Marketing Resource Management Benchmark Report 2012

ContentPart 1: Topic OverviewPart 2: Reasons to ImplementPart 3: Value DriversPart 4: ChallengesPart 5: Performance MetricsPart 6: Success StoryPart 7: Vendor Landscape

SidebarsSurvey StatsBenchmark KPIsCore TechnologiesGleanster NumbersVendor Quick Reference Guide

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Q2 2013

Gleansight

Marketing Resource Management (MRM) provides the administrative backbone of day-to-day marketing operations. These systems were originally deployed at very large enterprises, which needed to coordinate the activities of hundreds of marketers in offices around the globe. More recently, they have been adopted by smaller organizations to manage projects across channels, to track expenses more precisely, and to take greater control of marketing planning. The development of vendor-hosted Software as a Service (SaaS) systems let marketers get the benefits of MRM without running the systems on their own company servers. SaaS systems are also easily shared with suppliers and channel partners.

Like any software, MRM is only successful when deployed properly. As a system designed to help manage operations, MRM is especially dependent on its users having well-defined processes, well-maintained data, and disciplined execution. Companies that meet these conditions can expect to reap substantial improvements in costs, speed, and accuracy. Beyond the immediate benefits of greater efficiency, these organizations position themselves to run more effective marketing programs because they can measure results more accurately and take advantage of new business opportunities more quickly.

With this Gleansight benchmark report, marketers at all levels will learn how to best take advantage of MRM’s potential. It reveals how successful marketers are using MRM systems, what challenges they faced, and and how they’re maximizing the value of their investment. Marketers who are just considering their first MRM system will find guidance into setting realistic goals, anticipating roadblocks, and measuring success. Marketers already using MRM will be able to compare their own results with their peers while identifying areas of excellence and opportunities for improvement. All marketers will gain a richer understanding of how MRM can support their entire marketing operation, providing a foundation for future success.

Marketing Resource Management

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Gleansight: Marketing Resource Management



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Companies purchase MRM systems to improve the efficiency of their marketing operations. Without MRM, marketing departments use disconnected systems and spreadsheets to build plans, set budgets, track projects, manage approvals, record costs, and store content. This fragmentation has always made it difficult for marketers to share updated data and current marketing materials, to track and coordinate activities, and to standardize processes.

The problems are magnified as companies market through more channels, create more content for different segments, react more quickly to market changes, work with staff and vendors in more locations, and face tighter regulatory requirements. Faced with these new burdens, marketing operations risk catastrophic collapse – or, almost as bad, a slow drowning in a rising tide of errors and inefficiencies.

A centralized MRM system reduces the marketing operations workload by eliminating duplicate data entry, enabling collaboration within the

marketing department and with outside resources, providing superior tools for project and content management, maintaining an integrated framework that relates high-level marketing plans to specific campaigns and projects, producing a marketing calendar, reconciling budgets with actual expenses, and making data accessible for more sophisticated analysis. These features allow a company to define standardized processes for regular

marketing tasks, to track compliance with those processes, and ultimately to identify and implement improvements.

The increasing popularity of MRM

reflects both the greater need for the operating efficiency and the wider availability of solutions. It is also part of a broader wave of technology adoption among marketers, who are upgrading their systems for media buying, email campaigns, social media, website management, customer data, and analytics. Today nearly every marketing department can benefit from some version of MRM functionality.

Survey StatsThe research findings featured in this Gleansight benchmark report are derived from the Q2 2011 Gleanster survey Agile Business Intelligence.

• Total survey responses: 246

• Qualified survey responses: 213

• Company size: <$1M (6%); $1 - 10M (31%); $10-100M (34%); $100M - $1B (25%); >$1B (6%)

• Geography: North America (83%); Europe (12%); Other (5%)

• Industries: Consumer Goods (12%); Retail (8%); Software (10%); Entertainment (6%); Manufacturing (6%); Financial Services (5%); Non-Profit (4%)

• Job levels: C-level (7%); SVP/ VP (23%); Director (32%); Manager & Staff (38%)

Sample survey respondents:

Director, Liberty Mutual Insurance

Vice President, Four Seasons Resort

Director, Macy’s

Manager, Bank of America

Director, BP

Manager, Hain Celestial Group

Manager, Bayer AG

Director, Limited Brands

Vice President, Ford

Part 1: Topic OverviewMarketing Resource Management software supports the marketing operations of an organization. Primary functions include marketing planning and budgeting, marketing project management, and marketing content management, including approval workflows. Systems may also manage some procurement, such as purchase of printed materials and of marketing services, but media buying is generally done separately. Other components of marketing execution are also excluded, including customer and prospect databases, mailing list segmentation and campaigns, content creation, and website management. Reporting and analysis are largely limited to supporting the system’s main functions, including production reporting, predictive modeling, and return on investment calculations might draw on some MRM data but would be performed outside of the system.

Companies purchase MRM systems to improve the efficiency of their marketing operations.

“





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* According to Top Performers, based on 213 Qualified Survey Responses to the Q1 2013 Gleanster survey on MRM

89%87%77%MostCompellingReasons toImplement*

Improve compliance Manage brand consistency Standardize marketing processes

** According to Everyone Else, shown only when a notable disparity occurs relative to Top Performers

72%**

* According to Top Performers, based on 213 Qualified Survey Responses to the Q1 2013 Gleanster survey on MRM** According to Everyone Else, shown only when a notable disparity occurs relative to Top Performers

Standardize repetitive marketing processes. MRM systems provide a structure for the processes they manage, including planning, budgeting, project management, and approval workflows. This structure makes it easy to track compliance with standard procedures. Many MRM products go further to include detailed task lists for each project, which lay out the specific process steps for users to follow. Users can generally create templates that contain standard lists for different types of projects. These are extended with specific details, such as dates and staff members, when the project is created.

Manage brand consistency. The MRM content repository makes it easier for

dispersed marketers to share the same marketing materials. Most systems give administrators extensive control over which materials and which functions are available to individual users. This allows wide distribution of materials without risking unauthorized changes. Some MRM systems also have sophisticated distributed marketing functions that let channel partners, such as sales agents and dealers, download selected materials and make tightly controlled modifications. These features may automatically customize the materials with the information such as the channel partner’s address and product lines handled.

Part 2: Reasons to ImplementThe overarching reason to implement marketing resource management is to improve the efficiency of marketing operations. But this general goal encompasses many specific improvements, which different companies will assign different weights. One common objective is cost reduction, achieved by reducing the staff time required for specific tasks, by reductions in errors and rework, and by better managed procurement spending. Another key objective is standardization of marketing processes, which ensures more reliable execution, less reliance on individual workarounds, and compliance with regulatory requirements. A third set of goals relates to the need for greater visibility into marketing operations, gained by replacing stand-alone systems and private spreadsheets with a shared central system. This provides marketing management with greater control over operations and a clearer picture of results, helping them allocate resources to the most effective programs and channels.

Benchmark KPIs Gleanster uses 2-3 key performance indicators (KPIs) to distinguish “Top Performers” from all other companies (“Everyone Else”) within a given data set, thereby establishing a basis for benchmarking best practices. By definition, Top Performers are comprised of the top quartile of qualified survey respondents (QSRs).

The KPIs used for distinguishing Top Performers focus on performance metrics that speak to year-over-year improvement in relevant, measurable areas. Not all KPIs are weighted equally.

The KPIs used for this Gleansight are:

• Year-over-year revenue growth

• Marketing ROI

• Average cycle time on marketing execution

To learn more about Gleanster’s research methodology, please click here or email [email protected].


http://www.gleanster.com/about-us/research-methodology

mailto:research%40gleanster.com?subject=Research%20Metholology%20Question




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MRM Leadership

The key executive sponsor for MRM is the Chief Marketing Officer, since MRM affects nearly everyone within marketing and relatively few people outside. Support may also be needed from leaders in Finance and Information Technology groups, who will assess the business case and technology implications. After approval, the CMO must continue to support the project to ensure that workers within marketing work to ensure a successful deployment.

A strong senior leadership team is a core differentiator for Top Performing organizations. The biggest risk to the investment is not the technology, but people. Executive champions should take a vested interest in ongoing communication about the benefits, goals, and decisions made during the project rollout. Inevitably, there are always a handful of resistant resources who may require some strong-arm encouragement before divesting of legacy processes or systems. Interestingly, the stakeholders and executives who initially resist the most, often become some of the biggest advocates of MRM years down the line.

Improve compliance with regulatory requirements. Content management features of MRM systems include several capabilities that support compliance. The most important is ability for workflow features to route new materials to compliance officers for review. Many systems also provide mark-up features that let reviewers add comments to clarify any issues they uncover. In addition, the system may be able to enforce constraints on content use, such as limiting it to specific geographic areas (i.e., states where a product is authorized), customer groups (such as people over age 18), or date ranges.

