G00212759
The Next Generation of Functionality for
Marketing Resource Management
Published: 11 May 2011 Analyst(s): Kimberly Collins
This research defines the next generation of marketing resource
management (MRM) functionality across the five competencies of MRM:
planning and financial management, creative production management,
marketing asset management, marketing fulfillment and analytics. MRM
users should use this to re-evaluate their MRM solutions and to plan for new
functionality, whereas those new to MRM can gain a broader understanding
of where MRM will evolve over the next few years beyond its original
functionality set.
Key Findings
■ MRM functionality is expanding across all five original competencies.
■ New functionality focuses on how to govern agencies and marketing suppliers, reuse content
more effectively, collaborate better, share knowledge and optimize the use of marketing resources.
■ New functionality provides additional MRM benefits for chief marketing officers (CMOs) and
marketing leaders by improving agency/vendor control, enabling global planning, supporting appropriate skill selection, enhancing virtual collaboration, optimizing the marketing mix across all marketing initiatives, adjusting to market fluctuations more rapidly and facilitating faster cycle times across geographies, channels and products.
Recommendations
■ Understand the five competency areas of MRM and the traditional functionality associated with
each.
■ Before considering next-generation MRM functionality, implement the traditional MRM areas of
■ Evaluate the next generation of MRM functionality. ■ Expand MRM functionality to the next generation.
What You Need to Know
It has been a decade since the inception of MRM, when Gartner first defined it. Many midsize and large companies have begun to explore, invest in and implement MRM solutions. The next 10 years will see a new generation of MRM functionality. Many of these functions will expand the traditional competencies of MRM into new directions, further improving efficiencies, reducing costs, optimizing resources and driving more-effective marketing programs.
Analysis
MRM Defined
Gartner was the first to define MRM in 2001 (see "Marketing Resource Management: Key Components"). In 2008, Gartner redefined the five competencies of MRM (see "The Five
Competencies of MRM 'Re-' Defined"). Many large and midsize companies have begun adopting at least a few MRM capabilities. In this research, we provide an overview of the next generation of MRM functionality in each of the five competency areas for 2011 and beyond. By expanding to this next generation of functionality, CMOs and marketing leaders can improve global planning, manage vendor relationships more effectively, improve the governance of marketing spending, improve the selection and allocation of appropriate resources, enhance virtual collaboration, facilitate faster cycle times across geographies/channels/products, better adjust to market fluctuations and
optimize across the entire set of marketing activities. Here, we depict new functionality for the next generation of MRM for each of the five MRM competency areas.
Five MRM Competency Areas and Their New Functionality
Planning and Financial Management
The initial functionality for planning and financial management focused on planning, team selection, objective setting, financial management and cost tracking.
Enhanced Global Marketing Calendar
Although not a new functionality for many MRM solutions, the global marketing calendar has
become a predominant requirement over the last year in RFPs. Many vendors are making significant enhancements and updates to their global calendars to meet increasing demand and client
requirements. Global marketing calendars provide an overview of all marketing programs and
benefit the field (e.g., sales, the contact center and partners) by enabling them to understand how the marketing programs will impact them and when.
Vendor Management
Initial solution functionality and early adopters used MRM solutions to send RFQs to agencies/ marketing vendors, and to procure and pay them. The concept of vendor management is expanding in the next generation of MRM usage to include a broader set of vendor management and
governance functionalities. These capabilities include the ability to evaluate and select agencies and marketing suppliers, define the scope of work, create a skills database for suppliers, measure supplier performance, create SLAs and manage agency/supplier relationships. Although early MRM vendors such as Aprimo (Teradata) and Assetlink (SAS) provided some functionality in this area, new specialty vendors such as Arizona Software (Brazil) and Decideware (U.S.) are developing deeper and broader functionality for agency/supplier management. Key benefits include the ability to create a marketing supplier ecosystem, better select agencies and suppliers based on skills and past performance, improve pricing negotiations, drop vendors that do not meet SLA requirements or have poor performance and leverage the suppliers that demonstrate the best performance. These benefits lead to lower agency costs, better supplier alignment with marketing goals and improved agency relationship management.
Skills and Staffing
Initial MRM solutions enabled marketing organizations to assign teams to projects based on availability and make adjustments for time out of office (e.g., paid time off [PTO] and business travel). New functionality includes the ability to build a skills database for marketing and source projects based on skills and past performance. Other functionality includes the ability to define project requirements, ensure adequate staffing levels for different marketing roles/tasks based on projects and justify new hiring based on required skills and the availability of existing resources. Key benefits include the ability to ensure appropriate resource allocation based on skills, leverage
resources globally and make adjustments in resources (numbers and skills).
Creative Production Management
Initial functionality for creative production management centered on task-oriented calendars, project management and workflow for reviews and approvals. Next-generation functionality focuses on collaboration, virtual meetings and content reformatting.
Collaboration
Next-generation MRM functionality supports collaboration among marketing participants via discussion boards, blogs, wikis, chat and connections to social networking and communities. Key benefits include the ability of teammates on particular programs to reach each other quickly, and resolve issues and conflicts faster. Other benefits include the ability to actively seek knowledge and best practices from individuals in other geographies, brainstorm new concepts and share
Virtual Meetings
This functionality is an extension of traditional collaboration tools. It enables participants to call team meetings on short notice and leverage a shared work space to whiteboard, review, markup and discuss the projects and programs they are working on together. Main features are participant availability, messaging, shared work space and voice over IP (VoIP). Key benefits include the ability to assemble quickly, make decisions faster and resolve conflicts sooner.
