Marketing Asset Management - files-marcomcentral.netdna ... · According to Aberdeen’s September 2010 research report Sales and Marketing Alignment: Collaboration + Cooperation

Marketing Asset Management It's More Than Just Your Image

November 2010

Chris Houpis

~ Underwritten, in Part, by ~

Marketing Asset Management - It's More Than Just Your Image Page 2

© 2010 Aberdeen Group. Telephone: 617 854 5200

Executive Summary Research Benchmark

Aberdeen’s Research Benchmarks provide an in-depth and comprehensive look into process, procedure, methodologies, and technologies with best practice identification and actionable recommendations

Marketers are tasked with managing brands and content across multiple business units and geographies, capturing valuable information from an ever-increasing variety of sources, and routinely corroborating and evaluating their effectiveness. Many organizations continue to stifle efficiency and creativity by failing to leverage content creation while wasting money on unproductive marketing asset production and process management. This research reveals how Best-in-Class marketing organizations are far more likely to leverage content and associated technologies to speed time to market and increase the function's contribution to sales forecasted pipeline.

Best-in-Class Performance Three key performance criteria were used to distinguish Best-in-Class companies in marketing and digital asset management. On average, these top-performing organizations achieved the following:

• 44% of the sales forecasted pipeline generated by marketing, as compared to 2% contribution for Laggard organizations

• An average 9% reduction in Year-Over-Year cost of market asset creation, as compared to a 6% increase among Laggard organizations

• 15% average decrease in year-over-year time-to-market of content of all types and formats, as compared to a increase among Laggard organizations

Competitive Maturity Assessment Survey results show that the firms enjoying Best-in-Class performance shared several common characteristics to drive improved performance and results from their marketing asset management, including:

• Executive management understands the value of a single brand and supports asset management initiatives

• Customized content and landing pages are delivered based on specific products and services requested

Required Actions In addition to the specific recommendations in Chapter Three of this report, to achieve Best-in-Class performance, companies must strive to deliver marketing assets by:

• Allowing all geographies and business units to customize marketing content with proper controls

• Centralizing asset approval and distribution to expedite time to market and improve content

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Table of Contents Executive Summary....................................................................................................... 2

Best-in-Class Performance..................................................................................... 2 Competitive Maturity Assessment....................................................................... 2 Required Actions...................................................................................................... 2

Chapter One: Benchmarking the Best-in-Class.................................................... 5 The Expanding Role of Marketing Assets and Content .................................. 5 Business Pressures Impact Marketers ................................................................. 5 The Maturity Class Framework............................................................................ 7 The Best-in-Class PACE Model ............................................................................ 9 Best-in-Class Strategies.........................................................................................10

Chapter Two: Benchmarking Requirements for Success.................................13 Competitive Assessment......................................................................................14 Capabilities and Enablers ......................................................................................15

Chapter Three: Required Actions .........................................................................25 Laggard Steps to Success......................................................................................25 Industry Average Steps to Success ....................................................................25 Best-in-Class Steps to Success ............................................................................26

Appendix A: Research Methodology.....................................................................28 Appendix B: Related Aberdeen Research............................................................30 Featured Underwriters ..............................................................................................31 Figures Figure 1: The Quandary of Content Creation and Management....................... 5 Figure 2: A Distributed World with Multiple Moving Parts................................ 7 Figure 3: Marketers Measure What Matters to the Business............................. 9 Figure 4: Top Strategies to Optimize MAM..........................................................11 Figure 5: Where Are the Assets Used? .................................................................11 Figure 6: Better Processes Delivers Better Assets .............................................16 Figure 7: Balancing Access with Control ...............................................................17 Figure 8: Asset Management Knowledge Improves Results .............................18 Figure 9: Faster Technology Adoption Drives Top Performers......................21 Figure 10: Integrating CRM/SFA and Asset Management Improves Performance .................................................................................................................22 Figure 11: If You Build, They May Not Come......................................................24 Tables Table 1: Top Performers Secure Best-in-Class Status ......................................... 8 Table 2: The Best-in-Class PACE Framework ....................................................... 9 Table 3: The Best-in-Class Deserve The Status...................................................12 Table 4: The Competitive Framework...................................................................14 Table 5: The PACE Framework Key ......................................................................29 Table 6: The Competitive Framework Key ..........................................................29



Table 7: The Relationship Between PACE and the Competitive Framework ......29



Chapter One: Benchmarking the Best-in-Class

The Expanding Role of Marketing Assets and Content Fast Facts

√ 63% of Best-in-Class organizations are using video content to support their marketing efforts

√ 46% of top performing companies utilize multiple marketing agencies that support multiple global locations

According to Aberdeen’s September 2010 research report Sales and Marketing Alignment: Collaboration + Cooperation = Peak Performance, marketing organizations are under significant pressure to deliver higher ROI from their program expenditures while having reduced staff and budget available to do so. Marketing Asset Management (MAM) - as part of an expanded category of Digital Asset Management (DAM) technology - has been developed for the marketing function to drive efficiency, speed time to market, and improve sales cycles in support of demand generation activities and revenue acquisition. Businesses of all sizes, and across all geographies and industries are concerned about missing sales opportunities and ineffectively handling interactions with prospects and customers due to ineffective or ill-timed use of marketing content. Indeed, a marketer’s ability to collaborate, capture, and disseminate collateral and content from all sources and across all mediums has become a crucial component in driving quality leads to sales. MAM and DAM solutions help marketers create, centralize and manage marketing assets and deliver timely, relevant content in a cross-functional, distributed environment.

Business Pressures Impact Marketers Opportunities are hard to come by in today's business environment. Aberdeen's research shows that nearly one-half (49%) of all organizations are under significant pressure to deliver the right content at the right time to the right person while having less staff to manage marketing assets that are crucial to delivering those results (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The Quandary of Content Creation and Management

20%

24%

32%

49%

0% 20% 40% 60%

Poor management visibility intomarketing asset management

Inability to justify marketing assets

Complexity & growth of content leads toinformation overload

Lack of marketing staff required tomanage assets

Percent of respondents, n=431

All Respondents20%

24%

32%

49%

0% 20% 40% 60%

Poor management visibility intomarketing asset management

Inability to justify marketing assets

Complexity & growth of content leads toinformation overload

Lack of marketing staff required tomanage assets


All Respondents

"The primary reason driving us to adopt a MAM solution was to improve the impact of marketing’s efforts on supporting sales activities, and to ensure that our marketing assets are utilized in compliance with our brand image.”

~Rebecca Rosen, Director of Marketing, TelePacific

Communications

Source: Aberdeen Group, November 2010


http://www.aberdeen.com/Aberdeen-Library/6537/RA-sales-marketing-alignment.aspx




Fast Facts

√ 60% of top performing companies leverage web content management technologies to capture relevant material

√ 48% of Best in Class companies utilize knowledge management solutions to support asset management development

The shortage of staff to manage production, distribution and compliance of asset usage is made far more difficult by the ever expanding volume and types of content being created in today's multi-channel market. Indeed, fully a third of all respondents note the recent explosion and associated challenges created by new sources for marketing content from external sources including online social media communities and video file sharing services.

