So, further to the previous post, what happened with this Orbis client who had such issues with financial information in marketing?
This company now considers itself to be ‘excellent at marketing financial management’. How they got there seems simple, but in reality took a lot of Executive Commitment and support for a significant change.
The VP Marketing sponsored a project to implement the Orbis Marketing Planning & Financials solution. But more than just software, the executive team understood that it was important to promote and push for a long term change in behavior across marketing.
The Orbis Business Adoption program is helping to implement this, by focusing on 'Adoption', we have been able to help marketing to use the software effectively. All marketing teams now use financial data in all decision making; the executive team can rely on the data being accurate and timely; and the marketing results are measurably improved.
I guess it just shows how one event can be a catalyst for positive long-term change.
Has anyone else seen an event or issue that created an opportunity for long-term change?
More soon, Liam
Monday, July 20, 2009
Real-time visibility across Marketing Funds: Part 1
This story comes directly from one Orbis’ clients. It is a great reminder of the value in management information being close to hand. Hope you get some value out of it.
The VP Marketing received a call from a regional GM. “My team hasn’t been tracking their costs effectively and have overspent my budget. I need more money”.
The VP Marketing thought: “This happens every year”. (She kept a stash of budget aside for such an event).
However, this simple request produced other, more important questions:
How much budget was available from other funds?
How had this GM allowed the budget to be overspent? Was this a systemic issue across the business?
Three days later, the information the VP needed still had not arrived. On the fourth day, the information arrived but was simply wrong.
The problem was that each Marketing team had different definitions for Financial terms.
Words such as “Committed” and “Forecast” (e.g. some Marketers defined “Committed” as how much they had promised to suppliers, even if just through a handshake agreement; but Finance defined “Committed” as Purchase Order raised).
This lack of standardization meant the financial data was inconsistent and the VP was still unable to make a decision on the reallocation of funds for the GM.
Moreover, 22 people had been involved in answering these questions! The VP had asked seven GMs for their information; the GMs had asked nine of their people who in turn had brought in six more Marketing staff to assist.
So, one question led to an avalanche of inefficient activity. A question that should have taken almost no time to answer, had taken up over 200 hours of the organisation’s time.
And the data was still incorrect.
The VP’s dilemma was significant. “How can I run this business if I don’t have consistent financial information?” she asked herself. “We are an international brand, recognized around the world – we simply can not be so inefficient at financial decision making”.
Liam Royes
Director, Product & Solutions Group
The VP Marketing received a call from a regional GM. “My team hasn’t been tracking their costs effectively and have overspent my budget. I need more money”.
The VP Marketing thought: “This happens every year”. (She kept a stash of budget aside for such an event).
However, this simple request produced other, more important questions:
How much budget was available from other funds?
How had this GM allowed the budget to be overspent? Was this a systemic issue across the business?
Three days later, the information the VP needed still had not arrived. On the fourth day, the information arrived but was simply wrong.
The problem was that each Marketing team had different definitions for Financial terms.
Words such as “Committed” and “Forecast” (e.g. some Marketers defined “Committed” as how much they had promised to suppliers, even if just through a handshake agreement; but Finance defined “Committed” as Purchase Order raised).
This lack of standardization meant the financial data was inconsistent and the VP was still unable to make a decision on the reallocation of funds for the GM.
Moreover, 22 people had been involved in answering these questions! The VP had asked seven GMs for their information; the GMs had asked nine of their people who in turn had brought in six more Marketing staff to assist.
So, one question led to an avalanche of inefficient activity. A question that should have taken almost no time to answer, had taken up over 200 hours of the organisation’s time.
And the data was still incorrect.
The VP’s dilemma was significant. “How can I run this business if I don’t have consistent financial information?” she asked herself. “We are an international brand, recognized around the world – we simply can not be so inefficient at financial decision making”.
Liam Royes
Director, Product & Solutions Group
What Salvador Dali Teaches the Modern Marketer
By Clive Roberts, Head of Orbis APAC Sales.
Last night the Orbis team went with some of our clients to the Salvador Dali 'Liquid Desire' exhibition at the National Gallery Of Victoria, in Melbourne Australia. It was great to meet with them in a more relaxed environment. There's been a lot of hard work on both sides delivering some big projects. The most significant of these for a major Telco was delivered across hundreds of users on time and on budget.
The exhibition was fantastic. It certainly exceeded my expectations. Not only the quality of the works on display, but the volume of work. The Mad Spaniard was certainly a productive fellow.
What intrigues me was how adaptable & innovative Dali was.
Attempting to bring some relevance to the marketing discipline, as tenuous as that may be, was his willingness to ply his talent to new media forms in such an innovative fashion. It's maybe not too far a stretch as he did some wacky adverts for leading brands. Of course these are now artworks in their own right. I reckon he'd have quite a following on Facebook were he still around.
Dali would seek out the best talent in a particular space (Alfred Hitchcock, Walt Disney, Coco Chanel etc) and bring a whole new perspective and interpretation to the form, be it photography, theatre, movies (nominated for Best picture apparently) Jewelry... you name it.
He was also big into reuse. Some of his themes (motifs and Symbols - clocks, ants, food -weird stuff really) played out decades later in that period's contemporary style. He wasn't afraid to go back into the archives and take something from the past and bring it back to life in a new form. This obviously would get the critics wagging with deep and meaningful (and I think sometimes irrelevant) interpretations.
We see some savvy marketers who going back to their classic campaigns, or representations of their brands and refreshing them into today's initiatives. So as marketers appreciate today, new media doesn't mean abandoning tried and true methods, but rather applying them appropriately to reinforce the brand and the proposition in new more interactive channels. Innovation and experimentation can lead to some fascinating outcomes.