Decrease marketing costs. MRM systems help to reduce costs in many ways. Because the entire marketing department can work on the same system, less labor is spent copying data from one source to another and in updating colleagues about program status. Comprehensive budget vs. actual reporting makes it easier to spot unexpected costs and anticipate overruns. A clearer view of marketing results lets management shift spending towards more effective programs, either reducing the cost of achieving the same target or gaining additional results for the same budget. The MRM system provides comprehensive, consistent information on marketing program costs and results. This can be converted into return on investment figures, which allow marketers to compare returns for different programs and shift spending

to the most productive use. Other considerations also impact optimization decisions, such as the role played by different programs (acquisition, retention, etc.) and revenue targets by product line. The MRM system can classify programs along those lines, helping marketers understand the net impact of any budget shift.

Optimize multi-channel content production. The MRM system may store marketing materials that are either created within the system or loaded from other sources. Having this shared, central repository makes it easier to later modify the original content for reuse across different channels. A central repository also helps marketers to ensure that all versions of an item are updated or removed from use when appropriate. Companies also benefit from having a single set of workflow features for content creation, approval, and distribution.

Coordinate mult-channel program development and execution. Multi-channel programs often require coordination among separate groups within the marketing organization. MRM planning and program management features simplify this by letting everyone work from shared, integrated task lists and schedules. Similarly, content management features help coordinate content development by providing all groups with a single tool for review and approvals.


61%56%54% Compelling

Reasons toImplement*

Coordinate multi-channel

program executionOptimize multi-channel

content productionDecrease marketing costs






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Improve marketing cycle time. MRM systems speed marketing production by eliminating duplicate effort, enabling workers to access materials from a shared repository, and automatically managing the review and approval processes. The system may also provide efficient content creation tools, automated localization (such as versions in different languages), and tools to streamline procurement. Improved reporting also yields shorter cycle times by letting marketers view and react to program results more quickly.

Gain a holistic view of marketing events and campaigns. Marketing programs for different channels or products are often executed in separate systems. The planning and budgeting features of the MRM system may be one of the few places to unify information from these different sources. This provides a comprehensive view of spending across channels and, depending on the data feeds, may extend to results such as responses and revenues. This can form the basis for return on investment analysis and marketing budget optimization.

Streamline workflow with internal stakeholders (Finance, Legal, Operations, etc.) Workflow features in the MRM system can extend beyond the marketing department to include other groups who are involved in program creation and approvals.

This includes legal and compliance departments for regulatory sign-off on contents; finance for budget control on programs; and operations for coordination on execution. Building these communications into the standard workflows ensures these stakeholders are included automatically and with a minimum of additional effort.

Gain visibility into marketing spend. The planning and budgeting features of the MRM system provide a standard, shared framework for tracking marketing expenses. This framework helps marketers relate expenses to larger categories such customer segment, product line, and program purpose (acquisition, retention, cross-sell, etc.) Reporting features in the MRM system present this data in different ways to meet the needs of different users. Analytical features allow deeper exploration of spending trends and results. As programs are managed within the MRM system, it builds history of costs and results. This data is already tagged with attributes such as program type, channel, product, and target segment. This makes it easy for marketers to look for patterns in past projects, such as consistent cost overruns in a particular type of program or department. It also gives them a basis for estimating future costs by looking at actual results of comparable projects already completed.


50%48%45%LessCompellingReasons toImplement*

Streamline workflow with internal stakeholders

Gain a holistic view of marketing campaigns

Improve marketing cycle time

23%**







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Part 3: Value DriversDeployment of MRM requires training on the new system, changes to business processes, and integration with other systems. The scope of change can be huge: it may involve nearly every marketing employee and process, plus workers in related departments, at suppliers, and at channel partners. Technical implementation tends to be relatively straightforward, especially in SaaS systems where there is no software to run in-house. However, there may be significant data to load from existing systems, often accompanied by format conversions and added tagging to make the data useful in its new environment. The deployment effort must be managed effectively for the system to deliver its full value. Success begins with selection of a suitable system, continues with careful planning of the scope and sequence of changes, and relies on training and incentives to ensure the new system is used as intended. Management support, organizational adjustments, and adequate investment in external resources are essential.

System ease of use. Most MRM systems have many users, who bring varying degrees of involvement in the system and technical skill. A system that occasional users can learn with minimum of instruction is critical; so is a system that heavy users can operate quickly and easily once they are trained. While these goals do not necessarily conflict, they must still be assessed separately during the selection process. Assessment must also focus on the specific capabilities the company plans to use: many MRM systems have a much broader array of features than any single company would require. Determining in advance which features you need is essential to acquiring a

system that meets your particular needs.

Phase the implementation. MRM systems may touch every process in a marketing organization, but changing everything at once is a recipe for disaster. Implementation phases should be carefully chosen so the scope of each step is limited and still lays a foundation for future change. One strategy is to start with a small number of heavy users, who will be thoroughly trained on the system and then deploy a sequence of changes fairly quickly. Changes that involve a large number of casual users, such as approval workflows, can be deferred until the core system is running smoothly and the


92%70%67%MostImportantValueDrivers*

Process re-engineering Phase the implementation System ease of use

48%**


45%**






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heavy users are familiar enough to help others as question arise. This minimizes the time they must spend straddling the old and new processes. Success also allows project stakeholders to champion a small win and aligns stakeholders that will be impacted in future phases.

Process re-engineering. Many marketing organizations deploy MRM specifically as a way to improve their existing business processes. However, process change is difficult and changing all processes at once is almost guaranteed to fail. Marketers must carefully design their new processes to ensure they will fit with the organization, which often requires extensive study and assistance from outside experts. They must then implement those processes no faster than the organization can effectively absorb them, typically phasing them so new processes build on earlier changes.

Ongoing training and development. Companies often invest heavily in

training when a system is first deployed, but then fail to continue training after the initial push. This can cause a steady decline in system effectiveness, as new users are not taught the correct procedures or system shortcuts. Even experienced employees should get regular retraining both to learn about new features and to learn advanced techniques that were not covered in the initial training. Continuous training also helps to ensure that standard procedures remain consistent throughout the organization, instead of fragmenting into variations developed by local groups.

Executive level champions. Employees are often reluctant to change their existing processes, especially if they seem to work well. Management support is needed to make clear that change is not optional. Senior-level support is particularly important for MRM processes that cross organizational lines, since department leaders may not be willing


66%62%54% Important

ValueDrivers*

Establish a center of excellence

for marketing operationsExecutive level

championsOngoing training and

development

12%**

** According to Everyone Else, shown only when a notable disparity occurs relative to Top Performers* According to Top Performers, based on 213 Qualified Survey Responses to the Q1 2013 Gleanster survey on MRM** According to Everyone Else, shown only when a notable disparity occurs relative to Top Performers


45%38%38%LessImportantValueDrivers*

Integrate data and activities across multiple systems

Integrate with digital asset management system

Engage third-party experts /consultants


15%**






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to cooperate unless their common boss tells them to. But, while champions are important, they cannot substitute for well-considered plans and effective execution: project managers must ensure that they are asking employees to make changes that will ultimately work.

Establish a center of excellence for marketing operations. In a very large organization, the potential scope of MRM deployment may be so large that even a phased approach is still too difficult. These and other organizations might establish a center of excellence as an internal resource to help different groups of marketers with their own local deployments. The center of excellence provides expertise similar to outside resources, but more familiar with the company’s internal processes, needs and culture. The center of excellence also helps to create consistency throughout the marketing organization, making cooperation easier as marketing operations become more integrated over time.

Engage third-party experts / consultants. Outside resources can provide specialized expertise the organization lacks, such as process re-engineering or user training, or may simply offer an extra set of hands to workers who cannot both deploy the new system and complete the regular work. Because effective planning and good initial results are so critical to long-term success, companies should ensure they deploy adequate resources, including outside experts as necessary. However, terms of engagement should ensure that the necessary skills are transferred to company employees so the outside experts do not become a permanent cost. A typical MRM rollout from implementation through configuration and training can take a year or more depending on the level of process re-engineering required. Consultants can bring field-tested best practices to the table.

Integrate with digital asset mangement system. Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems are a specialized type of software that handles music, video, photographs, animations, and other types of non-textual data. These take special features to manipulate, distribute, tag, and archive that are typically not provided by the content management functions in a standard MRM. Exceptions may be MRM systems specifically designed to distribute brand assets. Other MRM systems must integrate their content management features with specialized DAM. Avoiding creation of duplicate marketing materials by making existing materials more visible and easier to share can provide substantial value, especially in large, dispersed organizations where each group has been working separately. However, these savings are on theoretical unless the organization changes its processes to ensure that the expected reuse actually takes place.

