical toolsets. Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria The criteria for this year s Magic Quadrant remain the same as for To be included in the 2008 EMM Magic Quadrant, a vendor must demonstrate the following attributes and capabilities. Market traction and momentum The vendor has at least 25 production customers for marketing functionality (for example, campaign management and MRM). The vendor has at least 15 new customers for marketing applications (for example, campaign management and MRM) during the past rolling four quarters. Revenue criteria are driven by the MRM and multichannel campaign management Magic Quadrants. EMM product capabilities: Vendors must meet the minimum criteria for inclusion in the campaign management and MRM Magic Quadrants, or the vendors must be on the campaign management Magic Quadrant and in the process of releasing a generally available MRM solution, or on the campaign management Magic Quadrant and developing a strong technology partnership with an MRM vendor to deliver a preintegrated EMM solution. Vendors must offer capabilities that support the operational (workflow, business rules, tasks and project management) and analytical (reporting, analysis, predictive modeling and optimization) aspects of EMM. In addition, vendors must demonstrate a vision for EMM that includes: 1. A broad focus on capabilities that cross the marketing function 2. Role-based delivery of functionality, information and content 3. Flexibility and usability of applications by marketing users 4. SOAs 5. Marketing performance management Added Given the increased focus on MRM by Infor (through in-house development) and Teradata (through its partnership with Assetlink), we added the two vendors back to the Magic Quadrant in Dropped No vendors were dropped. Evaluation Criteria Ability to Execute The criteria remain the same for 2008 as they were in Product/Service (High): Because the EMM market is immature, the breadth and depth of product capabilities and product architecture are key differentiators in vendor capabilities and are among the most important criteria for selecting a vendor. Subcriteria include: Campaign management (30%) MRM (25%) Other marketing solutions/capabilities, such as lead management, loyalty management and event/trade show management (15%) Marketing performance management (5%) Architecture flexibility or workflow (10%) Application usability or interface design and role-based access (10%) SOA and composite application functionality (5%) Overall Viability (Standard): Viability is an important criterion for investing in a strategic vendor to support your enterprise marketing platform. Subcriteria include overall financials (50%), marketing-related revenue (30%) and sales, marketing and partner strategies (20%). 5

6 Sales Execution/Pricing (Low): Although this criterion is less important than product capabilities and the overall viability of the vendor, organizations should consider the ability to purchase marketing capabilities/functionality incrementally to support key processes and look for flexible pricing options. This criterion receives a low weighting. Market Responsiveness and Track Record (High): A key evaluation criterion is how responsive the market is to a vendor and its solution, as well as the customer s experience working with the solution in the customer s geography and industry. This criterion provides validation points for the vendor s solution. Vendor experience in the market, particularly an emerging market, often is key to a company s success. Marketing Execution: This is subsumed under the Market Responsiveness and Track Record criterion. Customer Experience: This is subsumed under the Market Responsiveness and Track Record criterion. Operations (Standard): Implementation and support are relevant considerations during vendor evaluations and can affect an organization s successful implementation. Professional service experience is key to faster implementation. Access to knowledgeable support staff can increase the appropriate ongoing use of the solution. Subcriteria include customer service and support (50%) and professional services (50%). Table 1. Ability to Execute Evaluation Criteria Evaluation Criteria Product/Service Overall Viability (Business Unit, Financial, Strategy, Organization) Sales Execution/Pricing Market Responsiveness and Track Record Marketing Execution Customer Experience Weighting high standard low high no rating no rating Completeness of Vision Market Understanding (High): Marketing vision and innovation is an important criterion for EMM because this is an immature market. A vendor s understanding of the EMM market and its specific value proposition for different sets of marketing users, including the chief marketing officer and senior marketing executives, is critical to selecting a vendor with the vision to meet the user requirements of the marketing function. This criterion has the second-highest weight, behind offering (product) strategy. Marketing Strategy: This is subsumed under the Business Model criterion. Sales Strategy: This is subsumed under the Business Model criterion. Offering (Product) Strategy (High): Innovation and vision across the breadth and depth of EMM capabilities and architectures are critical to continuing to meet the needs of a maturing market and to establishing a platform that all marketing users (roles and functions) can employ. Subcriteria include: The vendor s vision for campaign management (20%) MRM (30%) Vision for other capabilities, such as lead management, loyalty management and event/trade show management (15%) Marketing performance management (10%) Architecture flexibility or workflow (10%) Application usability or interface design and role-based access (5%) SOA and composite application functionality (10%) Business Model (Standard): The business model for how a vendor aligns marketing and sales strategies for particular industries and geographies to deliver on its EMM value proposition is an important component of its vision, although less so than market understanding and product capabilities. Market understanding is key to developing the right solutions, while the business model provides vendors with the ability to execute on effectively selling these solutions. This criterion receives a standard weighting. Operations Source: Gartner standard Vertical/Industry Strategy: This is subsumed under the Business Model criterion. Innovation: This is subsumed under the Offering (Product) Strategy criterion. Geographic Strategy: This is subsumed under the Business Model criterion. 6