How does any of this relate to what we do at Orbis? Well quite simply, too much time in marketing is spent in administration instead of finding time, and the head-space, to think creatively, and to come up with big ideas. Its nice to dream that one day you will find the time to do this, but what is actually effective is to systemise the adminsitrative aspects of marketing to free up the opportunity to live that dream.
Clive Roberts
Head of Sales, APAC
Last night the Orbis team went with some of our clients to the Salvador Dali 'Liquid Desire' exhibition at the National Gallery Of Victoria, in Melbourne Australia. It was great to meet with them in a more relaxed environment. There's been a lot of hard work on both sides delivering some big projects. The most significant of these for a major Telco was delivered across hundreds of users on time and on budget.
The exhibition was fantastic. It certainly exceeded my expectations. Not only the quality of the works on display, but the volume of work. The Mad Spaniard was certainly a productive fellow.
What intrigues me was how adaptable & innovative Dali was.
Attempting to bring some relevance to the marketing discipline, as tenuous as that may be, was his willingness to ply his talent to new media forms in such an innovative fashion. It's maybe not too far a stretch as he did some wacky adverts for leading brands. Of course these are now artworks in their own right. I reckon he'd have quite a following on Facebook were he still around.
Dali would seek out the best talent in a particular space (Alfred Hitchcock, Walt Disney, Coco Chanel etc) and bring a whole new perspective and interpretation to the form, be it photography, theatre, movies (nominated for Best picture apparently) Jewelry... you name it.
He was also big into reuse. Some of his themes (motifs and Symbols - clocks, ants, food -weird stuff really) played out decades later in that period's contemporary style. He wasn't afraid to go back into the archives and take something from the past and bring it back to life in a new form. This obviously would get the critics wagging with deep and meaningful (and I think sometimes irrelevant) interpretations.
We see some savvy marketers who going back to their classic campaigns, or representations of their brands and refreshing them into today's initiatives. So as marketers appreciate today, new media doesn't mean abandoning tried and true methods, but rather applying them appropriately to reinforce the brand and the proposition in new more interactive channels. Innovation and experimentation can lead to some fascinating outcomes.
How does any of this relate to what we do at Orbis? Well quite simply, too much time in marketing is spent in administration instead of finding time, and the head-space, to think creatively, and to come up with big ideas. Its nice to dream that one day you will find the time to do this, but what is actually effective is to systemise the adminsitrative aspects of marketing to free up the opportunity to live that dream.
Clive Roberts
Head of Sales, APAC
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Demand is Arising...
I'm presently in the UK visiting with our EMEA operation. I try to spend at least a quarter of my year out of HQ and London is always a favorite place to come to. (The timing has nothing to do with the Ashes cricket series being on either!) :)
Our business in the Europe is growing substantially at the moment and I always find it interesting when I travel to compare the drivers behind takeup of our marketing software from one country to the next.
I'm certain that there has been an uptick in recent months in UK companies starting to look more deeply at systemisation initatives for marketing. In talking to our clients and prospects there seems to be a gradual increase in confidence each month. Companies that have done their down-sizing are now starting to look outward and are realising that if they are to sieze growth opportunities they will be increasing marketing effort BUT they have less resources to do this. Its a classic productivity problem of course, and the solution is to automate and eliminate waste and unnecessary process friction. The answer is defintely not to just do what you were doing before you downsized!
Despite the recession, Orbis just completed an amazing full financial year ( to the end of June 09), with a 64% year on year growth, and its our expectation that growth will continue at high rates in our market. I think this is because our solutions deliver fast returns, whether a client needs to quickly and directly eliminate costs or has a bigger strategic vision for more efficient and effective marketing.
The exceptional efforts of Paypal, an Orbis client in the UK, is a great example of how a progressive marketing team has implemented a solution really quickly and started reaping rewards literally within days of taking up the solution. You can read the interview-style case study here: http://www.orbisglobal.com/Content_Common/pg-PayPal-Case-Study.seo.
I know I'm biased but I think its one of the coolest success stories I've read in the software game for a while!
Yours in fast returns,
Grant
Our business in the Europe is growing substantially at the moment and I always find it interesting when I travel to compare the drivers behind takeup of our marketing software from one country to the next.
I'm certain that there has been an uptick in recent months in UK companies starting to look more deeply at systemisation initatives for marketing. In talking to our clients and prospects there seems to be a gradual increase in confidence each month. Companies that have done their down-sizing are now starting to look outward and are realising that if they are to sieze growth opportunities they will be increasing marketing effort BUT they have less resources to do this. Its a classic productivity problem of course, and the solution is to automate and eliminate waste and unnecessary process friction. The answer is defintely not to just do what you were doing before you downsized!
Despite the recession, Orbis just completed an amazing full financial year ( to the end of June 09), with a 64% year on year growth, and its our expectation that growth will continue at high rates in our market. I think this is because our solutions deliver fast returns, whether a client needs to quickly and directly eliminate costs or has a bigger strategic vision for more efficient and effective marketing.
The exceptional efforts of Paypal, an Orbis client in the UK, is a great example of how a progressive marketing team has implemented a solution really quickly and started reaping rewards literally within days of taking up the solution. You can read the interview-style case study here: http://www.orbisglobal.com/Content_Common/pg-PayPal-Case-Study.seo.
I know I'm biased but I think its one of the coolest success stories I've read in the software game for a while!
Yours in fast returns,
Grant
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