Integrate data and activities across multiple systems. MRM gains value from integration with other systems, such as accounting, customer relationship management, or marketing automation. This happens when MRM is controlling activities in those systems, such as content delivery or program deployment, or when those systems are feeding MRM with critical information about costs and results. Such integration may require a more technically complex deployment than a typical MRM implementation. Companies with this requirement need to examine integration capabilities very closely during their system selection process. As a general rule, it’s a good idea to minimize highly customized integration with other systems by re-engineering processes instead of technical customization. Excessive customization demands long-term dependence on technical resources and can impede future software updates.





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Part 4: ChallengesMRM projects often face significant obstacles to success. Some are common to all system projects, such as lack of funding or management support. Others are related to the nature of MRM, which relies on adequate marketing processes, willingness to share data across departments, and deep employee engagement. Another set reflects today’s marketing environment, where systems must deal with an ever-expanding array of marketing methods and marketers must face ever-increasing demands to prove the value of their investments. Meeting these challenges takes planning and perseverance. Some can be prevented altogether by adequate preparation, such as developing a clear business case with a sound return on investment projection. Others, such as support from IT or senior management support, are outside of marketing’s control but can be influenced by marketing actions. Environmental factors such as organizational culture, existing corporate systems, and regulatory constraints, must be factored into project plans even though marketing cannot change them.

Employee engagement. MRM deployment is often accompanied by job changes and loss of autonomy for marketing staff. The primary system users, in marketing operations, may be more enthusiastic than casual users who face new demands to work with the system but see no personal benefit. Overcoming this challenge requires a mix of sensitive process design, phased deployment, careful training, internal marketing, and management support.

Fragmented legacy systems. Marketing processes that were designed before MRM may use existing corporate systems such as email, reporting, and

Web content management. A new MRM system may not provide all the same functions, meaning that a process draws on both MRM and the legacy system to execute. Such processes are often redesigned during MRM deployment to separate the systems. When this is not possible, the systems may either be integrated or run side-by-side with only manual data transfers.

Growth in channels and devices. Rapid changes in marketing channels and methods are a constant in today’s marketing organizations. While the changes are a reason to adopt MRM, adjusting to them also consumes time


85%83%72%MostChallengingAspects*

Growth in channels and devices

Fragmented legacy systems

Employee engagement

* According All Companies, based on 213 Qualified Survey Responses to the Q1 2013 Gleanster survey on MRM** According to Everyone Else, shown only when a notable disparity occurs relative to Top Performers





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and funds that are needed to manage a MRM project. Proving that MRM should take priority depends in part on showing that it will be able to support programs in old, new, and future channels. This makes it a solution rather than part of the problem. Additionally, content proliferation has increasingly become a reason to implement MRM systems. MRM can deliver a centralized hub for routing multi-channel campaign activities allowing organizations to produce copy and creative that can be re-used in multiple channels and centrally managed in MRM.

Organizational culture. Specific problems such as poor processes, lack of cooperation, and low management support are often part of the broader organizational culture. Companies that are generally disorganized and fragmented will have an especially difficult time adapting to the more rigorous, integrated approach required by MRM. Leaders in those organizations should move carefully to deploy MRM in small groups whose culture can be adjusted over time, and bring to bear as many external resources as possible when changes involving large groups are unavoidable.

Poor marketing processes. MRM is built around marketing processes. Companies that start with poor processes must add the burden of designing new ones to the other steps in MRM deployment. Since those companies probably lack strong process design skills, they should carefully consider bringing in external resources to help. They should also pay

extra attention to training and process compliance during deployment. For Top Performers, success is dictated by careful planning and process alignment long before a system is configured. Some Top Performers indicated they spent twice as much time documenting and optimizing processes as they did actually configuring these processes. Remember, garbage in and garbage out. If you rush the implementation and implement sub-par processes in a new system it amplifies and streamlines mediocre results.

Adequate systems and technology. Organizations with specialized requirements may not be able to use a commercial MRM system, but most companies will find several existing MRM systems that meet their needs. Even special requirements can often be accommodated through standard interfaces (APIs) that integrate MRM functions with external systems. Marketers are more likely to face challenges with their existing systems, which may not be designed for easy integration with MRM or anything else. This problem can usually be solved in some way, such as batch file transfers, which is not perfect but will suffice. As previously mentioned, some customization will be inevitable as each company has unique needs, but if you are finding MRM tools must be excessively customized it’s better to re-think existing processes, organizational structure, and legacy systems. Excessive customization is costly and demands long-term support from vendors or implementation


70%67%46% Challenging

Aspects*

Systems and technology Poor marketing processes Organizational culture* According All Companies, based on 213 Qualified Survey Responses to the Q1 2013 Gleanster survey on MRM





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partners. Customization can also render common features unusable. It’s best to weigh the decision to customize MRM by a real business case with a stated justification.

Lack of IT support. Many MRM systems are offered as a vendor-hosted service, minimizing the IT effort required for deployment. But, even in those situations, the IT department may be involved in project assessment and vendor selection. IT assistance may also be needed to integrate MRM with other corporate systems, to manage access across company firewalls, and to ensure compliance with corporate security policies. If internal IT resources are not available, most MRM vendors have service teams that can handle much of the process. In these situations it’s critical to document the data governance decisions that were made to protect the investment at a later time. More often than not, when IT isn’t involved initially, they soon find out the project has a massive impact on the organization and can slow the rollout process. Nine out of ten Top Performers engage IT stakeholders on the project committee once the business case has been created and the project gets a green light.

Regulatory constraints. Government regulations may specify that data is treated in particular ways to ensure privacy or create an audit trail. The MRM system may play a key role in meeting these requirements. If so, the

necessary capabilities will be part of the selection criteria. Compliance will also be part of deployment planning, process design, configuration, and user training. Meeting regulatory standards can consume a large portion of the implementation budget.

Lack of funding. MRM competes for funding with other projects within marketing, even as marketing competes for funding with other departments. The cost of MRM is generally significant but not overwhelming, so whether it gets funded is largely a matter of whether it seems like a better investment than alternative projects. The out of pocket cost is often reduced by using SaaS systems that are bought through a relatively low-cost monthly subscription rather than a single, large license purchase. In some cases, the SaaS payment can be funded out of operational budgets, avoiding the need for a formal capital appropriation. Marketers should also consider the added staff time and outside services required for a successful deployment, and plan to fund these as well. MRM can usually be justified in terms of cost savings. However, developing specific, creditable estimates can be hard, especially in organizations that lack strong marketing operations discipline. Marketers in this situation can sometimes identify enough savings to pay for the system by focusing on particular benefits – such as reduced revisions or greater materials reuse.


39%29%26%LessChallengingAspects*

Lack of funding Regulatory constraints Lack of IT support

* According All Companies, based on 213 Qualified Survey Responses to the Q1 2013 Gleanster survey on MRM





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Part 5: Performance Metrics

Since the goal of MRM is greater operating efficiency, the most important performance metrics are efficiency measures. But efficiency can be measured at many levels, from return on marketing investment to cost per standard task to marketing spend per staff member. Metrics for MRM should report results that MRM affects directly, not those primarily determined by other factors. Ideally, the metrics would also show where MRM is working well and where it can be improved. No single metric can accomplish these aims, but marketers can easily look at several. Another set of metrics captures the accuracy of operational data, such as variance between actual and budgeted costs and between planned and actual schedules. Although not directly related to marketing efficiency, these are key factors in assessing the performance of the operations group. Metrics can also report on use of the MRM system itself. This includes the number of active users and the percentage of projects or budget managed within the system. These can help managers identify groups of users who have not fully adopted the system and to find tasks where the system has not been working effectively.

Number of active users on the system. Because MRM is a marketing-wide system, the number of active users is an important measure of adoption. It does not directly measure the benefits of the system, however. Annual revenue growth: Revenue is the most basic measure of business performance, but it can rarely be attributed directly to a MRM system. There may be exceptions where MRM supports a key function, such as distributing advertising materials or supporting a specific media

channel. Even then, factors other than the system itself are more likely to drive results.

ROI on marketing spend. Return on marketing spend is properly measured using the incremental revenue or profit created by marketing expenses. In practice, it is often difficult to determine how much incremental revenue can be attributed directly to marketing. The portion of this due specifically to MRM is still harder to estimate. MRM should give marketers better visibility


78%67%57%MostCommonMetrics*

ROI on marketing spend Annual revenue growth Number of active users on the system






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into actual expenses, thereby helping to predict future costs for similar projects. Since better predictions are a primary MRM benefit, prediction accuracy is an important measure of system results.

Projects delivered on time / on budget. The project management features of MRM allow users to track how well marketing projects meet their schedules and budgets. Improved management is a primary goal of MRM, so this is a useful performance metric for both the system and its users.