7 Table 2. Completeness of Vision Evaluation Criteria Evaluation Criteria Market Understanding Marketing Strategy Sales Strategy Offering (Product) Strategy Business Model Vertical/Industry Strategy Innovation Geographic Strategy Source: Gartner Weighting high no rating no rating high standard no rating no rating no rating Leaders Leaders in the EMM market have clients that have adopted their solutions as the primary vendor and platform to support all marketing roles and functions. These vendors deliver breadth and depth of integrated marketing functionality on large, enterprisewide and global platforms that extend across the marketing organization, providing the role-based delivery of information, content and functionality to all marketing roles and functions that support all marketing processes. Leaders successfully articulate business propositions that resonate with marketing buyers. Because of the immaturity of users and vendor offerings in the market, there are no leaders in this market. Challengers Challengers in the EMM market primarily provide marketing offerings that complement other business applications. These vendors typically offer breadth of functionality on an integrated platform, although often at the expense of depth. The focus is typically on IT buyers, rather than on business users. Challengers may have a diminished understanding of market trends, marketing buyers and particular marketing processes and roles. They may not be able to effectively articulate their vision or may not have mobilized their resources to excel in the market segment. There are no challengers in the EMM market. Visionaries Visionaries have a strong vision for applying technology and developing a platform to support a wide variety of marketing roles, functions and processes. They tend to have a broad focus on marketing functionality. Although they may have core competencies in certain areas, they may lack depth in others. They are distinguished in the openness, usability and flexibility of their application architectures and vision for component-based, highly configurable marketing applications. A visionary vendor is a market thought leader and innovator for creating a platform for the entire marketing department that has not yet gained broad market penetration and adoption as the primary marketing platform for its visionary capabilities on EMM. Niche Players Niche players perform well in a small segment of the EMM market and may be focused on a specific set of marketing functionality, roles and processes. Niche vendors are likely to lack breadth of marketing functionality across marketing roles and to have gaps in broader EMM functionality and platform requirements. They may have depth in particular role and process areas. Niche vendors may have a limited vision for the broader marketing function and all the roles within that division; however, they may have a good understanding of a few specific marketing roles/functions. Vendor Strengths and Cautions Alterian Strengths Breadth of functionality in core areas: Alterian offers breadth of marketing capabilities across campaign management, MRM and marketing. It provides data integration and an analytical foundation for database marketing. Alterian has improved its marketing platform with the release of v.4.0 of its engine, which offers faster load times, distributed processing and multitenancy capabilities to improve overall scalability. It has added mobile marketing capabilities with its Sybase 365 partnership. Strong reseller partnerships: Alterian has more than 80 global reseller partnerships, including many of the largest marketing service providers (MSPs) in the U.S. and Europe, with a large installed base of hosted database marketing solutions via MSPs. Alterian also works with many of the largest services organizations in South America, India and Australia. In addition to hosting solutions, these resellers support on-premises deployments. Strong growth: Alterian has grown more than 38% annually during the past two years. More than 50% of its revenue came from the U.S. market in Its recommended offer to acquire Mediasurface would add Web content management capabilities, 70% more revenue, 170 employees and 450 clients. Consider Alterian as a midmarket alternative if your company cannot afford on-premises marketing applications. 7

8 Cautions No prepackaged lead or event management solutions: Alterian does not provide prepackaged capabilities outside of database marketing and MRM, such as event management or lead management. Limited analytics for nonpower users: Analytics is built for power users. However, Alterian is working on dashboards that will bring data and insights to nonpower users that employ visualization technology. Slow adoption of MRM: Adoption of Alterian s MRM solutions remains slower than its campaign management capabilities, with limited experience in MRM from the hosting MSPs. Few references have integrated campaign management and MRM in a hosted model. Overreliance on MSPs: There continues to be a heavy reliance on MSPs for ongoing viability with a revenue model that favors the MSPs. However, Alterian s viability is improving with its strong revenue growth. It continues to expand its partner network while continuing to grow its revenue to offset its traditional reliance on partners. Aprimo Strengths Breadth and depth of marketing functionality and platform: Aprimo s role-based vision for EMM demonstrates an understanding of the entire marketing function, its value chain and its ecosystem. Aprimo offers a breadth of marketing capabilities across MRM, campaign management, lead management and event management. Its depth in MRM capabilities is driving strong market momentum for Aprimo in multiple industries as the MRM market matures. The financial-management component of its MRM solution often is a linchpin for clients pursuing a suite of marketing applications. Its open, SOA architecture, which is based on.net and has a library of more than 700 Aprimo objects, can be used for role-based and process configuration. All applications and modules use one code base, making components reusable across a common platform. Continued growth and sales momentum: Although Aprimo s new pricing model makes it difficult to compare revenue growth from 2006 to 2007, the vendor continues to increase its bookings 30% year over year for its marketing applications. This growth is organic and does not come from acquisitions. Despite a softening economy, Aprimo is projecting 25% to 30% bookings growth in 2008 and Most bookings continue to be in its core area of MRM, but there is an increasing number of bookings for campaign management and lead management. It also has several large agency deals in progress. Aprimo is seeing increasing sales momentum with its partners, including system integrators (Accenture, BearingPoint, Hitachi Consulting and IBM), MSPs and agencies. Strong R&D investment: Plans for the release of v.8.5 in fourth-quarter 2008 include improvements in MRM (improvements to workflow, Adobe annotations, print-ondemand capabilities, dynamic printing and collateral customization), campaign management (a digital marketing release that includes improved capabilities, the ability to build microsites, Web analytics integration and a Web tracking solution) and marketing performance management (integrated campaign analytics to view customer segments as a universe and report on the segment). Version 9.0, to be released in third-quarter 2009, includes plans for fully distributed campaign management capabilities, scenario evaluation analytics and marketing mix modeling. Developing partner ecosystem: Aprimo is developing its partner ecosystem, which includes vendors that provide print-on-demand (Kodak), sales force automation (salesforce.com and Microsoft), predictive analytics (SPSS), content management (EMC), marketing asset management (Xinet), Web analytics (WebTrends) and call center (eglue). Delivery model choice: Aprimo offers multiple deployment and pricing options, including on-premises, hosted and ondemand models. Consider Aprimo for its strong MRM capabilities and as an integrated platform for EMM. Cautions Depth in campaign management: Advanced campaign management and e-marketing capabilities, particularly for B2C organizations, still lag behind other leading campaign management vendors. However, Aprimo continues to close this gap, and many clients state that the capabilities meet their requirements. Lack of advanced analytics: Aprimo lacks a strong set of advanced analytical solutions. Companies may need to augment their analytical solutions with other vendors offerings or via Aprimo s partnerships with companies such as SPSS. Lack of industry solutions: Despite specific capabilities to support many industries (CPG/retail, financial services, life sciences/pharmaceuticals, automotive, agencies, media/entertainment and technical/manufacturing), Aprimo s offering lacks prepackaged solutions for specific industries outside its solution for agencies. 8