However, today's marketers are in a precarious position that is far more complicated that can be summarized by too much volume and not enough staff. Time is money and these two characteristics are dogging asset development as well. While the number of content sources is increasing exponentially, the time available to deliver content to customer and prospect facing staff in the pursuit of sales activity is shortening with one in five respondents citing the inability to deliver assets rapidly as a major obstacle. On the other side of time is money. Marketing's results and measurements are increasingly tied directly to its ability to deliver revenue. Marketing assets are being evaluated no differently, as indicated by 24% of the respondents who note that justifying marketing assets through to the sales pipeline or revenue in support the sales activities is a significant pressure. This drive to correlate and validate marketing's contribution to actual closed business (i.e. sales or revenue) is discussed in detail in the Analyst Insight at the end of this chapter,

Distributed Environments Are Today's Standard Operating Procedure Beyond the staffing issues associated with managing marketing assets or the variety and complexity of the formats involved, one aspect pushes the need to effectively manage assets more efficiently. Today's distributed business environment is the norm in this global economy where 67% of all respondents indicate they operate in multiple environments including different geographies, business units and channel sales distribution models (Figure 2).

While this operating environment may be dispersed because of location, functional responsibilities or products, each shares compelling traits with one another; field staff have regular direct and frequent interaction with customers and prospects compared with centralized marketing organizations that manage and produce much of the content they use. In fact, these local sources not only need to quickly find and leverage marketing assets for their activities but are sources for creating pertinent marketing materials to speed the sales cycle.

As a result, today's marketing executives operate in multiple geographies or lines of business simultaneously. While asset development and use is done in fractured, dispersed environments, it cannot sacrifice operating results, brand standards or efficiency. Marketing executives recognize that much of the content that delivers results for their organization may not be produced in a single, easily managed central location.




Figure 2: A Distributed World with Multiple Moving Parts

67%

33%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

Marketing operates in a distributedenvironment

Marketing operates in a centralizedenvironment


All Respondents67%

33%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

Marketing operates in a distributedenvironment

Marketing operates in a centralizedenvironment


All Respondents

“If you are utilizing digital asset management tools, you need to have an education component in place in order to effectively utilize these tools and improve the productivity of your marketing team.”

~ Stan Parker, VP of Marketing, GMAC Insurance


The Maturity Class Framework Aberdeen used three key performance criteria to distinguish the Best-in-Class from Industry Average and Laggard organizations:

• Marketing's contribution to the sales forecasted pipeline

• Cost of marketing content creation

• The time (increase/decrease) in time to market of assets

More impressive are the best performers' results against time to market of assets and costs on a Year-Over-Year (YOY) basis. Despite the same pressure regarding the lack of staff to manage assets, Best-in-Class companies produced a significant improvement by reducing the time to market up to 15%. Contrast this performance against the Industry Average which saw virtually no improvement at 2% and the Laggards who actually digress by taking up to 6% longer to deliver assets to market. Equally impressive are the improvements top performing companies have made to reduce costs in producing content with the Best-in-Class seeing a 9% reduction, while the Industry Average have remained stagnant and the Laggards have worsened their position with costs to produce assets rising an average 5%.

However, marketing's contribution to the sales pipeline is the most significant metric and is clearly a performance measure that is coming of age to track marketing's greatest impact on business growth. Those responsible for managing asset capture/creation and production are not simply measuring the time to develop and distribute content, but are focusing on how the asset has delivered business value through its ability to drive revenue growth. Top performers are contributing an incredible 730 times more to the sales pipeline from marketing efforts than Laggard organizations. To put this in sales vernacular, almost one in two deals comes




from marketing at a top performing organization compared to two out of every 100 for Laggards (Table 1).

Organizations with top performance based on these three criteria earned Best-in-Class status, as described in Table 1. For additional details on the Aberdeen Maturity Class Framework, see The Competitive Framework Key in Appendix A.

Table 1: Top Performers Secure Best-in-Class Status

Definition of Maturity Class Mean Class Performance

Best-in-Class: Top 20%

of aggregate performance scorers

44% of Sales forecasted pipeline generated by Marketing 9% average YOY improvement (decrease) in cost of marketing content creation 15% average YOY improvement (decline) in time-to-market of marketing assets

Industry Average: Middle 50% of aggregate

performance scorers

9% of Sales forecasted pipeline generated by Marketing 0% average YOY improvement in cost of marketing content creation 2% average YOY improvement (decline) in time-to-market of marketing assets

Laggard: Bottom 30% of aggregate

performance scorers

2% of Sales forecasted pipeline generated by Marketing 5% average YOY worsening (increase) in cost of marketing content creation 6% average YOY decline (increase) in time-to-market of marketing assets


Fast Facts

√ 45% of the Best-in-Class provide a forum for collaboration in content creation

√ 38% of all respondents have multiple marketing agencies supporting multiple global locations

Finally, Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI) has long been the common denominator in the marketer's measurement equation. However, ROMI is often captured, measured and reported differently across organizations. Lest there be any debate that marketing executives are changing the paradigm on success measurements, consider these findings. When asked what ROMI measurement was most important to their organizations, 60% of all respondents indicated unequivocally that marketing generated leads converted into the sales pipeline is the measurement that matters most. While once highly touted metrics such as cost reduction or customer sentiment scores barely receive an honorable mention as a metric of choice by all respondents respectively (Figure 3).

However, it is important to note this change is being used more based on the maturity class. The top performers have shifted to this meaningful metric 29% more often than all other respondents (67% vs. 52%). While the historic, less meaningful measures like click through percentages, download quantity, or response rates are used by all other respondents selecting them




45% more then the Best-in-Class. Clearly the winds are changing with marketing focusing on metrics that matter most to the business as a whole and not measuring metrics that have the most relevance to the marketing world exclusively.

Figure 3: Marketers Measure What Matters to the Business

67%

22%6% 6%

52%

32%

7% 9%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

Marketing'scontribution to thesales forecasted

pipeline

Response rates(i.e. offers,visitations,postings)

Reduced costsfor labor or

vendors

Considerationrates or net-

promoter scores


Best-in-Class All Others67%

22%6% 6%

52%

32%

7% 9%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

Marketing'scontribution to thesales forecasted

pipeline

Response rates(i.e. offers,visitations,postings)

Reduced costsfor labor or

vendors

Considerationrates or net-

promoter scores


Best-in-Class All Others


The Best-in-Class PACE Model Focusing on market asset management to achieve corporate goals requires a combination of strategic actions, organizational capabilities, and enabling technologies that are summarized in Table 2. There is little doubt that limited staff and growing assets to be managed from a variety of sources continues to press companies large and small. However, Best-in-Class companies are focused on improving sales by delivering timely, relevant content in a variety of formats and outlets as the key strategy to thrive.