Marketing spend as percent of revenue. The ratio of marketing spend to total revenue is a general measure of marketing effectiveness. Since MRM is primarily a way to improve marketing efficiency, benefits from MRM should be reflected in a lower spend-to-revenue ratio. However, as with revenue itself, other factors are likely to have a greater influence on results. Careful analysis

is needed to isolate the impact of MRM itself.

Number of marketing assets managed within the system. As with other utilization metrics, number of assets managed is not a direct value measure. The growing number of assets at most companies does make it a useful measure of volume and, combined with other data, of staff productivity.

Cost per standard marketing task (e.g. per email sent, per ad created, etc.). MRM is intended to reduce the cost of marketing tasks, so these are appropriate measures. However, using them requires detailed information about activity volumes and costs, which are not necessarily available. Companies wishing to use these measures need to ensure they have the appropriate data capture processes in place.


55%48%36% Common

Metrics*

Number of marketing assetsmanaged within system

Marketing spend as percent of revenue

Projects delivered on time / on budget

* According to Top Performers, based on 213 Qualified Survey Responses to the Q1 2013 Gleanster survey on MRM I


32%22%18%LessCommonMetrics*

Percentage of marketing spend managed within

the system

Marketing spend per marketing staff member

Cost per standard marketing task


NUMBERS

83Percentage of All Companies that view the existence of fragmented legacy systems as a top challenge with MRM implementation

67Percentage of Top Performers, (compared to 45% of Everyone

Else), that regard process reengineering as key to

maximizing the value of an investment in an MRM solution

78Percentage of companies that track and measure the number of active users on the MRM system as a performance metric

92Percentage of Top Performers that believe that imaking the MRM system easy to use is the best way to maximize the value of their investment

87Percentage of Top Performers

(compared to 72% of Everyone Else) that cite the need to

manage brand consistency as a reason to implement MRM

70Percentage of Top Performers, (compared to 48% of Everyone

Else), that believe that their organizations would benefit by phasing MRM implementation





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Marketing spend per marketing staff member. Staff productivity may be the most important MRM benefit, and spend per staff member is the most general productivity metric. Trends may also be affected by change in the media mix, since some media are inherently more labor intensive than others. If analysis can control for these and other factors, spend per staff member can be a critical MRM metric.

Percentage of marketing spend managed withing the system. Like active users, percentage of spend is a measure of system utilization that does not directly measure benefits.





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Part 6: Success StoriesEstablished in 1825, Standard Life is a leading provider of long term savings and investments to around ten million customers worldwide. Headquartered in Edinburgh, Standard Life has around 8,500 employees internationally. Standard Life is listed on the London Stock Exchange and has approximately 1.5 million individual shareholders in over 50 countries around the world.

The Challenge Standard Life creates more than 1,500 different types of marketing pieces each year and with 6,000 web pages across 400 different web sites. The company faced major challenges in terms of controlling such a large volume of output and also in achieving consistency in messaging. Standard Life also faced the task of having to update thematerials every time there was a change to a product (feature, price, tax rate, legislation etc.) and subject them to a formal review on a regular basis. This meant that in reality, the marketing team was actually working on a thousand or more pieces of marketing communication every quarter. Other challenges included the fact that the company used of many different marketing systems which were inefficient, and had a heavy reliance on manually operated systems and multi-layered sign-off processes, resulting was slow execution, increased spend and greater risk of human error. Standard Life needed a solution that would ensure marketing compliance through improved control and automation and would also help reduce costs by improving efficiency through the digitalization of marketing processes.The Solution Standard Life selected a leading Marketing Resource Management

solution system that would integrate with its other core systems. Key components of the system included a workflow manager, a marketing calendar, a digital asset manager and a collateral customizer. The solution is designed to automate marketing campaigns and it includes sophisticated tracking and review capabilities. The ResultsThe Marketing Resource Management solution has enabled Standard Life to make better use of its marketing resources, increasing effectiveness while reducing costly overruns and project time consumption. The marketing process has been streamlined considerably with improved automation resulting in significant time and cost savings and greater accuracy within and between documents. The time taken to review and approve marketing collateral has been reduced

by 80 percent. The number of documents rejected because of inaccuracies has been reduced by 30 percent. Standard Life has been able to create a unified, consistent and fully auditable

marketing process, making it easier to train new members of staff, update documents simultaneously and store documents electronically.

“The marketing process has been streamlined considerably with improved automation resulting in significant time and cost savings.

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Part 7: Vendor LandscapeMRM investments slowed over the last decade due to the economic climate. Budget cuts placed greater emphasis on demand generation and customer engagement, shifting expenditures towards initiatives that directly accelerated top-line revenue growth. Many organizations considered back-office efficiency of secondary concern amid tight budgets. But the last two to three years have seen sharp increases in marketing management initiatives that include investments in MRM. Manual processes and legacy systems are reaching diminishing returns against perpetual demand for more content in more channels. The underlying value proposition of MRM is gaining significant attention as marketing leaders wake up to the harsh reality of unsalable manual processes, lack of visibility into marketing activities, and longer than average cycle times on marketing execution. Looking to the future, organizations driven by exceedingly high customer expectations and increased competition for share of wallet are apt to embrace a roadmap that calls for investing in infrastructure that supports a longer-term marketing success.

Traditional MRM systems – on-premise implementations offering workflow, budgeting, digital asset management, and reporting – were designed for large complex marketing functions. These systems provide structure and scalability for aligning marketing objectives and execution across many business units, functions, or product lines. About five years ago, the industry saw significant consolidation. The largest MRM players were acquired by industry leading organizations with the goal of pulling them into a larger customer management solution stack.

Today, MRM capabilities are now available on-demand and are more accessible to midsize organization that have a need for marketing operations management capabilities. For midsize organizatons, seamless integration between back-office activity and customer engagement is critical. As a result, some MRM solution capabilities are blended into a comprehensive solution that supports planning through physical multi-channel execution. These on-demand solutions often lack the robust features and security options of enterprise MRM solutions, but deliver more than enough capabilities to align the marketing value chain.

Services have also become a major selling point for vendors who will often include implementation services as part of the investment (a potential point of negotiation) in the technology license. While solution providers typically excel at configuring the technology, they may be somewhat less exceptional when it comes to the non-technical aspects of the implementation such as process re-engineering, organizational alignment, phased implementations, and industry-specific best practices.

As a technology, MRM is an enabler of people and process. The speed of deployment should be the least important component of the initiative. Do it right or you will be doing it again. The most important best practice to

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Adnovatehttp://www.gleanster.com/vendors/adnovate

“Founded in early 2001, Adnovate is the largest supplier of automated marketing communication solutions in The Netherlands. The company offers its clients an all-embracing package of service and technology, enabling them to gain optimum benefit from their marketing communication efforts at much lower costs. Working with advertising and media agencies on a regular basis, Adnovate provides its services to companies such as TomTom, Mitsubishi, Ford, HEMA, Kia, Yamaha, Praxis, Hays, AEGON, Valvoline, Manpower, Yacht, Philips, DAF and PLUS Retail.”

Gleanster Skinny: Founded in 2002, adnovate has established a good reputation in the MRM space with a solid marketing solution that boasts a particularly strong focus on enabling multi-channel content management. Adnovate supports both the on-demand, SaaS multi-tenant model and the on-premise model. Perhaps the only area where the solution is lacking compared to other leading MRM solutions is in financial management. In 2012. the company expanded operations into a total of 6 countries and it now reportedly serves a total of 9,000 customers. Most of its clients are based in Europe.

Teradata Applications (formerly Aprimo)http://www.gleanster.com/vendors/aprimo

Teradata is a leading global provider of marketing software and services that enhance the productivity and performance of marketing organizations. Teradata Marketing Operations proves marketing works by connecting campaign results with internal operations and spend. With Teradata Applications marketers can integrate their marketing execution, get control of budget and spend, eliminate internal silos with streamlined workflows, and execute innovative multi-channel campaigns to drive measurable return on investment. Hundreds of thousands of marketers trust Aprimo to revolutionize their marketing.”

