A Marketing Geek's Fantasy - the be all, do all Marketing Engine

Do a search on Google for "marketing software" and you will get about 385,000,000 results; "marketing saas" gets over 2,000,000. With all these results, I still can't find my ideal "Marketing Engine". Let me explain this be-all-does-all "application": put simply, it is an application that ties all of my team's strategic and tactical marketing information together in one place, across products, projects and processes. The underlying value proposition is that it can help repeatably drive our marketing activities from start to finish with lower costs and higher success rates.

The requirements list isn't that long or difficult to deliver on:

1. the engine must support the sequential steps of marketing strategy creation through tactical execution: Plan > Segment > Revise Plan > Create > Execute > Measure > Improve > Plan
   
   
   
   
2. it should be possible to manage individual segments, mediums and product lines - or roll them up for consolidated management
   
   
   
   
3. Processes (planning, budgeting, SEO, lead scoring, etc.) and Projects (product launches, events, individual campaigns, etc.) must both be supported
   
   
   
   
4. real-time with reporting, dashboards and decision support from 50,000 feet down to ground level
   
   
   
   
5. a pro-active recommendation and optimization capability that can statistically evaluate all campaigns, segments and outcomes to provide the optimal future spend structure with what-if decision making
   
   
   
   
6. Lead scoring before hand offs to sales
   
   
   
   
7. 
   
   100% web based
   
   
   
   
8. able to integrate with CRM tools (gotta bring the sales team to the party)
   
   
   

It's not asking too much is it? As a consumer it would be Nirvana. As a marketing team responsible for defining and rolling it out, it would be pretty awesome as well. You could create some really interesting UI, logos, collateral and revenue generation campaigns ? As far as I know there is nothing out there that does what I want my Marketing Engine to do. Until one comes to market, I will have to make do with the five or six stand-alone applications that I have come to rely on: IQ's project / process automation platform, planning spreadsheets, our CRM package (SugarCRM), website analytics reports, adword reports and finances budgeting reports. If anybody knows of something like the Marketing Engine that I have described, let me know - I would love to check it out.

Making Distributed Teams Work

I recently read an article by Matt Asay of Alfresco about their highly virtual organization and some of the fundamentals that make them successful. It is hard to question his credibility in this area - Alfresco is doing a superb job strategically and tactically so something is working. They have defined their market (Enterprise Content Management), structured their business model (commercial open source) and are hitting it out of the park in a number of important metrics (downloads, customers, etc.) Still, I am a bit sceptical about the "all is rosy" picture that he paints.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2007/05/building_an_onl.html#comments


Here is why I am sceptical. At IQ, our marketing team is split between Massachusetts, USA and Bangalore, India. I have experienced the cost benefits of offshore teams, but I have also had to overcome the downsides of virtual teams. There are a few main obstacles to making teams work: (1) team cohesion, (2) communication friction, and (3) specialized knowledge. Let's explore them:

(1) team cohesion - I believe that communication is a cornerstone of effective teams. When you are spread across the country or around the world, communication is very difficult. It is a challenge to build effective teams when they can only communicate for two or three hours each day via conference call or IM. On-site visits and get-together certainly help but can never really replace hallway conversations.


(2) communication friction - anytime that you have virtual teams, you will inevitably have communication friction. Just being in different timezones and needing to schedule calls around different team's schedules introduces friction. I typically have calls to my virtual team from 7:30am - 10:00am every day. It works, but I would definitely prefer to have them down the hall for ad hoc discussions.

(3) specialized knowledge - where specific market knowledge or market activities are required in a geographic area, virtual teams do not work. My team in India is focused on marketing production (e.g. website creation and management, Flash development, collateral creation, SEO) and campaign execution (e.g. direct mail, SEM, online advertising). Market specific activities such as collateral creation, webinars, etc. require specialized knowledge and have to be done by local (USA based) team members.

Virtual teams can work, but they come with a cost.

Off-shore marketing production - a new twist

I recently formed a "Marketing Production" team in Bangalore that includes a marketing manager, web-developer and graphics specialist. There are a number of reasons for starting the team but the main one is budget. Essentially this team is an alternative to a marketing agency but at a fraction of the cost.

The team in India is responsibile for web-site development, collateral creation, SEO, online advertising / SEM, Flash production, campaign execution and CRM administration. Activities like strategic planning, content creation, customer interations, event execution and PR will remain in the US.

While off-shore marketing and off-shore development are clearly different, I expect that the 5+ years of experience I have gained working with off-shore development teams will pay dividents. I feel that there will be a couple of critical success factors: diligent hiring, constant communication, well defined processes and clear objectives. Right now I have all of them in place.