Table 2: The Best-in-Class PACE Framework

Pressures Actions Capabilities Enablers Lack of marketing staff required to manage assets

Improve relevancy through capturing content from diverse sources Speed the capture and dissemination of marketing assets

Controlled customization of marketing materials Formal process to capture and distribute assets Disseminate information on best practice assets to sales and marketing Periodic measurement of marketing asset effectiveness Refreshing of KPIs periodically Marketing has control over access and approval for use of assets Sales has access to a centralized database of marketing collateral

Marketing Asset Management Digital Asset Management Library Asset Management Brand Asset Management Web Content Management Web Analytics Marketing Automation Marketing Resource Management Social Media Monitoring





Best-in-Class Strategies While the top strategies of the three maturity classes are the same, the order in which they are pursued displays a difference in the evolution of asset management between the respondents.

“Too often, what looks good to Marketing doesn’t always resonate with prospects and/or customers. In order to achieve success, organizations must tie marketing initiatives to sales results and include customer and channel partner feedback into measurements.”

~ John Sweitzer, Director of Marketing

The time to market is a conventional measure frequently associated with the development, production and distribution of marketing collateral and materials. An analysis of marketing asset management requires that speed, a stalwart of success, be included and, indeed, the results justify this measure given its important to each maturity class. However, while top performing organizations understand the value of rapidly disseminating marketing assets to their organizations, the Industry Average and Laggards, having lagged behind deploying asset management practices and technology, are pursing this strategy at a significantly greater rate than the top performers. Laggards are 57% (53% compared to 33%) more likely to concentrate on speed of asset distribution than Best-in-Class (Figure 4).

Simultaneously, the top performers realize more readily than the others that the sheer volume of assets is rapidly leading to information overload. To combat this challenge, a third of best-performing companies are centralizing digital asset approval and use throughout their companies. Managing the branding, messaging and positioning efficiently in a world where the type and volume of collateral content is growing exponentially, requires a consolidated approval process to maintain brand compliance and consistency. While an important strategy for the Industry Average and Laggard companies, these firms prioritize central access at a rate 28% less (32% compared with 25% and 24% respectively) than the Best-in-Class companies (Figure 4).

Finally, the differing strategic priorities existing between the organizational classes are further highlighted through the pursuit of relevant content. All classes recognize the volume and complexity of the content used to enable the sales process is continuing to grow at a significant pace. And while all respondents believe capturing relevant content is an important strategy, the Best-in-Class rank this as their top initiative understanding that securing relevant information from multiple sources is crucial to success. Valuable content to support sales activities is generated from numerous sources and smart marketers realize that the genesis of valuable assets does not always originate from corporate offices. The disparate operating environment and the need to work collaboratively to produce the best content is more readily understood by the Best-in-Class who pursue securing assets from multiple sources as the top priority to ensure the most relevant and salient assets are captured, even in a disparate operating environment, and quickly distributed for enterprise-wide use (Figure 4).




Figure 4: Top Strategies to Optimize MAM

37%33% 32%35%

46%

25%

34%

52%

24%

0%

20%

40%

60%

Improve relevancy throughcapturing content from

diverse sources

Speed the capture anddissemination of marketing

assets

Centralize digital assetapproval and management

Percent of Respondents, n= 431

Best-in-ClassIndustry AverageLaggards

37%33% 32%35%

46%

25%

34%

52%

24%

0%

20%

40%

60%

Improve relevancy throughcapturing content from

diverse sources

Speed the capture anddissemination of marketing

assets

Centralize digital assetapproval and management

Percent of Respondents, n= 431

Best-in-ClassIndustry AverageLaggards


Finally, a consideration underlying strategies of all maturity classes regarding effective asset management is the changing mediums used in delivering materials. While it's crucial to secure the best content to resonate with prospects and customers, the delivery mechanism has a substantive impact on these initiatives as well. According to the respondents, content and assets must be prepared for delivery to a variety of on-demand, real time outlets. Whether content is leveraged in corporate web sites, email, social media or traditional print, each asset must be ready in a variety of instantaneous delivery mechanisms. This operational reality is forcing marketers in every maturity class to secure, deliver and store assets for use in near-real-time (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Where Are the Assets Used?

93% 88%

60%

43%37%

21%10%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Web Email Socialmedia

Print On-Demand

Agency Mobile Other


All Respondents

93% 88%

60%

43%37%

21%10%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Web Email Socialmedia

Print On-Demand

Agency Mobile Other


All Respondents





Aberdeen Insights — Relevant Marketing Metrics

Top-performing marketing organizations are laser-focused on strategies that deliver tangible, measurable results to the business. This correlation is also clearly apparent when evaluating market asset practices and performance. In fact, this research shows that 60% of marketers rate the most important metric used by their organizations to measure marketing’s return on investment is quantifying its impact on the sales forecasted pipeline in conjunction to asset development and deployment.

Why is this compelling metric rapidly becoming the standard that marketing organizations of all sizes and industries use to measure success even in areas like content and materials to support the dales cycle? Consider that 48% of all respondents to Aberdeen's August 2010 Quarterly Business Review indicate that organic revenue growth is their organization's top goal. Contrast this overarching objective with the desire by many marketers to measure their effectiveness via dated metrics like reduced production costs, brand consistency or customer satisfaction scores. While these once paramount metrics are still relevant to marketing and the business as a whole, they are increasingly marginalized in favor of more indicative measures. It would be short sighted to underestimate the significant shift underway as the "art" of marketing is quickly being driven toward a "science" that demands concrete, demonstrable value delivered to the business.

With organic business growth paramount, no metric connotes greater relevancy of assets, materials, and collateral than the impact to the business as a result of marketing's contribution to the sales forecasted pipeline. This captures not only leads being produced but also what has been converted and accepted by sales as a valid opportunity forecasted in their pipeline. And while it is calculated and reported in many ways, no other measure provides a more meaningful leading indicator to address the on-going requirement that marketers demonstrate a ROMI.

Lest readers assume other metrics are being forsaken; this research validates that, while a majority of all marketing organizations including Best-in-Class, measure performance based on contribution to the pipeline, the top performers deliver superior results against all conventional marketing metrics.

Table 3: The Best-in-Class Deserve The Status


Marketing Metric Best-in-Class Average Laggards Brand Consistency 21% 6% -2% Lead Conversion Rate 16% 4% -3% Return on Marketing Investments

8% 1% -6%

Sales Response Time 9% 3% -1% Sales Cycle Time 5% 0% -4% Error Rate (Misuse of Marketing Assets)

7% 1% -3%

Cost of Marketing Content Creation

5% 1% -3%


“MAM can contribute to higher ROI; however Sales and Marketing functions need to be joined at the hip on compensation. Our marketing team receives sales commission if they help to close the deal.”