9 Growth pressures: With its continued strong growth, Aprimo must balance company growth with software sales. Some clients have expressed concern that account management and customer support could become overextended quickly as Aprimo continues its rapid growth. Furthermore, Aprimo must continue expanding its partner network for implementation services so that it does not experience a postsales implementation backlog. Aprimo had more than 100 consultants certified through partners in It has 40 scheduled for certification in 2008 and projects that there will be more than 200 total certified via partners by year end. It also has four new certified service partners already in Market conditions for initial public offering (IPO): Aprimo withdrew its S1 for IPO on 3 April 2008 due to conditions in the financial markets and concerns over company valuation. Gartner expects the new pricing model to pose some issues and extra challenges in the near term. Clients should expect that if market conditions improve, then Aprimo will file for IPO again in a year or two. Availability of local skills: Although overall Aprimo Global Services (AGS) is well-respected for its marketing knowledge and expertise, clients have cited issues with the number and expertise level of local skills (implementation and services) in regions outside North America and the U.K. Clients in regions outside these areas should evaluate carefully local AGS resources and should consider alternative implementation partners. Infor Strengths Broadening vision for marketing: Infor s vision for EMM is broadening, and its marketing suite is expanding with the recent development and general availability of its new MRM solution. Infor provides campaign management, MRM, analytics and lead management capabilities for marketing organizations. Infor s vision is to leverage MRM as an entry point and to leverage the unified user interface into the different types of marketing (outbound, inbound and event triggered) and to use these types of marketing, in addition to sales and customer service, as channels of execution. Robust campaign management: The strength of Infor s product lies in its campaign management, particularly its inbound marketing capabilities. It also recently expanded its eventtriggered marketing capabilities within its campaign management suite. Strong architecture: Infor leverages SOA-based technology and architecture from Epiphany (which Infor acquired) to form the foundation of its marketing solutions. The platform is Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) and uses Web services standards, providing an open, scalable architecture for integrating solutions and avoiding vendor lock-in. Large customer base: Infor has the ability to leverage its broad customer base to cross-sell marketing applications, particularly MRM and lead management into B2B accounts. Cautions Unproven MRM: MRM capabilities are new and not yet proved in the market. Initial benefits likely will be tied to those that augment campaign management (inbound and outbound) rather than to the corporate or creative areas of marketing. Lack of a prepackaged marketing performance management solution: Although Infor provides a set of analytical tools and performance management capabilities, it does not yet provide a holistic, prepackaged marketing performance management solution. This likely will come with its second wave of releases for role-based homepages in the form of a dashboard and key performance indicators (KPIs) for the chief marketing officer and perhaps other key marketing personnel. No software-as-a-service (SaaS) option: Although Infor provides hosting and an application service provider option for many of its applications, including inbound marketing, it has not yet made MRM, outbound marketing or lead management capabilities available in these alternative delivery models. Depending on the adoption of its Business Edition solution, Infor may develop these capabilities in the future. No process-driven lead management solution: Lead management capabilities rely largely on data integration between marketing and sales applications, with qualification done during the sales process. A more marketingcentric solution based on business process integration with business rules, flowcharts and workflow capabilities would enable marketing staff to better qualify leads before sending them to sales. Debt levels may limit strategic flexibility: Infor has good financial flexibility; however, it carries a proportionately higher level of debt ($4.5 billion), as compared with some of its competitors (for example, Oracle and SAP). Gartner believes that, in this financial market, the debt level may limit Infor s strategic flexibility, as compared with other major vendors. 9

10 Oracle (Siebel) Strengths Vision on loyalty is driving growth: Oracle s vision for Siebel EMM centers on loyalty as a driver, not just for marketing but also for cross-crm processes that span sales and customer service. This positions marketing applications as being core to the CRM suite. Gartner estimates that Siebel Marketing applications comprise more than 50% of onpremises Siebel CRM deals. While campaign management (including and Real-Time Decision) continue to comprise the bulk of marketing application revenue, loyalty marketing is the fastest growing area for Siebel, with MRM coming in third. Breadth of functionality: Oracle Siebel Marketing continues to have one of the broadest sets of capabilities for EMM, including campaign management, MRM, loyalty management, lead management, event management, price management, privacy management and several industry-specific capabilities, such as trade promotion management, market funds development and financial profitability analysis for banking. Growing partner ecosystem: Oracle continues to develop a strong partner ecosystem for Siebel Marketing. Oracle has 75 external and 60 Oracle employees trained on consulting, support and sales in Asia, Europe and the Americas. Oracle also has signed several agencies for go-to-market, reseller and best-practice opportunities, including Sapient, JJ, Experian and MarketOne in the U.K. Service providers that can host the solution include Accenture, Acxiom, Allant, IBM, TCS, Wipro Technologies and Deloitte. Focused R&D investment: The major focus of the Siebel CRM v.8.1 for 2008 is on loyalty management, including an enhanced real-time loyalty engine, partner validation capabilities, dynamic redemption prices, an in-store loyalty engine, corporate employee joint rewards and prebuilt loyalty task-based user interface processes. Oracle Siebel takes a very industry-specific view of loyalty, developing capabilities for the airline, retail, telecom, financial services and other travel and hospitality industries. Version 8.1 also will provide enhancements for campaign management including list and response import, marketing, Web marketing and the release of Real-Time Decision 3.0 (Sigma Dynamics). Lead management capabilities are being enhanced in 8.1 to become more process oriented, including lead and response capture, advanced rules for lead scoring and routing and templates for end-to-end lead processes. For MRM, the 8.1 release will provide integration with Oracle s Universal Content Management solution for content management, creative content development and field fulfillment. Oracle s go-to-market solution: Siebel Marketing is the primary go-to-market product for marketing in Oracle (for example, Oracle and PeopleSoft Marketing are targeted only to E-Business Suite [EBS] and PeopleSoft customers). Gartner continues to see interest in the Siebel installed base (such as sales force automation and contact center) for adding its marketing solutions. Consider Siebel for its breadth of marketing capabilities, integration into the broader CRM suite and vision for EMM based on loyalty. Cautions Lack of depth in MRM: Oracle Siebel s depth of capabilities in MRM (for example, workflow for production management, detailed financial management and marketing fulfillment beyond partner relationship management) continues to lag best-of-breed MRM vendors. The product has not yet completed its integration cycle with Oracle s Universal Content Management solution, and it is still unknown how much this will improve its MRM capabilities in the areas of creative production management and marketing fulfillment. Unclear investment in marketing performance management: Although Oracle has a strong focus on analytics with robust marketing analytics in several areas, it has not invested as much in specific prepackaged marketing analytics and dashboards for more-casual business users during the past year. Oracle has made significant investments in its core business intelligence platform but not into a set of specific marketing performance management capabilities. Future plans call for additional prebuilt marketing analytic applications for loyalty and broader marketing performance by the end of 2008 or early For advanced analytical capabilities for data mining, Oracle has partners in areas of data mining for example, SPSS. Customers should look for proof points of established integration with these partners. Weak process-driven lead management: Although lead management processes have been improved in v.8.1, continued improvements are needed in business rules and workflow to improve the flexibility and configurability by business process owners to improve process flow in MRM. No strong SaaS option: Oracle has not articulated a clear strategy for the placement of its Siebel Marketing application, on-demand multitenancy model but relies instead on hosting via Oracle On Demand and on service partners. 10