Gleanster Skinny: Aprimo is widely regarded as the most robust MRM solution on the market, as evidenced by a client roster that includes a who’s who of Fortune 500 and large enterprise customers. In early 2011, Aprimo was acquired by Teradata, a provider of data warehousing and business analytics solutions. The company re-branded Aprimo in 2013 to Teradata Applicaionts: Marketing Operations. The acquisition came as part of Teradata’s stated strategy to leverage Aprimo’s marketing management capabilities and expertise in cloud and SaaS functionality. Aprimo MRM

Note: As with all Gleanster research findings, vendor rankings on the FLASH charts are determined by the experiences of industry practitioners and not by Gleanster’s own analyst assessment or opinion. The omission of a particular vendor name from one or more of the FLASH charts may be due to a lack of sufficient data about that vendor and may be no indication of its performance relative to other solution providers. Using a 1-5 point rating scale, survey respondents are asked to assess the solution provider(s) they are currently using, or have had the experience of using within the past two (2) years, across four (4) different dimensions: Ease of Deployment, Ease of Use, Features and Functionality, and Overall Value. To qualify for possible inclusion on one or more FLASH charts, vendors with less than $10M in annual revenue must be rated by a minimum of five (5) qualified survey responses and vendors with more than $10M in annual revenue must be rated by a minimum of eight (8) qualified survey responses. A mean class performance score is calculated for each vendor. Top-scoring vendors are then assigned to the FLASH charts on a rank-order basis. Gleanster screens all survey submissions that are used as the basis for vendor rankings and removes duplicate submissions from the same client company (factoring in only the highest scores). The final rankings are not intended to provide conclusive advice or recommendations but to merely serve as a source of directionally relevant data points. All solution providers included in the Vendor Landscape section are given an opportunity to invite their customers to participate in the survey at least six (6) weeks in advance of publication. Through no other means are solution providers allowed to influence their placement on these FLASH charts.

stress when evaluating MRM is to firmly understand your organization, the processes, and exactly what you need the tool to support. Vendors will answer all of your questions with “Yes, it can do that” or “We can make it work.” Keep a list of prioritized benefits your organization needs to accomplish to see value from the initiative and let vendors know how you plan to measure success and hold the to this during the roll-out.

MRM systems are designed to provide structure and cadence to an otherwise chaotic process. Marketing is part art and part science, and many stakeholders will have a difficult time placing rigor around creative process. Some users have even referred to MRM as the ERP of marketing. While this is partly true, it’s important to reiterate the goals of the initiative and drive organizational alignment across the company, long before turning dials on configuration. Engage users, find out the source of their pain points with respect to manual processes and aim to alleviate this pain within MRM. A stubborn marketer may view MRM as more work, and that might be true if they are unwilling to divest of legacy processes or systems. Change management is critical when implementing MRM. Demonstrate why the system is important, how it’s less risky, and communicate early (and often) with all stakeholders – particularly in the technology selection process.





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was primarily sold as an on-premise solution until 2006 when Aprimo launched Marketing Studio, a SaaS based marketing operations platform for mid-to-large organizations over $100M in revenue. Marketing Studio has been gaining considerable traction, largely because it provides a turnkey solution with a lower risk profile than a full scale on-premise MRM implementation. Aprimo’s Integrated Marketing Management software suite, which includes an MRM solution called Aprimo Marketing Studio, allows marketers to integrate online and offline channels, track budget and spend management, streamline workflow and provides digital asset

management. The solution is offered on demand or hosted on-premise or in a hybrid hosting environment. Teradata’s emphasis on consulting and getting the most long-term value out of its solution ranks as a major client benefit. That said, increasing pressure to meet revenue targets after the acquisition is now resulting in some implementations that have reportedly fallen somewhat short of customer expectations. Aprimo can be customized to meet the needs of the most sophisticated marketing processes. As a result, Aprimo MRM typically demands expertise from consultants and systems integrators that at times cost more than a license

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Vendor ranking data is still being calculated; charts will be updated soon



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Vendor Rankings FLASH chart © Gleanster, April 2013. Note: Vendor rankings are determined by the experiences of industry practitioners, according to survey feedback, and not by the assessment or opinion of Gleanster analysts. The omission of a particular vendor may be due to lack of sufficient data and may be no indication of that company’s performance relative to other solution providers. Information on the research methodology used for vendor rankings is available elsewhere in this Gleansight benchmark report and also in the FAQ section of the Gleanster website.




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to the solution itself. But long-time customers like Wells Fargo make it clear that they are getting their money’s worth given the role MRM can play in increasing ROI and reducing the chaos of enterprise marketing execution.

Aptean (formerly, CDC Software and Consona)http://www.gleanster.com/vendors/aptean

“Aptean, a global leader in enterprise application software (EAS), gives businesses of all sizes a competitive edge. We empower people and businesses with end-to-end, industry-specific

solutions to address complex business challenges more effectively. Our software applications and professional business services enable more than 9,000 customers, in more than 100 countries, to more successfully manage their business. Software built specifically for our target markets, aligned with deep knowledge across vertical industries, allow businesses to satisfy their customers, operate most efficiently, and stay at the forefront of their industry.”

Gleanster Skinny: In August 2012, Consona and CDC Software, which had filed for bankrupcy in 2011, announced that they had merged to form a new corporate entity, called

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AdnovateTeradata Applications, formerly AprimoAptean

BrandMaker

BrandMaster

BrandWizard

Central Desktop

Code Worldwide

Direxxis

Elateral

Encode

IBM (Unica)

Kodak

MarketingPilot

MarcomCentral

Neolane

North Plains

Oracle (Siebel)

Infor Orbis

Relolute MRM

Saepio

SAS (Assetlink)

SAP

SproutLoud

Vertis

WEDIA CrossMedia

Quick Reference Guide

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Aptean. Consona and CDC had complementary solutions in key application areas, including customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM), do the merger made sense in that respect. CDC’s Pivotal CRM solution is now part of the Aptean portfolio of offerings. There’s a version called Pivotal CRM Marketing that is specifically focused on MRM, giving marketing teams the ability to track and manage all of their resources, processes and projects from a centralized platform. Currently in its sixth iteration and built on the Microsoft.NET Framework, Pivotal CRM embeds Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Visual Studio. With a portfolio of over 32 product lines and overlapping CRM products (Pivotal, Onyx, and Saratoga), Aptean can get a bit dicey to navigate. To date, the “pivotal” product the company is mainly focusing on is Pivotal CRM and all three CRM products enjoy healthy penetration in three main verticals: financial services, manufacturing, and high tech. The company is looking at which product lines (if any) to migrate into a consolidated stack, so buyers may wish to gain more insight into the future product roadmap plans before making an investment decision.

BrandMakerhttp://www.gleanster.com/vendors/brandmaker

“BrandMaker is the leading provider of Marketing Resource Management (MRM) systems in Europe. Established in 1999 as pi-consult GmbH, the company has operated as BrandMaker GmbH since 2009; it focuses exclusively on the development and marketing of demanding software solutions for the marketing communication of medium-sized and large organizations. BrandMaker is headquartered in Karlsruhe and employs approximately 185 people.”

Gleanster Skinny: Germany-based BrandMaker offers a robust MRM solution that is used across North America and Europe. The vendor is differentiated by its broad set of MRM capabilities and its focus on brand management. The latest version (5.5) of its MRM suite offers tighter incorporation of communicating applications into marketing technologies and processes. A new language center allows the localization of marketing content and the expanded Marketing Product Information Management module enables the consolidation of product

information. BrandMaker has also integrated high-performance business intelligence tools into version 5.5. Also new is the release of a version of BrandMaker’s marketing technology especially for franchise systems. The vendor raised $2.5 million in 2012, bringing its total investment funding to $11.8 million. It has been actively growing its partner ecosystem, particularly in the United States. It recently announced a strategic partnership in the U.K. with Marketing Logic, resulting in the creation of BrandMaker UK. The vendor also opened its first offices in France and Poland in 2012. Despite its continued growth, it is still one of the smaller companies on the MRM landscape. The solution is primarily implemented for centralized brand and asset management. It offers robust functionality and security customization on par with competitive solutions, but the interface and usability make it feel less cumbersome and easier to adopt for mid-to-large companies. While compelling for cost conscious buyers, the modules do not necessarily integrate as deeply as a more comprehensive MRM solution. For example, the marketing calendar is disconnected from workflow allowing marketers to manually enter calendar elements, but there is no automation with real-time workflow. In most cases, this is more than sufficient for a mid-to-large size enterprise and obviates the need to an extremely robust MRM solution.

BrandMasterhttp://www.gleanster.com/vendors/brandmaster

“BrandMaster is one of Europe’s leading marketing software and services companies. We deliver high-performance online technology to help deliver your brands and marketing campaigns with speed, control and cost-efficiency. Our customers range from national to premium global brand leaders who rely on our marketing software and services to address the challenge of efficient and effective multi-channel marketing, across 74 countries, 6 continents and 24 hours a day.”

Gleanster Skinny: The latest version of BrandMaster’s online marketing platform, BrandMaster 18, introduces support for WYSIWYG Web Ads and includes some useful enhancements to WYSIWYG print templates, as well, including end-user cropping of graphics and a new admin tool for color palette management. The WYSIWYG InDesign module introduced in the previous release helps simplify brand consistency. Key features include video

Note: While Gleanster strives to include all of the most relevant and noteworthy solution providers in the Vendor Landscape section, the list is by no means comprehensive in nature. Omissions may occur due to lack of sufficient market presence, as judged by the Gleanster research analyst team. Space constraints may necessitate some amount of paring of even those vendors that do have sufficient market presence. Simple oversights may also happen on occasion. To submit information about a solution provider, please complete the Solution Provider Information Form. To schedule a vendor briefing, please email [email protected]. Vendor descriptions are taken verbatim from company websites or from vendor-submitted profile information. Gleanster Skinny (GS) commentaries are based on vendor briefings, customer interviews and Gleansight research findings as well as on company press releases and various other information sources.