~ Sajai Kurian, Managing Director, Alliance Company



Chapter Two: Benchmarking Requirements for Success

The selection of asset management technology solutions and its integration with marketing processes that support the collaboration, capture, production, and dissemination of assets plays a crucial role in the ability to turn these strategies into results that deliver revenue.

Case Study — A Knaack for Asset Management

Knaack is a leading manufacturer of premier storage solutions for industrial applications. Historically the company had a manual, labor-intensive marketing asset management process. Approximately three years ago, the company decided to implement a Marketing Asset Management (MAM) solution to capture and store all of its marketing materials, regardless of the format, within a centralized repository. The primary factor driving this initiative was to enable the sales team and channel partners with a simple, streamlined process for searching and utilizing this content while maintaining brand compliance and messaging consistency. “To maintain and strengthen our brand image and empower our sales staff and channel partners with relevant content, implementing a MAM solution was the logical way for us to go,” says Jim Scarlata, Senior Marketing Operations Manager at Knaack.

The new initiative had strong support by executive management within the company. “The strength and value of the new system was obvious; it urged the executive management to support implementation and utilization of this new technology.” Besides establishing strong support from top-level management, Knaack also focused on enabling easy access to its MAM portal by integrating it with its existing sales portal. “Seamless integration with our existing systems is a key driver making our systems work so well,” adds Scarlata. The MAM solution allows for the delivery of crucial marketing assets to sales representatives and channel partners in near real-time without compromising brand effectiveness.

Another key focus area of the company was making the MAM portal very intuitive, easy-to-use, and compatible with different asset types (i.e. .jpg, .eps, .png). Creating new and user-friendly methods to search for relevant assets improved adoption and utilization of the company’s MAM portal. The solution that Knaack implemented also allows it to track and measure the use of its marketing assets to determine and understand their effectiveness in delivering meaningful results to the business as a whole.

continued

“In order to support our business growth through our channel partners while maintaining the accuracy of our brand image, it was essential for us to utilize existing resources by enabling our partners to leverage marketing assets based on their specific needs.”

~ Jim Scarlata, Senior Marketing Operations Manager at Knaack

Fast Facts

√ 33% of all respondents plan to provide relevant staff with incentives based on marketing performance

√ 30% of all respondents plan to implement marketing asset management technology




Case Study — A Knaack for Asset Management

Providing relevant marketing content to each stakeholder so they can promote and sell the same product across myriad messages/forms while maintaining brand compliance and consistency had a significant impact on Knaack’s performance. It supported the company’s growth objectives by improving the use of relevant marketing assets, and speeding time-to-market. “Marketing asset management is an integral part of our business today. Enforcing and maintaining brand integrity was one of first and most important results that we achieved through our MAM system; our brand integrity has improved dramatically,” notes Scarlata.

Competitive Assessment Aberdeen Group analyzed the aggregated metrics of responding companies to determine whether their performance ranked as Best-in-Class, Industry Average, or Laggard. In addition to having common performance levels, each class also shared characteristics in five key categories: (1) process (the approaches they take to execute daily operations); (2) organization (corporate focus and collaboration among stakeholders); (3) knowledge management (contextualizing data and exposing it to key stakeholders); (4) technology (the selection of the appropriate tools and the effective deployment of those tools); and (5) performance management (the ability of the organization to measure its results to improve its business). These characteristics (identified in Table 4) serve as a guideline for best practices, and correlate directly with Best-in-Class performance across the key metrics.

Table 4: The Competitive Framework

Best-in-Class Average Laggards Customized content/landing pages delivered

44% 29% 21%

Standardized process for refreshing/versioning collateral

41% 32% 32%

Technology use is built into the marketing workflow and production process

Process

36% 29% 29%

Senior management understands value of single brand across regions, business/product units, etc.

80% 60% 52%

Senior management actively supports marketing asset management efforts to ensure compliance

Organization

77% 44% 41%

Fast Facts

√ Best-in-Class organizations access asset management solutions on daily basis 45% more than Laggard companies

√ 65% of top performing companies utilize a channel or partner distribution sales model




Best-in-Class Average Laggards Digital repositories are integrated with marketing campaign

technology

40% 25% 21%


Geographies and business units customize marketing content with proper controls in place

Knowledge

43% 28% 30%

42% Digital Asset Management 41% Marketing Asset Management

18% Digital Asset Management 19% Marketing Asset Management 22% Brand Asset Management

16% Digital Asset Management 21% Marketing Asset Management

Enabling Technologies

38% Brand Asset Management

17% Brand Asset Management

Periodic measurement of marketing asset effectiveness

49% 37% 31%

Relevant staff are provided with incentives based on marketing performance metrics

Performance

22% 13% 34%


Capabilities and Enablers "Our goal for marketing asset management is to maintain and build corporate brand equity while empowering local marketers to develop relevant content across a wide geography."

~ Roese Almon-Martin,Vice President, MEDRAD

Based on the findings of the Competitive Framework and interviews with end users, Aberdeen’s analysis of the Best-in-Class demonstrates that a highly identifiable set of corporate capabilities and technology led to measurable business success. This research demonstrates that the deployment of marketing asset management processes and technologies are common ingredients for producing superior business results.

Process Customers and prospects have widely differing needs and interact with companies in myriad ways across multiple mediums. As a result organizations with a "one size fits all" approach to creating and delivering assets 'pushed' from a central location to the wider distributed organization fail to address local content needs. Best-in-Class companies have defined processes to pre-approve and use marketing assets locally. The accuracy and quality of brand consistency for local service, sales and marketing staff is improved by positively impacting the speed, quality and relevance of their interactions with prospects and customers.

Developing core competencies to allow local customization of marketing assets on a pre-approved basis also supports Best-in-Class strategies for asset management. Pre-approved localization of assets maintains the need for central control of asset utilization to stakeholders with the necessary access rights while enforcing compliance with existing brand regulations. Simultaneously streamlined approval for customization enables the best



marketing organizations to provide content to deliver invaluable local relevancy. Best-in-Class companies are 121% (53% vs. 24%) more likely than Laggards to have implemented this process in support of their asset management strategies (Figure 6).

More importantly, superior marketing organizations realize that having a formal process to capture content and enable central access/approval is only part of a successful solution. The volume and complexity of formats makes it difficult for other functions to be aware of materials and collateral that is available or has worked effectively. Best-in-Class companies develop processes to disseminate information on asset best practices to their sales and marketing groups to address this. Best-in-Class companies are nearly twice as likely as Laggards (44% versus 26%) to have implemented this process in their business practices. Disseminating information on effective content fosters collaboration and allows the top performers to empower their sales and marketing team members with marketing collateral that is known to improve results.