11 Lack of clarity on the impact of Fusion: There is the potential of migration to Fusion in the future, if and when Oracle shifts investments from Siebel Marketing to Fusion applications. Continue to monitor Oracle s plans for Fusion and its migration plans and development of Siebel Marketing beyond v.8.x. Few stand-alone marketing deals: Investment in an integrated CRM suite continues to drive most Siebel Marketing deals. Market and brand perceptions around Siebel CRM as more of a CRM suite than a stand-alone marketing suite limit the number of stand-alone marketing deals for which Siebel CRM is considered. However, marketing users select Siebel Marketing for its capabilities in this area, and Gartner has seen more competitive wins against vendors such as SAP and Unica. Oracle E-Business Suite Strengths Breadth of functionality: Oracle EBS offers a breadth of capabilities across marketing, such as campaign management, MRM, lead management, event management, trade promotion management and marketing performance management. With the release of 12.0, usability is improved. However, Gartner has not seen a strong demand or uptake in v.12.0 for marketing. Integration into EBS: Integration to data and information outside marketing as part of a broader EBS is provided the platform is based on Oracle Customer Data Hub, data models from other solutions and content management application. Potential to leverage Oracle Application Integration Architecture (AIA): EBS has the potential to provide good integration to other Oracle products via the AIA, for example, Oracle Universal Content Management, with Siebel Marketing. However, no integrations have been developed yet for marketing applications. Targeted at established EBS back-office customers: The installed base of EBS predominately comprises B2B hightech and manufacturing organizations. Consider Oracle Marketing if you are an EBS customer and have other Oracle CRM (EBS) deployments you are integrating with marketing. Ensure that this version meets your short and long-term requirements. Cautions Lack of depth: Depth of marketing functionality lags behind the best-of-breed marketing vendors. Usability, although improved, also still lags behind best-of-breed marketing vendors its EBS application was built from a set of core technologies (content management, business intelligence and workflow), and clients often cite usability of the interface as an issue with deployment and user adoption based on this assembly. Uncertain R&D investments: Siebel Marketing is the primary go-to-market marketing product for Oracle. Under Applications Unlimited, we expect to see some new investments in functionality in EBS, driven by the established client/industry focus. However, we expect investments in marketing applications to be minor, as compared with other application areas. Clients should compare road maps between EBS, Siebel and Fusion marketing applications, as well as the planned integrations between them. No SaaS option: Oracle EBS for marketing is not available in an on-demand, multitenancy model but relies instead on hosting via Oracle On Demand or on its service partners. EBS customers should consider Oracle EBS for marketing if the established version meets short-term requirements and where needed future functionality is defined clearly in the road map of future releases. If you are not an EBS customer, then consider alternatives, including Siebel Marketing. Oracle PeopleSoft Strengths Breadth of functionality: Oracle PeopleSoft offers a breadth of capabilities across campaign management, marketing and MRM. The potential to leverage AIA: Oracle PeopleSoft has the potential to leverage Oracle AIA for better integration with other Oracle products (for example, PeopleSoft marketing with Siebel Marketing). However, no integrations have been developed yet for marketing applications. Option for nonprofit industries: The product is targeted at PeopleSoft application users, particularly those in government, higher education and other nonprofit organizations. The offering is a more affordable option for nonprofit industries than some of the more expensive solutions on the market. 11

12 Consider PeopleSoft Marketing if you are a PeopleSoft application customer looking for integration with other PeopleSoft applications and plan to leverage the same infrastructure for all PeopleSoft applications. Nonprofit organizations concerned about IT costs might consider PeopleSoft Marketing as a less-expensive alternative but must evaluate the solution carefully to ensure that the functionality meets their requirements. Cautions Lack of depth: Depth of marketing functionality for MRM and campaign management trails best-of-breed vendors. Uncertain R&D investments: Siebel Marketing is the primary go-to-market marketing product for Oracle. Under Applications Unlimited, we expect to see some new investments in functionality in PeopleSoft applications, driven by Oracle s client/industry focus. However, we expect investments in marketing applications to be minor, as compared with other application areas. Clients should compare road maps between PeopleSoft, Siebel and Fusion marketing applications, as well as planned integrations between them. No SaaS option: Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise Marketing is not available in an on-demand, multitenancy model but relies instead on hosting via Oracle On Demand or its service partners. PeopleSoft customers should consider Oracle PeopleSoft only if the version meets users short-term requirements and where needed future functionality is defined clearly in the road map of future releases. If you are not a PeopleSoft application user, then consider alternatives, including Siebel Marketing. SAP Strengths Breadth of functionality: SAP has a broad range of capabilities for marketing organizations, including campaign management, segmentation, MRM, lead management, marketing analytics and partner channel management. SAP also provides industry-specific marketing capabilities, particularly for CPG, retail and high technology, such as trade promotion management, market funds development, coupon management, product development management and channel partner marketing. Gartner has noted increasing interest from SAP clients with the SAP CRM 2007 release, but most of these new projects are still in the implementation stage. Stronger vision with new leadership: With new CRM and marketing leadership, SAP s vision for its marketing applications is improving significantly. SAP s coinnovation strategy focuses on customers, partners and SAP to develop new marketing capabilities. Part of the vision is ensuring that the marketing applications can work as stand-alone applications, outside the rest of SAP CRM and ERP applications. Feedback from clients and prospects on the SAP CRM 2007 release is that usability has improved dramatically from prior versions; although it still may not match best-of-breed marketing vendors for overall usability. R&D on new solution areas: The coinnovation strategy is driving the development of a new Loyalty Management solution (membership and card management, partner integration and points management) and distributed marketing capabilities with a dealer campaign management solution. It also is enhancing capabilities for advanced campaign management for B2C clients (for example, segmentation, external list management and campaign execution) and MRM (calendar, user guidance and digital asset management [DAM]). Use of Web 2.0: SAP is beginning to use more Web 2.0 capabilities for building communities and collaboration by Web 2.0 enabling the SAP CRM 2007 release, and as a way of building its CRM applications moving forward. Increased focus on analytics: With the acquisition of Business Objects, marketing performance management is receiving increasing attention to provide marketing users access to insights and simple analytics in a marketing and industry context. Leveraging the Business Objects business intelligence and performance management platforms and Xcelsius Dashboard Builder, SAP has developed several role-based dashboards for marketing users (for example, executives, product marketing managers and channel managers), providing these users with KPIs, charts, tables and simple what if analysis tools to do some basic scenario planning. Consider SAP if you want to standardize on the SAP platform, plan to integrate your marketing applications with other SAP business applications and have industry-specific marketing requirements in CPG, high tech or manufacturing. If you are not interested in the SAP platform or integration with other SAP applications, then consider alternatives until there are more solid proof points of SAP as a stand-alone marketing application. 12