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streaming and drag-and-drop functionality for uploading content. The platform can be run out-of-the-box or can be customized to a client’s specific needs. BrandMaster’s customer base ranges from smaller companies to global brands in multiple countries.

BrandWizardhttp://www.gleanster.com/vendors/brandwizard

“Acting as the digital arm of Interbrand Corporation since 1998, BrandWizard combines branding and Digital Asset Management (DAM) to bring technology solutions to brand

management challenges. While DAM is certainly not a new concept, we believe it is evolving from a basic storage space for brand guidelines and elements to collaborative marketing workspaces. As the leading provider if brand management platforms, BrandWizard is on the forefront of this shift in the market. For the past 15 years, BrandWizard has built customized brand portal solutions for global and multi-brand organizations. Our extensive experience informs our best-in-class core offering: an off-the-shelf Brand Center built with your primary requirements in mind.”

Gleanster Skinny: BrandWizard is ideal for

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companies looking for a brand management focused solution. Its parent company Interbrand is a subsidiary of Omnicom Group. BrandWizard’s close connection to the large agency has helped fuel its growth (it added 14 new MRM clients in 2012), particularly with companies that want creative production management and marketing fulfillment capabilities. A milestone of the company’s growth in the past year has been the creation of a new prepackaged solution designed to allow for faster speed to market and cost savings, as well as BrandWizard’s new Virtual Workspaces, which allows creative teams to share works-in-progress, comment, and collaborate in real-time.

Central Desktophttp://www.gleanster.com/vendors/centraldesktop

“Central Desktop helps people work together in ways they never imagined possible. Our SocialBridge online collaboration platform connects people and information in the cloud, making it possible to share files, combine knowledge, inspire ideas, manage projects and more. Central Desktop serves more than half a million users worldwide. Key Central Desktop customers include CBS, MLB.com, Harvard University, the Humane Society of the United States, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Javelin Marketing Group, Upshot, Engauge, WD-40 and Workday. Founded in 2005, Central Desktop is a privately-held company with headquarters in Pasadena, California.”

Gleanster Skinny: Central Desktop originally made inroads as an on-demand enterprise collaboration platform provider. Then, in 2011, the company shifted focus to specifically address the collaborative needs of marketers. Today Central Desktop enables project collaboration for marketers by providing “marketing-specific workflows that connect people, content and customers in the cloud” through its flagship product SocialBridge. SocialBridge has established a strong presence in agencies as a collaborative platform for managing interactions with clients but the product is increasingly being used by brands, as well. The customizable solution is a good alternative to a more rigid and structured Marketing Resource Management (MRM) platform. The company had a strong year last year. Highlights include record year-over-year growth for SocialBridge, key customer wins and significant product enhancements to address

its growing base of enterprise customers.

Code Worldwidehttp://www.gleanster.com/vendors/code-worldwide

“We build platforms for brands and their agencies to streamline their advertising – control their content, automate production, build engagement, harness data to continually improve performance.”

Gleanster Skinny: A fully owned subsidiary of Omnicom Group, Code Worldwide is focused on automating the creative advertising and branding process for major brands and agencies. Code’s adZU platform is designed to automate the production of digital display ads, building hundreds of variants in seconds, allowing users to target content to their audience. The solution integrates with ad networks and social networks, allowing users to control all their media from a single console. There’s also a mobile component which helps to build native apps, hybrid apps and mobile web solutions. The vendor works with media partners to connect audience and performance data to optimize client campaigns.

Direxxishttp://www.gleanster.com/vendors/direxxis “Direxxis is a leading provider of integrated marketing solutions designed to support organizations with decentralized sales and marketing needs. Organizations rely on Direxxis to simplify marketing operations by improving the effectiveness, relevance, efficiency and accountability of custom programs targeted at regional customer audiences. Direxxis delivers the power and flexibility required to deliver relevant, consistent and timely sales and marketing communications across all channels, including digital media, email, social media, text messages, telephone, mail and traditional print and display advertising mediums.”

Gleanster Skinny: Founded in 2003, Direxxis offers an integrated marketing solution designed to help manage the complexity associated with creating, distributing and managing marketing assets and content and maintaining brand standards. The cloud-based platform enables multi-channel fulfillment, performance tracking and program administration. The platform is highly configurable, easy to use and intuitive. Direxxis has four solution options — Group Edition, Professional Edition, Enterprise Edition





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and Unlimited Edition, all of which share the same multi-tenant data architecture. The company primarily serves the North American market. Its growing client list includes Purina Mills, Charles Schwab, American Family Insurance, and FedEx Office.

Elateralhttp://www.gleanster.com/vendors/elateral

“Elateral, recognized global leader in Brand Marketing Automation, sets the standard in technology and services that enables the localization and customization of integrated

marketing communications. Elateral streamlines the delivery of complex global marketing campaigns across media, borders and channels for clients such as Autodesk, Coca Cola, Cisco, New Balance, SAP and Toyota.”

Gleanster Skinny: Elateral offers three separate but related marketing products that are strong on marketing fulfillment and brand management. There’s BrandHub, for managing marketing collateral; DesignHub, for scaling one brand story across several different types of shopping experiences, and keeping that story fresh and localized to allow retailers to win at point-of-sale, on the display and in the packaging; and

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CampaignHub, an offering targeted at high-tech vendors looking to drive partner-led demand generation that’s built on a platform dubbed Channel Co-Creation by Elateral. Elateral has been working to strengthen its leadership team and is adding quality assurance tools to its customization studio, which is designed for creating print and digital marketing content.

Encodehttp://www.gleanster.com/vendors/encode

“Encode, Inc. works in partnership with major technology vendors to enable people, leverage technology and solve business problems. Encode is an Information Technology Consulting and Solutions firm for large enterprise and small to mid-size businesses. Encode’s strength is our ability to understand a client’s business challenge and provide a technical solution that integrates seamlessly into current operating environments. With an average of over ten (10) years of experience, our team members are the “Best-of-Breed” in their respective disciplines. Our extraordinary depth of knowledge and mastery of multiple technical platforms enable us to handle even the most complex integration issues.”

Gleanster Skinny: Encode offers a solid solution for digital brand management. Called Encode Marketing, it’s designed to give companies the power to control and manage their brand’s identity, logos, guidelines, marketing workflows and production management. Encode Marketing is ideal for use in a local or global marketing department. Encode has partnerships with IBM, SecurIT and Aveska.

IBM Enterprise Marketing Management (formerly, IBM Unica)http://www.gleanster.com/vendors/ibm-unica

“Customer expectations — whether consumers, citizens or business customers – for relevant, personalized and consistent interactions are soaring. Catalysts like social media, real-time access to information and the growth of mobile devices are redefining what customers expect. According to an IBM study of over 1,700 Chief Marketing Officers, strong consensus exists among senior marketers across the world that these trends are fundamentally changing how marketing must work in order to drive business success. With end-to-end enterprise marketing management solutions from IBM,

you can transform all aspects of marketing to engage customers in highly relevant, interactive dialogues across digital, social, mobile and traditional marketing channels.”

Gleanster Skinny: Software giant IBM acquired Unica in October 2010 to help customers streamline and automate marketing processes and understand and predict customer preferences. Unica has a robust platform designed to provide web and customer analytics and offline and online demand generation, in addition to MRM. The solution, IBM Unica Marketing Operations, is currently in its 9th major release. IBM offers IBM Marketing Operations as an on-premises solution and as a hosted solution through third-party vendors (Accenture, Acxiom, Merkle and Epsilon, to name a few). IBM Marketing Operations OnDemand is its on-demand, multi-tenant SaaS solution. The vendor’s recent marketing partnership with Quark is aimed at helping IBM bolster its marketing asset management and fulfillment capabilities. The deal adds marketing publishing and distributed marketing capabilities to its MRM product, specifically.

Kodakhttp://www.gleanster.com/vendors/kodak

“Kodak’s Graphic Communications Group is a unit of Eastman Kodak Company, the world’s foremost imaging innovator. The Graphic Communications Group provides commercial printers, packaging printers, publishers, data printers, and enterprises with one of the broadest portfolios of technologies, products, and services in the graphic communications and document capture industries.”

Gleanster Skinny: While perhaps better known for its consumer-facing cameras and printing solutions, Kodak has a digital communications division that offers enterprise-class tools for marketing. Their flagship product, DESIGN2LAUNCH Brand Manager, is a centralized, web-based solution for managing brand assets and content creation. The offering is targeted at both marketing and packaging teams. In 2012, Kodak filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy leading to a tough year for the digital communications division. In January 2013, the District of New York approved Kodak’s $844M financing led by Centerbridge Partners LP. DESIGN2LAUNCH provides a solid platform for enterprise CPG clients, but the risk of the bankruptcy softened the pipeline in 2012. Buyers should be weary of the future plans for Kodak’s





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MRM roadmap before making an investment.

