Part II: No Forklifts Required
Last week’s announcement of the Oracle-Seibel deal provoked some interesting commentary about the reasons for the deal (GMSV), the state of the CRM art, and what marketers really need to run an effective analytics program. The reaction highlighted the fact that except for huge corporations managing multiple terabytes of data, you don’t need a small army of rocket scientists and a forklift to design and implement a great marketing analytics program. And Marc Benioff would make that case for the Fortune 500 as well (ZDNet).
The heavy lift is the strategic work: engraining measurement and analytics into the company DNA. Once that’s done, designing the work-flow process and implementing the technical infrastructure becomes less time (and cash) consuming.
Follow the money trail. The work-flow process for your marketing analytics program should be a visual representation of the money flow for your company. It should reflect all your customer touch-points. It should consider how you create demand, how you incent trial, how you sell, how you service and how you bill your customers. Here’s where one of the greatest obstacles for an early-stage company becomes an advantage: your limited staff. Small companies have streamlined teams who can develop this kind of process faster and more deftly than large corporations. In other words, you can assemble the people you need to design this process (sales & marketing, customer service, finance, web site development, IT) around a table at Starbucks, and you might even get it done before you finish your venti lattes. It will actually take more than a few venti lattes, but you get the point. In addition to being more efficient, this collaborative (and caffeinated) design process ensures that everyone’s bought into it, and that they understand the importance of their contributions.
Make your program strategy-heavy and implementation-light. Implementation of this kind of measurement and analysis programs used to be really ugly. I’ve worked with more than one multi-national corporation that holds its measurement system together with bailing wire and rubber bands, and staffs it with a roomful of analysts. Fortunately you don’t have to do that. Emerging growth companies are particularly well-suited to take advantage of new on-demand analytics tools and services. And with your marketing dashboard reporting and work-flow process in place, you’ve already written most of your technical requirements.
So what should you include in your program? There are a few essentials:
- Campaign Management: tracking and analysis of sales & marketing campaigns
- Sales Force/Contact Center Automation: contact management and tracking system for sales/service teams
- Web Analytics: tracking web site usage and behaviors
Just like the rest of the tech industry, there’s been consolidation among these providers and technologies over the past several years. The result is a fairly short list of options which will best meet the needs of an early stage company. Start simple and optimize over time. It’s easy to be overwhelmed with complexity and to over-design the solution. Avoid that temptation.
Be creative about leveraging technology … think of ways you can automate processes rather than depending on human intervention. (For example, using multiple codes on coupons allows a retail scan and your own campaign tracking.) Don’t miss a chance to tag important events. Use promotion codes on every type of prospect or customer interaction. But be aware of limited tolerance for information collection and sensitivity about privacy. Make the process as transparent as possible for your prospects and customers.
Most importantly, you should go into this knowing that it will continue to evolve over time. 95% of business plans change in the first two years. Your company is in a state of rapid evolution. Your measurement processes and systems need to be just as flexible and adaptive.
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