13 Cautions Lack of depth in some marketing areas: Although SAP has depth in industry functionality for CPG, high tech and manufacturing, given its client/partner strategy, its marketing solutions lack depth, as compared with best-of-breed marketing vendors in some areas of MRM and campaign management, where it remains a challenger. SAP continues to work to close the gap. Usability and flexibility lags best-of-breed vendors: Although SAP has improved the usability and flexibility of its marketing applications significantly, it lags behind bestof-breed marketing vendors in this area that continue to invest heavily in the usability and flexibility of their applications. Ability to overcome market perceptions: Although SAP s vision for marketing applications is improving, the ability to execute still lags behind the company s vision. The market still perceives SAP marketing applications as having poor usability, being inflexible and overly complex. Changing this market view will not be easy and may be one of the biggest challenges for SAP s marketing applications. Weak SaaS strategy: Although SAP offers a SaaS offering for sales force automation and campaign management, customer uptake for this model has been slow, particularly for its campaign management capabilities. At the same time, SAP has not yet made marketing capabilities available in a SaaS model where we have seen more uptake of SaaS in the market, such as MRM (planning, creative production management and marketing fulfillment). Therefore, its on-demand capabilities for marketing are missing the market and likely costing SAP marketing deals. References: Sales of marketing applications continue to outpace implementations. To help convince prospective customers and those that have bought but not implemented to consider SAP CRM 2007 for marketing, SAP will need references from marketing users (not IT staff) who have selected the solution and deployed it as a prepackaged solution with little customization. SAP reports that it has many CRM 2007 marketing implementations under way. Therefore, clients should expect more references on the latest version in SAS Strengths Increasing market traction: SAS remains a leader in campaign management and a pioneer and visionary in marketing performance management. There has been increased traction during the past six months for marketing campaign optimization and marketing mix/media mix optimization. The increased traction for marketing mix optimization has brought SAS into more creative divisions and higher levels of marketing, and has pushed it to deliver more-strategic consulting services to benefit clients. Breadth of adjacent capabilities: Other marketing capabilities include customer data integration, customer data mining, customer profitability analysis and management, governance and risk management, planning and financial management (MRM). Marketing functionality also includes pricing/promotion/packaging, lead management, media planning optimization, and mobile marketing, Web site and online customer behavior analytics and marketing optimization. The Customer Intelligence (CI) v.5.1 provides a single point of control for inbound, outbound and event-triggered marketing campaigns. Strong analytics: One key strength and differentiator of SAS s CI solutions is its analytics and marketing performance management capabilities. SAS offers a platform (data management, integration, analytics and business intelligence) and SAS-based tools to support closed-loop marketing, including basic (reporting, dashboards and KPIs) and advanced (marketing mix, simulation, predictive modeling and optimization) marketing analytics. This platform supports bottom-up and top-down planning. Strong R&D: Plans for CI v.5.3 in 2009 include a new and integrated Web analytics solution, a new workflow solution and an upgrade to the new SAS platform. Future releases beyond 5.3 will focus on more-advanced, event-triggered marketing capabilities, distributed marketing capabilities, lead management, collaboration capabilities, social network analysis and the use of Flash and Flex for rich Internet application user interface. Consider SAS for its integrated suite of solutions for database marketing (taking customer insights into the interaction) and as a platform for EMM, with an emphasis on marketing performance management (planning, financial management, profitability management, pricing and promotion). 13

14 Cautions Weak support of operational MRM capabilities: SAS does not provide prepackaged capabilities to support the operational project management aspects of MRM (production management and marketing fulfillment). However, with the release of its new stand-alone workflow tool for marketing users, it may provide some added capabilities in this area in future releases and the ability to develop a more prepackaged solution for this area. No lead management solution: SAS does not provide a separate solution for lead management. Rather, lead management capabilities are achieved through the combination and integration of SAS Interaction Management for lead detection and SAS Real-Time Decision Manager for lead routing and execution. SAS provides adapters to integrate with Siebel, PeopleSoft, Oracle, SAP Sales Force Automation and salesforce.com. SAS intends to continue to support clients lead management needs through more prepackaged offerings, including a revamping of its distributed marketing module in late Its new workflow solution could also help speed time to development for more process-oriented lead management capabilities. DAM not fully integrated: DAM capabilities have not been integrated fully across all modules of the CI platform and is one of the missing elements for SAS as an EMM platform to fully support creative and brand management processes. Integration between two modules in the marketing suite: SAS has obtained a few of its marketing applications via acquisitions. While its campaign management module (acquired from Intrinsic in 2001 and completely rewritten in SAS in 2004) has been integrated fully to leverage the value of the SAS platform, the Veridiem marketing mix acquisition has been partially integrated (and is expected to be fully integrated in 2009). However, integration between SAS Interaction Management and other modules is data-level only, and clients report issues with lack of tight integration between Marketing Automation and Interaction Management. Migrating SAS Interaction Management to the SAS platform is on SAS s road map. Local skills in some areas: Although clients state that SAS is a good company to work with and has engaged senior and executive management, clients also cited issues, such as lack of knowledge skills and a lack of expertise with local implementation services and ongoing support in regions outside North America and Western Europe. To address this challenge, SAS created global teams with SAS CI domain expertise to provide best-practice support to emerging regions. No SaaS alternative: SAS still is viewed as a high-end solution for large enterprises that can be complex and difficult to configure. To gain traction with more midmarket clients, SAS must develop simpler on-demand solutions (multitenant) that are easy for clients to navigate and require fewer technical skills. Teradata Strengths Strong data driven vision: Teradata s vision for marketing and CRM is data-centric, driving customer intelligence into multiple channels with MRM managing processes for enablement. Teradata Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) provides a foundation for its single view of the customer to support customer analytics and campaign management solutions with integrations to its partner Assetlink for MRM capabilities. Robust campaign management: Teradata provides a broad range of campaign management capabilities for campaign planning and execution, offer management and communication optimization. It also provides analytical tools and models for customer insights, including relationship pricing, next-best activities, propensity to buy, customer-profitability analysis and propensity to churn. MRM capabilities for planning, budgeting, reporting and resource management are provided via integration with Assetlink s marketing operations management solution. Teradata has partnerships with Attensity for text mining and customer feedback analysis. Strong focus on data mapping: The Teradata EDW road map is a tool that enables clients to map data elements to specific analytics and processes. These tools help with the planning and management of data required for implementation and enable companies to prioritize application investments based on available data. Through its logical data models, Teradata provides industry templates of the tool for the retail, financial services, telecom, healthcare, manufacturing, insurance and travel/transportation industries. Strong MRM partnership: Integration with Assetlink has been completed, with testing set to be completed by the end of July Assetlink has been ported over to Teradata and is running as a native Teradata application. Web services have been 14