Figure 6: Better Processes Delivers Better Assets

Fast Facts

√ 81% of Best-in-Class organizations leverage print-on-demand services to support asset management delivery

√ 35% of top performing companies utilize marketing asset management to maintain and secure their corporate/brand images from illegal activities

26%

22%

30%

24%

37%

29%

40%

32%

44%

48%

49%

53%

10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

Formal process tocapture and distribute

assets

Disseminateinformation on best

practice assets

Controlledcustomization of

marketing materials

Pre-approved use ofmarketing assets

used locally


LaggardsIndustry AverageBest in Class

26%

22%

30%

24%

37%

29%

40%

32%

44%

48%

49%

53%

10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

Formal process tocapture and distribute

assets

Disseminateinformation on best

practice assets

Controlledcustomization of

marketing materials

Pre-approved use ofmarketing assets

used locally




Organization Management To drive effective marketing and sales activity throughout an organization, the value of single brand consistency across geographies, business and product units must be understood by the entire enterprise and be supported by top executives. By retaining corporate and/or product brand image consistency, Best-in-Class companies increase the effectiveness of marketing messages to any target audience across distributed environments. Executive management at top performing companies combines two organizational strengths to gain optimum results. Not only do they recognize the value of a single brand and consistent messaging but also support asset management compliance 88% more often than Laggard




organizations. Indeed, the management at Best-in-Class organizations are "walking the walk and talking the talk" by understanding the value of a single brand and ensuring it is used appropriately.

Still, the power of brand and message consistency is often sacrificed by local marketing and sales staff who produce materials independently for the sake of perceived expediency or improved relevancy. This action exposes organizations to substantive risk by allowing any stakeholder to capture access and distribute marketing assets for any purpose. Best-in-Class companies recognize the damage that can be done if brand and message continuity is lost which is why top performers are 43% more likely than Laggards to have marketing control access to and use of marketing assets. Controlling content access and ensuring consistency with the corporate and/or product brand standards is crucial in maintaining the integrity of a company's brand. This capability enables organizations to mitigate the risks associated with managing their marketing assets while empowering relevant stakeholders to create timely materials that positively influence customer interactions in accordance with proven brand and message efficacy.

"Communication is critical for effective implementation and use of MAM. You need to arrive at agreed upon tools and use them as designed."

~ Director of Business Development at Mid-size

Architectural Company

However, top performing organizations are sensitive that a strong arm approach alone to asset development and management will thwart collaboration and stifle marketing and sales activity. This is why the top-performing organizations also enable sales representatives in their companies to access a centralized database of marketing collateral. Providing sales representatives with ready access to marketing assets supports their interactions with prospects and customers while reducing the risk of misusing marketing assets and enhancing marketing's contribution to sales efforts. Best-in-Class companies are over 50% more likely than Laggards (60% vs. 40% respectively) to have implemented this capability (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Balancing Access with Control

21%

40%

45%

25%

52%

52%

40%

60%

63%

10% 30% 50% 70%

Digital repositoriesare integrated with

marketing technology

Sales has access to acentralized database

of marketing collateral

Marketing has controlover use of assets



21%

40%

45%

25%

52%

52%

40%

60%

63%

10% 30% 50% 70%

Digital repositoriesare integrated with

marketing technology

Sales has access to acentralized database

of marketing collateral

Marketing has controlover use of assets




Knowledge Management Best-in-Class companies leverage knowledge of asset usage in additional ways to improve their organization's performance. As seen in the Analyst




Insight, marketers are being driven to measure their success on tangible business related metrics. ROMI is an established business relevant metric that can be used to support marketing efforts. For instance, using ROMI from an assets use perspective or its impact in sales activities is valuable. Capturing, recording and sharing existing asset performance with organizational stakeholders enables Best-in-Class companies to produce ROI estimates to substantiate their future marketing investments. Best-in-Class organizations leverage this knowledge at a rate of 43% (45% vs. 30% respectively) more often than all other organizations (Figure 8).

Figure 8: Asset Management Knowledge Improves Results

49%45%

34%30%

0%

20%

40%

60%

Periodic measurement of marketing asseteffectiveness

ROI estimates are used to cost justifyinvestments

Percent of Respondents, n=431

Best in Class All Others

49%45%

34%30%

0%

20%

40%

60%

Periodic measurement of marketing asseteffectiveness

ROI estimates are used to cost justifyinvestments




Case Study — Monitronics: Monitoring Your Asset Management Success

Monitronics is one of North America’s leading alarm security and monitoring providers. With commercial and residential customers in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico, this 700 employee company has seen significant growth in its business. Monitronics leverages an extensive Authorized Dealer Network of 500 to 600 independent companies that manage all the sales and installation of their alarm monitoring systems. While Monitronics purchases the contracts as a revenue stream from each of these independent firms and handles all the technical and customer support services, the company is responsible for managing the brand and multiple assets along with the legal contracts across multiple sales teams within numerous dealer geographies.

continued

Fast Facts

√ 51% of Best-in-Class organizations plan to increase spending on asset management solutions in the next 12 months

√ Demonstrated success is the top vendor selection criteria for 60% of all respondents





According to Jason Thompson, Senior Marketing Manager, his four member staff had significant hurdles managing the multitude of items, materials, and content the company’s dealers required on a daily basis. “At that time the entire fulfillment process was manual,” said Thompson, “and I had an entire full time person dedicated to handling production and distribution to the dealer network as well as handling customer service calls.” In addition, they were limited to having one vendor with four full time employees manage their account. The volume and complexity of the materials combined with the geographic disparity of the partners, supporting the individual needs was difficult. Monitronics provided all marketing materials to its authorized dealers to be used in local marketing and sales efforts – from direct mail advertisements, media placements, product brochures to door hanger notices.

It was a system fraught with challenges. According to Thompson there wasn’t a simple way for a dealer to, “take copy and place it into a template for use in an advertisement or direct mail piece.” Locking down the brand while providing the flexibility to dealers to access and leverage the company’s assets was near impossible. “From taking the order through emails or faxes to producing and shipping the materials, everything was manual,” said Thompson. In addition the lack of an asset management solution was costing Monitronics money and dealer satisfaction. There wasn’t an easy self-service way for dealers to access materials and the cost to produce and ship materials couldn’t be accurately projected given inventory often wasn’t on hand and had to be produced. While the volume of materials made the dealer costs higher, it was also a significant financial impact on Monitronics. The company was spending $150,000 a year subsidizing material production, providing a full time staff to process dealer orders and another to handle customer service issues and requests, and having third party warehouses to store and ship materials. Given this manual process, tracking assets usage and relevancy was impossible and the company often wrote off as much as $50,000 a year retiring old or ineffective materials.

In 2007, Thompson’s goal was simply “to make the phone stop ringing” by driving dealer costs down and improving the value of the assets Monitronics provided. A search was started to identify a solution that would provide the company’s entire catalog of materials for dealers to access instantly online from a web store front. The objective was to provide materials from signage to logo wear quickly, easily and through a fully automated, self-service model.

continued

"Having a marketing asset management solution enables my staff to spend identifying and producing content quickly that dealers sell more effectively."