MarcomCentral

http://whttp://www.gleanster.com/solutions/marcomcentral

“MarcomCentral® is an online, on demand marketing assets management (MAM) solution. Integrating marketing communications systems and marketing resource management software (MRM) through the customizable MarcomCentral® online marketing portal. MarcomCentral enables strategic marketing communication, marketing collateral management and marketing collateral distribution. This enterprise marketing management system is a marketing automation solution, brand management tool and marketing campaign management solution. And as a marketing operations management (MOM) tool, MarcomCentral® allows for marketing content management, distributed marketing and franchise marketing.”

Gleanster Skinny: MarcomCentral includes core Marketing Asset Management (MAM) capabilities including dynamic content templates, universal search, and asset management. It came out of the woodwork over the last six years, with roots in on-demand print fulfillment and a strong grasp of the creative-to-print lifecycle. Parent company PTI Marketing Technologies, (which rebranded from Printable Technologies in 2011) has the financial foundation, industry expertise, and brand to establish MarcomCentral as a shortlisted MRM player. At $20,000 to $40,000 a year, its capabilities are affordable when compared to alternative marketing operations solutions. In May 2012, PTI expanded its international capabilities, adding new language localization capabilities for both its MarcomCentral and FusionPro products.

MarketingPilot (acquired by Microsoft)http://www.gleanster.com/vendors/marketingpilot

“MarketingPilot is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation that operates within the rapidly growing $2.5 billion marketing automation software sector where we’ve been developing integrated software for marketing departments and ad agencies since 2001. Our goal is to provide our clients with an integrated suite of tools to help them manage and execute all their

marketing campaigns and activities. Marketers choose MarketingPilot to improve their execution, customer insights, time-to-market, operational efficiency and marketing performance.”

Gleanster Skinny: MarketingPilot began life as an operations management tool for mid-size direct marketers, with features for project management, list and media buying, source code tracking, expense capture, and vendor management. It still offers a midmarket solution but has since expanded to encompass an extremely broad range of marketing capabilities, including lead prioritization and scoring, and may offer the most extensive list of MRM capabilities of any vendor under the sun. In October 2012 the company was acquired by software giant Microsoft. MarketingPilot has a comprehensive vision for Integrated Marketing solutions that aligns closely to Microsoft’s vision. Not surprisingly, MarketingPilot’s product suite, available both in the cloud and on-premises, is built on Microsoft technologies. The vendor is one of the few solution providers in this space with a product designed specifically for agencies,and is in continuous development mode, releasing frequent platform updates. The latest major release, MarketingPilot 14.0, was introduced in August 2012 and brings a significant enhancement to MarketingPilot’s media planning functions.

Neolanehttp://www.gleanster.com/vendors/neolane

“Neolane provides the only conversational marketing technology that empowers organizations to build and sustain one-to-one lifetime dialogues, dramatically increasing revenue and marketing efficiency. Born digital, with best-in-class email and inbound-outbound channel fusion capabilities architected into a single code-based platform, marketers achieve results in record time. Neolane is easy to use for both power and casual users, but powerful enough to drive the most sophisticated marketing strategies.”

Gleanster Skinny: Neolane, which targets large enterprise organizations with a platform of marketing operations and marketing execution tools, delivers exceptionally strong marketing analytics. Its MRM solution is robust, designed to give companies the visibility needed to optimize internal and external resources, control costs, and lift overall ROI. In early 2012, the Neolane secured a $27 million financing round led by





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Battery Ventures, to bolster its sales, marketing and product development efforts, while increasing its presence in new geographies. (Neolane was based in Europe, but started moving aggressively into the United States in 2007.) The company had another year of strong growth, closing 2012 with a reported $58 million in revenue and a 40 percent increase in global consolidated growth. 2012 marks the fifth year that Neolane has benefited from profitable growth – an impressive feat, especially in the marketing automation space. There’s no doubt Neolane has a bright future. In early 2013, it was listed at No. 64 on Forbes Magazine’s annual ranking of America’s Most Promising Companies – a list of one-hundred privately held, high-growth companies.

North Plainshttp://www.gleanster.com/vendors/vyre

“North Plains create out of the box and enterprise level integrated marketing resource management software. Developed over the last 10 years our cloud based solutions are used by over 400 global brands. We enable marketers to take complete control of marketing operations and campaign management, eliminate silos with streamlined workflows, and execute innovative multi-channel campaigns to drive measurable ROI. North Plains MRM solutions include: Brand Asset Management, Digital Asset Management, Campaign Management, Digital Marketing and Marketing Operations.”

Gleanster Skinny: At the end of last year North Plains, which has been creating integrated marketing resource management software for around a decade now, acquired Vyre, a UK-based leading provider of marketing resource management (MRM) and brand asset management (BAM) software. The deal is reportedly aimed at enabling North Plains’ customers to better connect and engage with their target audience by tapping into the power of their visual media. Vyre’s flagship product, Unify, is a collection of multi-channel content management and marketing automation capabilities (in the form of tightly integrated modules) for creating, sharing, publishing and managing digital information and projects. Unify is the platform behind both the tailored and out-of-the-box suite of digital asset management solutions, called On Brand. The acquisition follows North Plains’ April 2012 purchase of Xinet, one of the most robust work-in-progress digital asset management solutions on the

market.

Oracle (Siebel)http://www.gleanster.com/vendors/oracle

“Oracle provides the world’s most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems, with more than 370,000 customers—including 100 of the Fortune 100—representing a variety of sizes and industries in more than 145 countries around the globe. Oracle’s product strategy provides flexibility and choice to our customers across their IT infrastructure.”

Gleanster Skinny: Oracle’s Siebel Marketing Resource Management solution was recognized by Gartner as a leader in this space. The solution comes with tools for planning, budgeting, executing, and measuring the impact of global marketing efforts. Its analytics are particularly robust. Oracle’s Siebel MRM is one of many applications within Oracle’s Siebel Enterprise Marketing product, a comprehensive solution designed to serve the needs of business and consumer marketers across more than 20 industries. In addition to its expertise in MRM, the software giant is recognized for its prowess in a wide range of areas including CRM, Customer Experience, Business Intelligence, Application Management, and a slew of other tangentially related spaces.

Infor Orbis (previously, Orbis Global)http://www.gleanster.com/vendors/orbis-global

“Orbis Global is a leading global provider of Marketing Management software. The company’s flagship product, Orbis MRM™ delivers higher levels of efficiency, productivity and control to the marketing departments of mid to large-sized companies, ultimately leading to higher ROI on marketing investments. Orbis MRM™ empowers marketers at many of the world’s leading brands in financial services, pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, telecommunications, retail, oil and gas, manufacturing and utilities.”

Gleanster Skinny: Orbis Global was acquired by Infor in December 2012 and was subsequently rebranded as Infor Orbis. A pure-play MRM vendor, Orbis Global reportedly achieved record customer acquisition and revenue growth in its North American operation in 2012. The company moved its headquarters from Sydney, Australia to San Francisco in September 2011





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and has progressively expanded its footprint in North America since then. Its flagship solution, Orbis MRM, was selected by such marketers as Dell, GE Capital and Barnes & Noble. It was also recently selected by Sony Computer Entertainment to help manage their European marketing operations efforts.

Resolut MRMhttp://www.gleanster.com/vendors/resolut-mrm

“Resolut provides services to over 80 well-known brands and companies throughout Europe use our products. We have grown from 2 to 20 people. 2006 Resolut became company of the year, appointed by Almi Stockholm…It is our clients who built Resolut and it is our clients’ requirements, desires and ideas that have helped us develop and refine our tools.”

Gleanster Skinny: Founded in 2000, Sweden-based Resolut offers over 100 global brands and their marketing departments a strong set of MRM tools for creating and planning activities and local and personalized marketing campaigns, and storing and accessing media and campaign materials. Resolut MRM is used worldwide and supports localization for approximately 60 languages. In addition to technology, the pure-play MRM vendor offers related services. Clients include BMW, Audi and Snickers.

Saepiohttp://www.gleanster.com/vendors/saepio

“Saepio empowers marketers to plan and execute meaningful and engaging marketing campaigns across distributed networks and around the globe – ensuring local relevance, brand consistency, speed to market and significant cost savings. The world’s best known brands turn to Saepio’s powerful software platform and extensive portfolio of support services to automate the marketing process, eliminate redundancy and ensure that all marketers connected to the brand – whether global, distributed, franchise, VAR or chain store marketers – have the assets and tools they need to quickly customize and execute campaigns.”