It will be interesting to see if the issues of location, time-zone and a lack of industry expertise can be overcome. I am confident that they can. Time will tell.

Competence Party

Over the last few years I have enjoyed reading Bob Lewis' weekly article "IS Survivor". His advice and thoughts may be focused on IT, but they apply just as well to pretty much any other function. This week his article deals with competency and accountability. Some highlights of his tongue-in-cheek Competency Party Platform:

"We will know what we want to accomplish, be clear in how we describe it, and know why it's a good idea.

We will concentrate our efforts on a small number of important goals, recognizing that if we try to accomplish everything we'll end up accomplishing nothing.

We will be realistic. We will choose courses of action only from among those possibilities predicated on all physical objects obeying the laws of physics, human nature not somehow changing for the better, and what has gone wrong in the past having something useful to teach us.

Our decisions will always begin by examining the evidence. And we will recognize that when our cherished principles collide with the evidence, the evidence wins. Every time.

With new evidence we will reconsider old decisions. Without it, we won't.

We will never mistake our personal experience for hard evidence. Personal experience is the evidence we know best. It's also a biased sample.

We will think first, plan next, and only then act. The only exception is a true emergency, where making any decision in the next two minutes is better than making the right decision sometime in the next several days.

We will never mistake hope for a plan. A plan describes what everyone has to do, in what order, to achieve a goal. Vague intentions and platitudes don't.

We will sweat the details. Vague intentions and platitudes don't have any, which is why those who stop with them always fail.

We will put the most qualified person we can find in every position. We'll find some other way to reward high-dollar campaign contributors. Also, if we find someone is not able to succeed at what we've asked them to do, we'll replace them with someone who is.

We will never blame anything on the law of unintended consequences. Our job is to foresee consequences, which we can usually do if we think things through. "

Bob makes some very good points to manage by. A couple of additional ones that could be included:

We will implement repeatable processes and constantly improve them. Business success and scale depends on process success.

We will measure our progress and improve accordingly. Metrics and measurements let you know how you are performing and react accordingly.

Coming Full Circle Back To Custom Applications

As with all technology cycles, we are in for a reversal. The trend of buying packaged applications has been very strong for the last decade +, but is about to change directions. I predict (yes you can quote me) that over the next 24 months (possibly 36 months) we will see a new shift towards enterprise application development.

There are a few forces driving this shift:

1. Labor is less expensive - with off-shore development there are large groups of developers that are available to do application coding at a low cost (no duh comments on this one - I realize that off-shore development has been going on for quite some time).
2. The core functionality stack is already in-place - in most organizations, the large functional components (ERP, SCM, MRO, CRM, etc.) already exist. Still the complex differentiation requirements of modern businesses are not met by these packages. There is a need to extend and expand functionality to pull ahead of the pack.
3. 80% foundations exist already - this final factor is probably the most important. In the past, companies had to build complete solutions from scratch. Today they have a major advantage. With open source solutions available in almost every category, and with the components (web server, reporting, database, etc.) available for free, significant portions of solutions already exist pre-built. Customizing the functionality (which is never trivial) is all that remains.

So, if you are an in IT or are a corporate business user rejoice and celebrate the new opportunities......maybe; there is a reason that SAP, Oracle and the others seemed so inviting that you were willing to pay millions.

Off Shore Development - Shoe-horning a SWOT Analysis

A friend of mine has recently been considering off-shoring a portion of his development organization, this post is a synopsis of my thoughts and experience....

Off-shore development has been going of for more than a couple decades. When I started with Accenture (then Andersen Consulting) in 1994, engineers in the Philippines were being employed to do off-shore development - simply missing the ubiquitous moniker. Only with India's tremendous growth in this area and the exposure of outsourcing in Friedland's book "The World Is Flat", has off-shore development truly started to be universally discussed.

Despite all the hype, observations by media pundits and the reality of off-shore development don't really jive. India will not take all US IT jobs, China will not replace India as the preferred destination (in the Short Term) and the cost savings won't last all that much longer. Having managed a 40 person on-shore / off-shore product development and marketing organization (based in Bangalore, India) for the last three years, I have come to understand some of the capabilities and drawbacks of this development model along with some ability to cut through the hype.

Off-shore Model - Various Editions
A brief synopsis of 3 different models that can be used to analyze the various development structures.