15 used to create objects in Teradata Relationship Manager (TRM), such as create campaign and create segment to help with the integration. The Web services and objects also enable integration at the workflow and process layer, as opposed to data integration only. Objects from TRM can be tracked within Assetlink. Good R&D investment: The road map for Teradata s marketing solutions include Web 2.0 and digital marketing. Teradata will offer Web data loading, advanced Web analytics and search engine optimization. Long-term plans include social network analysis, targeted advertising, data visualization, constraint-based optimization combined with rule-based optimization and distributed user enablement. Consider Teradata for its strong customer analysis and customer-intelligence-driven marketing solutions. Cautions Need to invest in Teradata EDW: Clients that are not supporting or considering Teradata EDW should consider alternatives as the solutions are optimized for Teradata s data models and database. Lack of clarity for marketing performance management: Although Teradata provides an advanced set of analytical tools for marketing, it does not have a clear vision for marketing performance management based on different marketing roles. It relies on solutions from Assetlink for reporting capabilities in this area. Teradata must develop a set of role-based dashboards with visualization and what-if analysis to compete with other vendors in the market. Partner risk: Teradata does not own Assetlink. If Assetlink is acquired by another vendor, particularly a Teradata competitor, then clients with integrated campaign management and MRM capabilities could be at long-term risk of solution upgrades and integration issues. Lack of formal partner strategy: Although Teradata has key partners in this area, it must develop a stronger ecosystem of technology and service partners. Lack of alternative delivery models: Teradata solutions are deployed primarily on-premises. It does not have a clear strategy for developing on-demand solutions or for cultivating services partners for hosting. Unica Strengths Strong vision and breadth of capabilities: Unica has a strong vision for EMM focused on using the marketing system of record as the platform to support closed-loop marketing processes (analyze, plan, design and produce, execute and measure). Its vision encompasses relationship marketing (campaign management), MRM and Internet marketing. Functionality is deep in multichannel, campaign management (integrating online and offline channels). Unica also provides solutions for distributed campaign management for field marketing (Affinium Campaign Collaborate), event-triggered marketing (Affinium Detect), lead management (Affinium Leads) and marketing performance management (Affinium Insight). Good viability: Unica has one of the largest installed customer bases (more than 600 enterprises) for marketing applications, with a 35% compound annual growth rate from fiscal year 2003 to fiscal year Traditionally, most of its revenue has come from campaign management. In 2007, most of its new revenue came from its Internet marketing applications, followed by MRM, with MRM being used to augment Internet marketing for planning, budgeting and project management of Internet marketing programs and campaigns. More deployment options: Multiple deployment options, including on-premises, hosted and hybrid models, should open up even more opportunities for growth. Strong R&D investments: Unica continues its strong investment in R&D, with 18% to 20% of its revenue going back into R&D. The next release of Affinium in the summer of 2008 will provide improved workflow and markup capabilities for MRM (Affinium Plan), more-scalable and integrated interactive marketing (Affinium Interact), multishot and multiwave campaigns in its distributed marketing solution (Affinium Campaign Collaborate) and updates to its dashboards for Affinium NetInsight and Affinium Insight. Although Unica offers some solutions, such as Internet marketing and MRM (project management) on demand, early 2009 will see the first major release of its on-demand suite, which will include a broader set of MRM capabilities and its campaign management capabilities. Major plans for Affinium in mid-2009 call for a new portal-based graphical user interface that will be leveraged from its on-demand 15