~ Jason Thompson, Senior Marketing Manager,

Monitronics





After a significant RFP and vendor selection process, Monitronics implemented a hosted marketing asset management solution that provided dealers with the ability to integrate and personalize all of the company’s materials and content from a single store front portal called “ProShop.” Every item could instantly be customized and tailored to the dealer’s specific requirements and proofed immediately online, speeding the time of deliver to the market. Dealer satisfaction soared not only because they had visibility and an instant, firm commitment on availability but their costs were reduced by 40% through lower production and shipping. There was no need to maintain physical inventory for any asset – everything was stored and produced digitally enabling dealers to co-brand logos, advertisements and marketing collateral easily.

The technology solution also provided immense operational and financial value to Monitronics. The market asset management solution had an impressive ROI paying for itself in the first year of operation and eliminating most of the carrying, product and write offs costs. Not only were warehousing physical inventories eliminated past but tracking which materials were used to improve relevancy were automated. Asset usage is now monitored and reported with a click of a mouse. If an asset doesn’t perform well, it is easily and quickly taken down and made unavailable. And everything is available through the marketing asset management solution – from shirts for tradeshows to television advertisements – to be localized, customized and personalized. Monitronics has even integrated its marketing asset management solution directly into its CRM its legal forms produced and accessed from the asset management solution. The two people Thompson had dedicated to asset management is now one person who “spends 80% of their optimizing content and only 25% on customer producing service issues says Thompson.

Technology The technology solutions Best-in-Class companies are using include enhancing the organizational structure, improving process capabilities, and increasing knowledge acquisition. Coupling the internal capabilities outlined in this report with enabling technologies directly supports effective and efficient use of marketing assets across the organization. As a result, Best-in-Class organizations experience superior KPI results by speeding time to market of relevant resources and driving sales activities to support pipeline growth.

In fact, top performers are implementing asset management solutions at a rate 95% to 162% more than Laggards (Table 4). Top performing companies understand that asset management technology solutions improve



organizational processes related to content capture and production while simultaneously boosting knowledge that supports the development and dissemination of their materials. Whether brand asset management, marketing asset management or digital asset management solutions, the top marketing organizations have implemented and are planning on expanding their adoption of these specific technologies at a significant rate (Figure 9). Consider as further proof that 33% of the Best-in-Class companies have pursued marketing asset management initiatives for more than two years compared to 46% of Laggards that are planning but have yet to implement one this year or, at a minimum, sometime in the near future.

It is important to note that these top-performing companies aren't simply deploying technology for the sake of automation. The solutions being leveraged are not implemented in isolation but are, instead, done in concert with the top performers' internal capabilities and processes. As shown in the process section of Table 4, building technology into both the marketing workflow and production processes is done 25% more often at Best-in-Class organizations than Laggards (36% vs. 29%). This optimizes solution success by ensuring that the technology works in conjunction with the marketing organizations process capabilities. Top performers turn to asset management technologies far more readily than all others while also maximizing their investments by integrating solutions with internal workflows.

Figure 9: Faster Technology Adoption Drives Top Performers

41% 42% 38%

29% 27%23%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

Marketing AssetManagement

Digital AssetManagement

Brand AssetManagement

Percent of Respondents, n = 431

Best-in-Class (Current) Best-in-Class (Planned)

41% 42% 38%

29% 27%23%

0%

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60%

80%

Marketing AssetManagement

Digital AssetManagement

Brand AssetManagement

Percent of Respondents, n = 431

Best-in-Class (Current) Best-in-Class (Planned)


Finally, while Best-in-Class organizations have historically adopted asset management technologies earlier and deployed various solutions more readily, many companies also integrate technologies in a more comprehensive and compelling manner to deliver superior performance. Consider how the Best-in-Class organizations are merging the role of asset management with Customer Relationship Management/Sales Force Automation (CRM/SFA) solutions. Currently more than 33% of the top




performing companies utilize asset management technologies in conjunction with CRM/SFA versus only 8% of all other respondents. Those companies integrating these solutions between the sales and marketing functions, exchanging information in real time, achieve better alignment between the creation of marketing content and the assets’ use in sales activities. Performance metrics that typically struggle between the two disciplines like brand effectiveness and consistency are seen improving 200% (27% vs. 6%) and 300% (15% vs. 5%) respectively when the technologies are joined. When marketing is empowered by asset management solutions to capture, produce and manage the most relevant content that sales, in turn, can quickly leverage from their system of record, the ability to deliver content that quickly resonates in the market to improve lead conversion rates is impacted significantly (Figure 10).

Figure 10: Integrating CRM/SFA and Asset Management Improves Performance

27%

15% 14%13%

11%

6% 5%2% 1% 2%

0%

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30%

BrandConsistency

Return onMarketing

Investments(ROMI)

Time-to-Market /Speed of

Distribution

LeadConversion

Rate

BrandEffectiveness


MAM Integrated with CRM No CRM Integration27%

15% 14%13%

11%

6% 5%2% 1% 2%

0%

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30%

BrandConsistency

Return onMarketing

Investments(ROMI)

Time-to-Market /Speed of

Distribution

LeadConversion

Rate

BrandEffectiveness


MAM Integrated with CRM No CRM Integration


Aberdeen Insights — Customers Are Talking About You

Not surprisingly, marketers from every size organization, industry type and geographic location are faced with an ever increasing amount of content from a variety of internal and external resources to potentially support sales and marketing activities. And while relevancy of marketing assets is the cornerstone to capture and disseminate valuable content, determining what is most compelling becomes difficult in today's expansive environment. Identifying, prioritizing and delivering the most germane content that resonates most effectively with prospects and customers is a challenge dogging marketing asset practices in all organizations.

continued




Aberdeen Insights — Customers Are Talking About You

So where are the best firms turning when they seek new content that reverberates in the market? Listening to customers and prospects is a time honored best practice pursued at many companies. But in the online, on-demand world of today, social media is the epicenter for marketing asset development. Top performing companies are turning to the social media medium an impressive 84% more often than Laggard organizations (35% vs. 19% respectively). Few mediums provide a source for material as efficiently, rapidly and thoroughly as social media outlets.

Whether the business model is B2B, B2C or B2B2C, social media is a prime outlet to capture the voice of customers to leverage in new materials and campaigns. Identifying content that will be received by customers is far more likely to occur when secured from social media since the messaging is already in use with that constituency. Conversely social media, like no other outlet, provides a clear road map on messaging and content to avoid with customers and prospects. One can simply recall The GAP's new logo and the image becomes clear.

Best-in-Class marketing organizations are flocking to social media as a source for meaningful, timely and applicable content to be used in marketing assets.

Performance Management Understanding the unique information needs of different organizational users internally and externally is crucial for driving effective use of marketing assets and influencing interactions with customers and prospects. Measuring the frequency and effectiveness of specific assets allows the best companies to improve their utilization of marketing assets and, in turn, target the right prospect or customer with the right asset at the right time. The Best-in-Class are 48% (49% vs. 34%) more likely than Laggards to have implemented periodic measurement of marketing asset effectiveness, making it a clear differentiating ability.