Gleanster Skinny: Saepio is known for its superior MAM technology, designed to address the challenges of a distributed marketing function. MarketPort, Saepio’s new digital marketing platform, allows marketers to run their corporate marketing campaigns and distributed

marketing network. Built with collaboration and simplicity in mind, MarketPort is designed to handle the complexities of building and running a cross-channel campaign, from a corporate marketing level or in partnership with the company’s local marketing network. It comes with tools for coordinating enterprise-level campaigns, for digital asset management and workflow approvals and intuitive analytics – to name a few. Saepio has been praised for its mobile capabilities. The vendor has an impressive list of clients in CPG, Retail, Hospitality, Financial Services, Automotive, and other industries. It boasts partnerships with SAS (to tap into customer intelligence to allow users to create and deliver localized and targeted messages) and Unica (to deliver interactive marketing capabilities), among other technology leaders.

SAS (Assetlink)http://www.gleanster.com/vendors/sas

“As the world’s largest independent business analytics company with consistent revenue growth and profitability since it was founded more than 34 years ago, SAS provides an integrated set of software products and services to more than 45,000 customer sites in 118 countries. SAS leads the pack with its general and industry-specific business solutions, and integrated technologies for data management, advanced analytics and reporting. Across the globe, both the public and private sector use SAS® software to assist in their efforts to compete and excel in a climate of unprecedented economic uncertainty and globalization. Since 1976 SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW®.”

Gleanster Skinny: In early 2011, Assetlink was acquired by business analytics giant SAS, which used the technology as the basis for an integrated marketing management platform. The two companies have been partners for over four years, but you might be more familiar with Assetlink if you’ve used Teradata MRM (that’s right, Assetlink was the white label backend; oddly enough, Teradata kicked Assetlink to the curb and acquired Aprimo in 2010). Assetlink has come a long way over the past 5 years, and represents a compelling fully integrated MRM solution with digital asset capacities optimized for marketers. Assetlink excels over traditional DAM solutions because the solution is designed to manage the front-end of the marketing creation





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value chain. Assetlink has encroached heavily on Aprimo’s marketshare over the last few years, and more than a few large global brands are currently making a move from “other leading technologies” to Assetlink. The solution is ideal for global organizations.

SAPhttp://www.gleanster.com/vendors/sap

“Headquartered in Walldorf, Germany, SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software. Founded in 1972, SAP (which stands for “Systems, Applications, and Products in Data Processing”) has a rich history of innovation and growth as a true industry leader. SAP applications and services enable more than 183,000 customers worldwide to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably. With revenue (IFRS) of €12.5 billion for the year 2010, SAP has more than 55,000 employees and sales and development locations in more than 120 countries worldwide.”

Gleanster Skinny: SAP offers a broad set of MRM capabilities through SAP CRM. A robust and feature-rich solution, SAP CRM is designed to deliver capabilities for sales, marketing, service, customer support, e-commerce, and IT functions. It also delivers tools for partner channel management, business communications management, and real-time offer management. SAP CRM’s DAM functionality is enabled by a partnership with OpenText, a provider of enterprise information management technology. The vendor has effectively strengthened its collaboration capabiltiescapabilities through the 2012 acquisition of human capital management software company SuccessFactors. Users may benefit from the ability to integrate SAP CRM with other SAP applications and infrastructures. Another benefit: the SAP CRM application is designed to support a number of industry-specific processes.

SproutLoudhttp://www.gleanster.com/vendors/sproutloud

“Headquartered in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, SproutLoud Media Networks helps manage brands and promote marketing messages at the local level with a web-based Marketing Resource Management solution. Providing customizable modules and an easy to use online interface, we empower a company’s local marketing network to access the materials they need in the marketing

media of their choice.”

Gleanster Skinny: With tools for co-op funds management, business intelligence, turnkey subscription marketing programs, inventory management and fulfillment, as well as online storefronts with ship-to-your-door delivery, SproutLoud MRM+ functionality is broader traditional MRM solutions. The solution is gaining good traction, particularly within the franchise industry. Synergy has spent the past three years helping franchise companies support and empower their franchisees with local marketing services in a franchise marketing platform. In October 2012, SproutLoud announced it was going to acquire Synergy Brand Management, a Boca Raton–based brand management agency specializing in the franchise industry which provides print, direct mail, specialty items, apparel, creative design and fulfillment programs. Synergy brings franchise expertise to SproutLoud, also based in Florida, and has enabled SproutLoud to add additional names like Menchies Frozen Yogurt, Lenny’s Sub Shop and WingZone to its client roster. SproutLoud was named to the 2012 Inc. 5000 list for the third consecutive year.SproutLoud has gained considerable traction through its full-service MRM offering; particularly in distributed marketing environments with field resources that lack the time, expertise, or resources to focus on local communications. SproutLoud has a full staff of support and creative resources that can augment local and regional marketing efforts through online and offline campaigns. The system acts like a centralized (branded) portal for corporate, local, or channel co-op engagement complete with live chat, email, and phone support.

Vertis (acquired by Quad/Graphics)

http://www.gleanster.com/vendors/vertis-communications

“Quad/Graphics (NYSE: QUAD), a leading global printer and media channel integrator, is redefining print in today’s multichannel media world by helping marketers and publishers capitalize on print’s ability to complement and connect with other media channels. With consultative ideas, worldwide capabilities, leading-edge technology and single-source simplicity, Quad/Graphics has the resources and knowledge to help its clients maximize the revenue they derive from their marketing spend through channel integration,





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and minimize their total cost of production and distribution through a fully integrated national distribution network. The Company provides a diverse range of print solutions, media solutions and logistics services from multiple locations throughout North America, Latin America and Europe.”

Gleanster Skinny: In 2013, leading global printer and media channel integrator Quad/Graphics announced that it has finalized its acquisition of Vertis in a deal aimed at strengthening Quad/Graphics’ ability to serve clients across multiple print and related channels. Vertis won several awards, most focused on the company’s digital printing technology. It has received a total of seven Gold Ink Awards for printing excellence in the categories of Direct Mail, Digital Printing/Variable Data/Personalization, Brochures/Web and Sunday Magazines. The acquisition has effectively expanded Quad/Graphics’ retail advertising insert, direct marketing and in-store marketing solutions. In fact, Quad just announced that it has made a multi-million dollar investment in a platform for direct marketing. WEDIA CrossMediahttp://www.gleanster.com/vendors/resolut-mrm

“WEDIA is the most experienced print+web+mobile marketing asset management (MAM) software provider to bring creation, customization, and distribution capabilities to all three major content channels: web, print and mobile. WEDIA helps global companies engage in more profitable dialogues with local or segmented customers and prospects by empowering individuals at the point of

impact, making globally distributed marketers, salespeople, stores and branches more agile by moving the design, production, editing and distribution of valuable marketing assets to the point of impact while also ensure message consistency across three channels.”

Gleanster Skinny: In early 2012 WEDIA completed the acquisition of BrandProject AB, a leading provider of brand asset management technology known for its prowess in developing digital asset management systems for marketers. The acquisition of Sweden-based BrandProject is primarily focused on enabling WEDIA to expand its business to Sweden. BrandProject’s client list includes Swedish companies such as Volvo, Tetra Pak, Mölnlycke Health Care and Stena Metall, as well as TaylorMade-Adidas in England and Logitech in the US. WEDIA next acquired NewLC, a mobile application development company based in France, in a deal intended to help WEDIA further strengthen its position in a fragmented market for mobile marketing software. Founded in 2004, NewLC specializes in marketing to smartphones and tablet PCs, targeting platforms. WEDIA also completed acquisition of GESCO in early 2012. GESCO IS a leading French Digital Asset Management (DAM) software provider that helps companies centralize and manage media, photo libraries and other digital assets. With these three companies under its belt, WEDIA is now closer than ever to realizing its goal to become a leading provider of MAM software for producing marketing communications for web, print and mobile.





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Related ResearchRecently published Gleansight benchmark reports that may be of interest to senior industry practitioners include:

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Lead Authors

Ian MichielsPrincipal Analyst

David RaabContributing Analyst

A globally-recognized thought leader, research analyst and consultant on marketing technology, Raab advises major consumer and business marketers on marketing processes, technology and service vendors. He established Raab Associates in 1987. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Note: Research and analysis for the Vendor Landscape section was conducted by Gleanster research support staff and reflects survey rankings by end-users.


http://www.gleanster.com/reports/marketing-automation

http://www.gleanster.com/reports/web-content-management

http://www.gleanster.com/surveys/crm-for-small-to-midsize-businesses-smb

http://www.gleanster.com/reports/reports/17

http://gleanster.com/reports/reports/27



Marketing Resource Management Benchmark Report 2012

Marketing

Transcript of Marketing Resource Management Benchmark Report 2012