16 solution. Unica s vision is to enable mashups with a large ecosystem of potential content suppliers (for example, data, services and technology integration). Open architecture: It offers an open, Java EE architecture and is database-neutral. The development of marketing objects enables the reuse of marketing work that typically is not contained in a file. With Affinium Plan 7.3, users can store parts of a project as a marketing object for reuse. Consider Unica for its strong relationship and Internet marketing capabilities, its open, scalable platform and its broader EMM vision. Cautions Missing depth in key MRM areas: Although Unica continues to invest in its MRM capabilities and to gain traction in the market (Unica reports signing up 10 new enterprise MRM customers), its MRM capabilities still lag behind best-of-breed MRM solutions, particularly in the areas of DAM and marketing fulfillment. Lack of a clear vision for marketing performance management: Although Unica provides a number of standard outof-the-box reports and offers Web analytics with NetInsight and customer analytics with Insight, it has not demonstrated a broader role-based vision for marketing performance management, as compared with other vendors in the market. For example, Unica does not offer advanced analytical capabilities for MRM around resource optimization (for example, budgets, people and marketing mix allocations), and it has not demonstrated a clear strategy for developing role-based dashboards to a broad set of marketing users. Although Unica offers a predictive modeling solution, Affinium Model, we see few clients using the solution, with many preferring to integrate SAS models into the Affinium Campaign. No event management solution: Unica does not offer a prepackaged solution for event management. Clients can use Affinium Plan for project management of events (tasks, approvals and budget), MarketingCentral s event calendar to promote events and Affinium Campaign and Affinium Campaign emessage to invite attendees, track responses and send follow-up messages. Unica does not offer event registration, payment collection, content posting and event production (for example, audiovisual, talent and catering) capabilities. Instead, clients must rely on specialists in these areas. No points management system: Although Unica can support loyalty marketing via its campaign management, event-triggered marketing and MRM capabilities, it does not offer a points accounting module. It has no plans to offer a prepackaged solution but will rely on integration with other vendors and solutions for point management. Demonstrating B2B understanding: Although Unica is attracting the interest of more B2B clients, B2B prospects continue to state that Unica does not fully understand the needs of B2B organizations. However, Unica is demonstrating progress in the B2B area after its appointment of a B2B segment manager, and issues appear to be less of a deal stopper for B2B organizations than a year ago. Continuing expansion of MRM deals beyond campaign management: Although we are seeing more MRM deals focused on internally driven marketing processes in creative and advertising areas, many of Unica s MRM deals have been to augment campaign management and, more recently, Internet marketing by improving the planning and budgeting of online and offline marketing campaigns. As compared with pure-play MRM vendors, Unica s implementations have been more in the direct or database marketing division and increasingly in the Internet marketing or e- commerce division. Clients must carefully evaluate Unica s product capabilities and should speak with references in more-creative advertising and brand-oriented divisions. Vendors Added or Dropped We review and adjust our inclusion criteria for Magic Quadrants and MarketScopes as markets change. As a result of these adjustments, the mix of vendors in any Magic Quadrant or MarketScope may change over time. A vendor appearing in a Magic Quadrant or MarketScope one year and not the next does not necessarily indicate that we have changed our opinion of that vendor. This may be a reflection of a change in the market and, therefore, changed evaluation criteria, or a change of focus by a vendor. Gartner RAS Core Research Note G , Kimberly Collins, Adam Sarner, 1 July

17 Evaluation Criteria Definitions Ability to Execute Product/Service: Core goods and services offered by the vendor that compete in/serve the defined market. This includes current product/service capabilities, quality, feature sets, skills and so on, whether offered natively or through OEM agreements/partnerships as defined in the market definition and detailed in the subcriteria. Overall Viability (Business Unit, Financial, Strategy, Organization): Viability includes an assessment of the overall organization s financial health, the financial and practical success of the business unit, and the likelihood of the individual business unit to continue investing in the product, to continue offering the product and to advance the state of the art within the organization s portfolio of products. Sales Execution/Pricing: The vendor s capabilities in all pre-sales activities and the structure that supports them. This includes deal management, pricing and negotiation, pre-sales support and the overall effectiveness of the sales channel. Market Responsiveness and Track Record: Ability to respond, change direction, be flexible and achieve competitive success as opportunities develop, competitors act, customer needs evolve and market dynamics change. This criterion also considers the vendor s history of responsiveness. Marketing Execution: The clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of programs designed to deliver the organization s message to influence the market, promote the brand and business, increase awareness of the products, and establish a positive identification with the product/brand and organization in the minds of buyers. This mind share can be driven by a combination of publicity, promotional, thought leadership, word-of-mouth and sales activities. Customer Experience: Relationships, products and services/programs that enable clients to be successful with the products evaluated. Specifically, this includes the ways customers receive technical support or account support. This can also include ancillary tools, customer support programs (and the quality thereof), availability of user groups, service-level agreements and so on. Operations: The ability of the organization to meet its goals and commitments. Factors include the quality of the organizational structure including skills, experiences, programs, systems and other vehicles that enable the organization to operate effectively and efficiently on an ongoing basis. Completeness of Vision Market Understanding: Ability of the vendor to understand buyers wants and needs and to translate those into products and services. Vendors that show the highest degree of vision listen and understand buyers wants and needs, and can shape or enhance those with their added vision. Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set of messages consistently communicated throughout the organization and externalized through the Web site, advertising, customer programs and positioning statements. Sales Strategy: The strategy for selling product that uses the appropriate network of direct and indirect sales, marketing, service and communication affiliates that extend the scope and depth of market reach, skills, expertise, technologies, services and the customer base. Offering (Product) Strategy: The vendor s approach to product development and delivery that emphasizes differentiation, functionality, methodology and feature set as they map to current and future requirements. Business Model: The soundness and logic of the vendor s underlying business proposition. Vertical/Industry Strategy: The vendor s strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the specific needs of individual market segments, including verticals. Innovation: Direct, related, complementary and synergistic layouts of resources, expertise or capital for investment, consolidation, defensive or pre-emptive purposes. Geographic Strategy: The vendor s strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the specific needs of geographies outside the home or native geography, either directly or through partners, channels and subsidiaries as appropriate for that geography and market. 17

18 0 to 90 in Four Easy Steps: A Marketing Maturity Model Marketing operations is in the midst of a major revolution. While the tools of marketing have changed dramatically over the past 25 years, the operational systems and processes have remained relatively stagnant. Most organizations use desktop productivity tools and to plan, deliver and ultimately execute their marketing activities. This is not necessarily a best practice, but a kind of stalwart tradition that has been passed on from marketing department to marketing department through the decades. The good news is that companies all over the world are moving from paralysis to action. According to Gartner research, By 2010, more than 2,500 MRM deployments will exist (0.8 probability) 1. Most of these companies will start small and take a crawl, stand, walk, run approach that will ultimately grow their investment based on the return they glean from their initial efforts. Many marketing organizations that are starting out on their journey to improved operational effectiveness would like a roadmap that will help them compare themselves to others who have already begun the journey. Based on its experience with more than 200 companies on this trajectory, Aprimo has developed a Marketing Operations Maturity Model (MOMM) that will help shed a light on the path that lies in front of organizations that have made a choice to elevate their ability for marketing to deliver value. Maturity models have been developed for a wide variety of technology and business processes. They aggregate the experiences that many organizations have gone through from the growth curve of ad hoc and unstructured processes to a highly optimized end state. The MOMM developed by Aprimo provides the following benefits: It communicates to everyone involved that improvements in marketing operations come through a systematic and multiphase approach. - A single process improvement project will not deliver the value that is sought after. It gives everyone a place to start from. - Oftentimes organizations that have severely broken operational processes are overwhelmed by the task ahead. The MOMM breaks the mountain down to a series of steps that can be conquered over a period of several years. It provides a framework for prioritizing actions. - Organizations are always faced with the challenge of allocating resources to these types of efforts. The MOMM helps to focus these investments on steps that will allow the achievement of next steps. It allows organizations to understand the experiences and challenges that other companies have faced in their journey to marketing effectiveness. - The knowledge gained from other companies tackling the MOMM will validate their decision and help to inform and guide the MOMM initiative. Finally, the MOMM provides a means of assessing an organization s success. - The accumulated data allows comparisons across multiple companies top provide a benchmark from which to measure success. Aprimo has developed a Marketing Operations Maturity Model that will help shed a light on the path that lies in front of organizations that have made a choice to elevate their ability for marketing to deliver value. Organizations that begin a journey of this type will face numerous challenges and obstacles before they reach their ultimate success level. In talking with companies all over the world, the struggle for progress is universal and can sometimes be overwhelming. With average tenure of a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) now under two years (and shrinking), the need for operational enhancements to provide transparent value is higher than ever before. When new leadership arrives on the scene, process owners can show how they are aligned to one of the steps in the MOMM. When other organizational changes occur ranging from tactical reorganizations all the way to broad consolidation of multiple marketing organizations huge pressure is placed on the marketing organization to move in a new direction. Again, the MOMM can serve as an anchor to stay the course in turbulent times. The MOMM The MOMM is based on the ISO 9000 marketing maturity model that has been used extensively by companies to evaluate the effectiveness of their processes relative to a global standard. Similarly, the MOMM framework helps marketers to define a true north so that they can see where they are, what steps they need to progress through and where they ultimately can arrive at. The model also provides guidance on specific actions and priorities that a marketing organization can take to move from a stage of chaos to one this highly optimized. 1 Gartner, Inc. Toolkit Decision Framework: Use the MRM Maturity Model to Assess Your MRM Initiatives, Kimberly Collins, 17 April