Finally, no company can win the game if it doesn't know the score and managing marketing assets is no different. This research demonstrates that Best-in-Class companies are keenly aware of utilizing both fundamental and innovative performance management measures to advance their marketing materials and content in a manner that directly supports the business.

How many marketers will tell a story about a sales person who simply "had to have" a piece of collateral developed or a presentation created claiming that the entire organization would benefit from its use as well? The organization finds the dollars to produce the needed video, image, or brochure only to learn months later that the content was never used again by the sales person or anyone else in the organization either. Wasted time, money and effort for no results are, sadly, a common theme in the world of marketing asset management.



Top performers work to ensure a production scenario like this doesn't occur by measuring, analyzing and adjusting their marketing assets based on specific performance results. Best-in-Class organizations improve their management of assets by effectively planning and budgeting for their production and use. An organization can't manage content if a baseline isn't drawn from which performance is tracked. While business environments change and operating conditions are fluid, top performing organizations engage in this performance management competency 100% more often than all other organizations surveyed (34% vs. 17% as noted in Figure 10).

Figure 11: If You Build, They May Not Come

42%

33%30%

18%15% 15%

0%

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30%

40%

50%

Refreshing of KPIsperiodically

Closed-loop processes tomeasure collateral

effectiveness

KPIs are used to measureMAM effectiveness


Best in Class All Others42%

33%30%

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0%

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30%

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50%

Refreshing of KPIsperiodically

Closed-loop processes tomeasure collateral

effectiveness

KPIs are used to measureMAM effectiveness




And the best performing marketers don’t stop with forecasting asset production and use. While it is difficult to track marketing activity from creation to close, the best companies are 120% more likely (35% vs. 15%) than all other respondent to complete this activity to measure performance. These companies are engaging in closed loop measurement to highlight an assets value to the company as a whole.

Finally top marketing organizations are establishing KPI benchmarks which can be leveraged to evaluate marketing asset effectiveness 100% more often than all other organizations (30% vs. 15%). These KPI measures are easily adjusted to a specific industry, and are related to an individual company's applicable goals for success. Best-in-Class companies leverage performance management throughout the lifecycle of an asset to measure success and adjust resources which, in turn, support their ability to deliver more relevant content in a timely manner to drive sales activity.




Chapter Three: Required Actions

Fast Facts

√ 63% of the Best-in-Class companies utilize branded video for business purposes

√ 37% of the Best-in-Class have dedicated staff to monitor online communities to capture customer feedback

Whether a company is trying to move its marketing asset management performance from Laggard to Industry Average, or Industry Average to Best-in-Class, the following actions will help spur the necessary performance improvements:

Laggard Steps to Success • Executive management support of asset management

initiatives. Success for any strategy, objective or tactic always requires senior management support and asset management is no different. While Best-in-Class organizations have adopted a variety of asset management technologies more readily and have been using them longer, they have done so with the support and endorsement of executive management. With 59% of Laggards not having senior level support for an asset management program, any initiative must start with this alignment in place. Use the data in this report - specifically what is presented in Chapter One with regard to performance improvement in time to market and cost of marketing content to help you build the business case. But, if available, make sure to do so against your organization's current performance in both.

• Centralize your marketing asset approval and access. Only 24% of Laggard organizations provide sales with a centralized storage and access system for marketing assets. Many organizations, regardless of size and industry, assume that the best marketing assets are readily available or can be utilized without taking the brand standards or rules into consideration. This results in exposing organizations to the risk of allowing customization of marketing materials without approval, regardless of its format, source or intended audience. This is a critical action to support an organization in its development, management, and deployment of marketing assets.

• Use KPIs to measure marketing asset effectiveness. It's difficult to identify and pursue content that is the most relevant if an organization isn't clear what is being effective today. With a dismal 19% of Laggards utilizing KPIs to measure their asset effectiveness, substantial improvement can be achieved by focusing on this area. Determine what measures are most effective for your business to evaluate asset performance and implement them.

Industry Average Steps to Success • Develop a formal process to capture and disseminate

assets. Applying the business rules, regulatory and brand guidelines is crucial to ensure optimum market exposure, message consistency


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"Our marketing staffers are in a better place because they are doing more of what they, and we, want them doing rather than getting stuck in repetitive production activities."

~ Brian Mater, Marketing Manager, Ferrellgas

and logo or messaging compliance. Equally important is ensuring that valuable content is captured regardless of the originating source. Aberdeen research shows that 63% of the Industry Average companies do not have a formal process to secure and distribute approved materials. This is a key differentiating capability to manage marketing assets effectively that ensures brand and message consistency to improve performance results of marketing campaigns.

• Focus on the supporting technology. Improve your ability to rapidly produce, update and deliver customized marketing materials in compliance with regulatory and brand guidelines, regardless of medium, to support customer or prospecting programs/needs. Less than 21% of Industry Average organizations have adopted technology to handle the ever growing/expanding asset base and solutions like brand asset management, digital asset management, or marketing asset management add significant productivity.

• Provide ability to customize and localize. Whereas maintaining brand continuity and message consistency is a key need for marketing organizations, this must be tempered against available staff to manage assets and local market intelligence. Only 40% of the Industry Average firms enable local customization of marketing content. These companies must focus on capabilities and enabling technologies that leverage the local capture and customization of marketing content from a variety of sources in a timely manner while providing an immediate access, approval and delivery mechanism. This is especially relevant when multi-channel and/or multi-touch marketing and sales programs are implemented by collaborative service, sales and marketing roles within the organization. The ability to collaborate, combine, localize and/or customize marketing assets is critical to improve time to market of these assets and ensure their effective use.

Best-in-Class Steps to Success • Make viewing and approving of marketing content

automated and auditable. Best-in-Class organizations understand the value that asset management delivers to the organization and they leverage the benefits of technology solutions more so that the other maturity classes. However, the benefits of automation should expand beyond asset management and apply to the process of reviewing and approving content - an area only 27% of the Best-in-Class are engaged with currently. As the volume of materials increases and the collaborative sources for content expands, the ability to streamline the approval process and complete an audited review delivers greater efficiency to the marketing organization.

• Integrate asset management with your customer relationship management/sales force automation solutions.




The ultimate goal of any marketing asset, regardless of its format or content is to have the item used readily and effectively in sales activity. Any action that increases the ease of use for sales will directly support marketing's ability to contribute to the sales forecasted pipeline. Yet only 33% of the best performing companies integrate their asset management technology with their CRM/SFA solutions. This integration enables sales staff to "take the path of least resistance" never needing to exit CRM/SFA or learn another application when identifying, accessing and utilizing marketing assets.