Content Reformatting
This functionality enables content to be broken down into component parts (e.g., images, backgrounds and text) that can be reassembled to create new content for the same or different channels and media. Key benefits include the ability to leverage existing content for new programs, campaigns and channels, which reduces creative and agency costs.
Marketing Asset Management
Traditional functionality for marketing asset management focused on the actual content and digital asset repository for storage with search and version control. The new capabilities have expanded to include product information and knowledge management.
Product Information Management
This functionality enables product information and codes to be captured so that they can be associated with the appropriate marketing content and collateral materials. It does not replace production information management (PIM) systems, but integrates with them to pull out the relevant information that needs to be associated with marketing content for collateral materials, campaigns and offers. Key benefits include the ability to assemble marketing collateral materials and
campaigns with the most up-to-date and relevant product information.
Knowledge Management
This functionality allows information shared in the collaborative tools to be captured and stored for later use. It may also structure this knowledge according to specific topics. It further allows metrics (e.g., usage and effectiveness) to be associated with content and collateral materials. Key benefits include the ability to share and leverage knowledge and best practices about what works and what doesn't for marketing programs and campaigns. Other benefits include the ability to monitor content usage and effectiveness, enabling marketing organizations to hold agencies more accountable and to negotiate better deals with agencies for similar content.
Marketing Fulfillment
Language Translation
This functionality automates the translation of marketing content or text from one language into other languages. Vendors such as Elateral are looking to use machine-assisted translation technology to do this. Key benefits of language translation include the ability to reuse content across different countries and languages without human translation services, which are expensive and time-consuming. Content can be created in one language, and used quickly and repeatedly in other languages. Workflow for reviews and approvals in creative production management can enable quick quality checks within the country for the language translated. Cycle times to market and translation costs can be reduced dramatically.
Cultural Translation
This functionality automates the ability to ensure that marketing content is appropriate and not offensive to different countries and cultures. It provides analytical capabilities to find offensive content quickly, review and approve content, make modifications and provide governance over the reuse of content and collateral materials. Key benefits include the ability to leverage content across multiple cultures at a reduced expense in costs, resources and time. Cycle times to market can be reduced dramatically, enabling global rollout of marketing programs and campaigns almost
simultaneously.
Cross-Media/-Device/-Channel Publication
This functionality automates the nonproportional resizing and reformatting of marketing content to fit different channels and media (e.g., print and Web) and devices (e.g., computers, iPads and mobile). Key benefits include the ability to leverage content across multiple channels and devices, decreasing agency costs and enabling a faster time to market. Vendors focused on cross-media marketing fulfillment, such as Balihoo, Pica9 and Thunderhead, are emerging in this market. Traditional marketing fulfillment vendors, such as Elateral and Saepio, are moving in this direction.
MRM Analytics
Initial functionality for MRM analytics focused on reporting and dashboards that provide better visualization of reporting. Next-generation functionality supports marketing mix optimization and scenario planning.
Marketing Mix Optimization
This functionality enables marketing to optimize media mix, marketing resources (budget/people) and, ultimately, the entire marketing mix across all types of campaigns (e.g., targeted and
Scenario Planning
This functionality allows marketers to run what-if analyses to simulate different scenarios and possible outcomes based on market and competitive intelligence. These models forecast marketing results and revenue associated with different marketing programs and campaigns. Simulation allows marketers to select the best scenario, and to plan their marketing efforts based on those scenarios. Scenarios can be changed to another model or updated version based on changes in market trends or competitive actions. Key benefits include the ability to select the best marketing strategy, programs and campaigns based on current market conditions, while allowing flexibility to alter plans quickly if a significant market or competitive change is noted. Marketing can plan more effectively, and be nimble to make changes when needed.
New and Enhanced MRM Roles and Users
Traditional MRM application users and roles have included CMOs, marketing managers, brand/ product marketing, creative advertising, media planners and buyers, campaign planners, and field marketing, including partners and distributors. Gartner believes MRM will evolve to support other roles, as well as enhance existing roles.
New Roles and Users
Public Relations and Marketing Communications
Functionality will be adapted for marketing communications and public relations (PR) to do planning, budgeting, PR reviews and approvals, publications and measurement. Reviews and approval workflows, PR calendars and integration with PR agencies and publishing houses will be key functionalities.
Market Research/Competitive Intelligence
The advent of social media and the ability to gain insight faster are rejuvenating marketing and competitive-intelligence areas within marketing. These users have been largely underserved by enterprise software. The ability to plan, budget, review and approve requests from the field and disseminate the results within marketing to the relevant parties will become more important over the next few years as more people seek insights from this area of marketing. Key functionality includes a market research project calendar, review and approval workflow for requests to this department, portals and dashboards to display results, integration with third-party suppliers and integration with other marketing applications.
Enhanced Roles and Users
Partners and Distributors
Today, these users typically have access to or the ability to procure marketing content and
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