19 Processes are identified and documented. Everyone in the organization should know how they fit into the grand scheme. Requests for marketing outputs are formalized. Requesters of marketing output must now make a formal request for work, usually backed up with some type of brief or structured form. Some type of integrated marketing technology is in place to facilitate the documented processes. MANAGED The Managed level of maturity is really a refinement of the gains that were established in the Repeatable level. Organizations reach this plateau after they have extended their investments in marketing technology and process improvements. Key characteristics are: Performance is systematically measured and the results, across each role in the organization, are available to all who are involved. Ad Hoc Marketing organizations start out at a level referred to as ad hoc. This describes the raw state of marketing without any explicit attempt to automate the processes. As a marketing organization grows in complexity, geography and increased demands for accountability, this stage becomes increasingly dysfunctional. Documentation is sporadic and may exist for a few key processes, but not most. A superman mentality is in play. Successful completion of work is usually dependent on the heroic efforts of a few people. Measurement is either nonexistent or intermittent There is no accountability because there is no measurement. The primary tools of the trade are , spreadsheets and paper job jackets. Many organizations will use MS Project, but the data is accessible only to the project manager who is left to single-handedly enforce project schedules. Management is reactive rather than proactive. REPEATABLE Marketing organizations usually reach a Repeatable level after they have made their first significant effort to document their process and implement some type of marketing resource management (MRM) software to ensure that new processes are followed. Key characteristics of a company that has achieved this level are: Technology is used to ensure that all workflows are managed and repeated, according to the most ideal established processes. Results are always measured in a quantifiable manner. OPTIMIZED Very few marketing organizations have achieved the Optimized level of the MOMM. Typically this level of achievement requires three to five years of continued investment and focus on improvement in process and measurement. In some ways, this level of attainment parallels the learning of a foreign language in adulthood. During the early phases of this process, individuals will hear something in a foreign tongue, translate it to their native tongue and then reverse the process when they want to speak. At some point, their competency reaches a point where this intermediate translation is not necessary. When organizations reach the Optimized level of maturity, their natural actions become consistent with the process. They become fluent. Key requirements to achieve this level of success are: Processes are quick and nimble. While the emphasis of early levels of maturity is on repeatable structure, the focus at the Optimized level shifts to accommodating various complexities that are vital to outstanding performance. Measurement advances to a broader assessment of marketing effectiveness. Earlier levels tend to focus on improving specific performance, whereas Optimized steps back and looks at broader pictures of effectiveness. Systematic optimization of resources for maximum impact is fundamental to this level of maturity. Because everyone is in the process, the systems can now help allocate 19

20 resources and activities in a manner that optimizes the level of performance achieved with a fixed level of investment. This is the truly the pentultimate of marketing operations. The reality is that most marketing organizations find themselves at the Ad Hoc level of the MOMM. In many cases, this initial point of departure is not a pretty one. Many companies describe a particular event or situation that finally forces them to make a serious commitment to improving their marketing productivity. One Aprimo customer described an event referred to as the Valentine s Day Massacre where a large campaign designed to go live for Valentine s Day resulted in a series of expensive and stressful missteps. The marketing operations team used this event as a focal point to study the cost of operational ineffectiveness. The results of this investigation were used as a business case to justify the beginning of their journey through the MOMM. MOVING THROUGH THE MOMM Changing the effectiveness of any organization usually requires the simultaneous change of people, process and technology. Marketing is no exception. The following chart is a set of recommended actions that can be taken to move from one level of the MOMM to the next. People Process Technology Ad Hoc Identify a champion to lead the first phase of the effort Secure the highest possible sponsorship within the marketing organization Communicate liberally to all affected personnel Develop training program for all participants Start with a few key processes Establish metrics for success and accountability Define a set of approved vendors Include agencies and key vendors in the process refinements Select and install an MRM technology that aligns with your business Select and install a repository to manage digital marketing assets Repeatable Establish a permanent team that owns process improvements Secure the support of the CMO Gather feedback and address concerns Network with other companies at a similar point in the MOMM journey Add additional processes to the automation Broaden participation outside the core marketing team Define clear authorization procedures Ensure use of centralized marketing assets Transition from a project management paradigm to a flexible workflow template approach Make initial (often batch) integration with other key financial/operational systems Managed Secure ongoing sponsorship with C-level executives (IT, finance, business owners) Focus on long-term user adoption of the new processes Implement a fully integrated sourcing program Evolve processes to support exceptions and rare case situations Define performance metrics Broaden integration with other key financial and corporate systems Expand analytics to include business and marketing metrics Leverage scenario planning to optimize resource distribution Source: Aprimo 20