• Marketing should partner more closely with their IT or technology partners. With only half of the Best-in-Class indicating they work closely with their own IT, technology continues to be a significant area of opportunity for advancement and competitive differentiation. The volume of marketing assets is too large and the increasingly complex formats across dispersed geographies and business units too difficult to expect a marketing organization to manage them independently or without the support and engagement of technology supported by the organization's IT staff. Partnering with your IT staff enables the marketing organization to ensure the best technologies are being used not only to capture, store and retrieve content but deliver it to customers and prospects optimally.

Aberdeen Insights — Summary

The ability to collaborate, combine, localize and customize marketing assets is critical to improve the time to market of these materials. However the resources needed to effectively capture and store a vast pool of marketing assets and strategically manage them as a part of business efforts is crucial to improve performance in the distribution and compliant use of these materials.

Companies proceeding down the digital highway must effectively use internal capabilities in conjunction with enabling technologies to control the spectrum encompassing capture, storage, dissemination, usage and archival and/or disposal of assets. These resources are no longer banished to a brochure stand when ineffective but must be viewed as tools that enable organizations to track, measure, and understand the individual and aggregate patterns occurring from their sales interactions.

In turn these resources are increasingly being used to measure the effectiveness of their marketing organizations to produce engaging customer or prospect interaction that contributes to top line revenue growth.



Appendix A: Research Methodology

During October 2010, Aberdeen examined the use, the experiences, and the intentions of more than 400 enterprises using marketing asset management.

Study Focus

Responding executives completed an online survey that included questions designed to determine the following:

√ Providing central access to materials, regardless of medium to localize, customize and distribute to relevant sales and marketing staff.

√ Deploying technologies to collaborate capture and disseminate relevant content from a variety of sources such as web activities, social media interactions, and marketing campaigns.

√ Utilizing an automated system to track/report on asset usage, relevance and impact on this business.

The study aimed to identify emerging best practices for marketing asset management across forms, geographies and business units to provide a framework by which readers could assess their own management capabilities in this area.

Aberdeen supplemented this online survey effort with interviews with select survey respondents, gathering additional information on marketing asset management strategies, experiences, and results.

Responding enterprises included the following:

• Job title: The research sample included respondents with the following job titles: Director/VP/C-level (66%); Manager (20%); Staff (4%); and other (10%).

• Department / function: The research sample included respondents from the following departments or functions: Marketing (36%), Sales / Business Development (30%), Corporate Management (15%), procurement, supply chain, or logistics (1%), IT (4%), Finance (1%): Customer/Field Services (1%), Operations (3%), Human Resources (1%), Product Engineering (1%), and other (7%).

• Classification: The research sample included respondents from both Business to Business and Business to Consumer industries. Business to Business (B2B) was the larger segment with 67% of the sample.

• Geography: The majority of respondents (65%) were from North America which includes Mexico and Canada. Remaining respondents were from Europe (14%), the Asia-Pacific region (14%), Middle East & Africa (5%) and South/Central Americas & Caribbean (2%)

• Headcount: 17% of respondents were from large enterprises (headcount greater than 1,000 employees); 20% were from midsize enterprises (headcount between 100 and 999 employees); and 63% of respondents were from small businesses (headcount between 1 and 99 employees).




Table 5: The PACE Framework Key

Overview Aberdeen applies a methodology to benchmark research that evaluates the business pressures, actions, capabilities, and enablers (PACE) that indicate corporate behavior in specific business processes. These terms are defined as follows: Pressures — external forces that impact an organization’s market position, competitiveness, or business operations (e.g., economic, political and regulatory, technology, changing customer preferences, competitive) Actions — the strategic approaches that an organization takes in response to industry pressures (e.g., align the corporate business model to leverage industry opportunities, such as product / service strategy, target markets, financial strategy, go-to-market, and sales strategy) Capabilities — the business process competencies required to execute corporate strategy (e.g., skilled people, brand, market positioning, viable products / services, ecosystem partners, financing) Enablers — the key functionality of technology solutions required to support the organization’s enabling business practices (e.g., development platform, applications, network connectivity, user interface, training and support, partner interfaces, data cleansing, and management)


Table 6: The Competitive Framework Key

Overview The Aberdeen Competitive Framework defines enterprises as falling into one of the following three levels of practices and performance:

In the following categories: Process — What is the scope of process standardization? What is the efficiency and effectiveness of this process? Best-in-Class (20%) — Practices that are the best

currently being employed and are significantly superior to the Industry Average, and result in the top industry performance.

Organization — How is your company currently organized to manage and optimize this particular process?

Industry Average (50%) — Practices that represent the average or norm, and result in average industry performance.

Knowledge — What visibility do you have into key data and intelligence required to manage this process? Technology — What level of automation have you used to support this process? How is this automation integrated and aligned?

Laggards (30%) — Practices that are significantly behind the average of the industry, and result in below average performance. Performance — What do you measure? How

frequently? What’s your actual performance?


Table 7: The Relationship Between PACE and the Competitive Framework

PACE and the Competitive Framework – How They Interact Aberdeen research indicates that companies that identify the most influential pressures and take the most transformational and effective actions are most likely to achieve superior performance. The level of competitive performance that a company achieves is strongly determined by the PACE choices that they make and how well they execute those decisions.





Appendix B: Related Aberdeen Research

Related Aberdeen research that forms a companion or reference to this report includes:

• Sales and Marketing Alignment: Collaboration + Cooperation = Peak Performance; September 2010

• Restocking The Marketer's Tool Box In The Digital Age; June 2010

• Optimizing Lead-To-Win: Shrinking the Sales Cycle and Focusing Closers on Sealing More Deals; May 2010

• Providing a 360˚ View of the Customer: Better Service - Higher Sales, March 2010

• Sales Intelligence: Preparing for Smarter Selling,; February 2010

• Unified Communications: Unleashing Transformation, Efficiency, Collaboration, and Compliance; March 2010

Information on these and any other Aberdeen publications can be found at www.aberdeen.com.

Author: Chris Houpis, Senior Research Analyst, Marketing Strategy & Effectiveness, ([email protected])

Since 1988, Aberdeen's research has been helping corporations worldwide become Best-in-Class. Having benchmarked the performance of more than 644,000 companies, Aberdeen is uniquely positioned to provide organizations with the facts that matter — the facts that enable companies to get ahead and drive results. That's why our research is relied on by more than 2.2 million readers in over 40 countries, 90% of the Fortune 1,000, and 93% of the Technology 500.

As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of Harte-Hanks (Information – Opportunity – Insight – Engagement – Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit Aberdeen http://www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to http://www.harte-hanks.com.

This document is the result of primary research performed by Aberdeen Group. Aberdeen Group's methodologies provide for objective fact-based research and represent the best analysis available at the time of publication. Unless otherwise noted, the entire contents of this publication are copyrighted by Aberdeen Group, Inc. and may not be reproduced, distributed, archived, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written consent by Aberdeen Group, Inc. (071309b)



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