1. Wholly Owned Subsidiary- The off-shore development organization is owned by the parent company and all 'workers' are employees. This structure is typically used by Multi-nationals that have the ability to staff a large organization, deploy the required processes, invest in the necessary tools and have a low enough overhead:delivery ratio to make it cost effective. Microsoft, Google, SAIC, IBM, EDS, etc. have successfully deployed this model.
2. 3rd Party Development Organization - The off-shore development organization is owned by a third-party organization and all the 'workers' are employees of the third-party organization. Typically the 3rd party will be responsible for the processes, tools, staffing and delivery. Tata, Infosys and Wipro are the pioneers of this model and are constantly evolving to be more like traditional consulting organizations rather than just low cost development organizations.
3. Body Shop - At the most basic form, Body Shop organizations provide workers and space without the management and oversite. Process development, tools, etc are left up to the customer. Body Shopping will not be addressed in this posting since I don't believe it is a particularly effective method of off-shoring compared to the other two models.

Model Analysis

Analyzing business models is always subjective and difficult to structure without some form of a framework. While not ideal, I am "shoe-horning" a SWOT Analysis since it is close enough and better than any alternatives that I considered.

Model 1 : Wholly Owned Subsidiary

Strengths

• Direct control over all aspects of development and delivery
• Your costs do not include their Margin
• As employees, you are able to provide unique incentives (e.g. options) and perks (e.g. rotation programs)
• Overhead costs associated with managing their manages do not exist

Weaknesses

• Your costs include your overhead expenses - unless you are a multi-national you will never have the same overhead:delivery ratio that a large outsource company will have
• All HR initiatives are yours and your HR department must be prepared to support the local initiatives and regulations.
• Engineers want career paths (especially in India) with specific milestones. Your organization must be large enough to support growth and their career paths.
• It is easier for "Name Brand" companies to hire top talent - if you don't have the brand, the Tata's, IBM's and Accenture's of the world will have a foot-up in recruiting.
• You are responsible for developing your processes and making sure that they work.
  

Opportunities

• Your off-shore management team must be integrated into your local management team. I have been fortunate to work with an exceptional country manager. It makes all the difference.
• While cost savings are going away, there is still a pretty significant value proposition. As of April 2007, the loaded cost per employee, per year is approximately $17,000. This is for a 100 person development organization and includes HR, Operations, Finance, Management and IT resources in the total number. Additional costs such as

Threats

• Costs are rising rapidly - this is especially true in Bangalore and other Tier 1 cities. When compared to the US: Salaries are lower, Telecommunications is higher, HW is equivalent or higher, SW is equivalent, Power is higher, Space is equivalent in Tier 1 cities though lower elsewhere, Admin Overhead is lower.
• Attrition is a significant factor when working in India.

Model 2 : 3rd Party Development Organization

Strengths

• You do not need to "deal" with all the legal, HR and regulatory issues of managing an off-shore subsidiary.
• They can bring the processes, tools and best practices from day 1. This should not be overlooked.
• If you go with a large organization, they can provide the career paths and incentives that staff in India require. However, you have less control over the types of incentives that you can provide to their employees.

Weaknesses

• Your costs include their Margin.
• Their processes are fairly rigid.
• You have limited control over the resources that get added to your project.
  

Opportunities

• If you don't have world-class development processes in place, working with a CMMI-5 company is a good way to develop them.
• The Golden Rule applies. If you are a SME, you will always be a second tier customer - focus and priority goes to the customers that generate millions of $ in biling revenues.

Threats

• If product development / IT delivery is a core compency to your company, by off-shoring you lost control.

Critical Success Factors

• Your processes (or partner's processes) and associated tools must be rock solid.
• Metrics for tracking project success must be in-place.
• Your team must clearly segment activities and responsibilities between locations.
• HR needs to be a tremendous focus - hiring, growing and retaining talent can make or break an off-shoring initiative.
• Communication is critical
  Communication is critical
  One more time - communication is critical. Daily conference calls, online chat sessions, midnight Skype sessions and regular trips for in-person meetings are all absolutely critical to success.

Summary

• Difficult for SMEs to do it themselves
• Risk is compounded due to distance and time
• Cost justification for India is going away
• If your development processes are not solid you will have major issues.
• There are some great resources in India - skills extension for your team can be a great reason in itself.

Library

http://www.solovatsoft.com/softwaremethodology.html : some good white papers though tilted towards their approach.

http://blogs.msdn.com/architectinsight/archive/2007/03/12/globalisation-clinic.aspx : a Microsoft blog that addresses a number of valid points.

Online Marketplaces ...Back To The Future

InformationWeek has a very interesting article on Red Hat's move to having an online marketplace. This is consistent with the IQ strategy and certainly highlights that our approach and positioning are on the leading edge of the market. Other notable early movers include SugarCRM (SugarExchange), Joomla (Joomla Exchange) and Salesforce.com (AppExchange). Each of these companies have identified the value of leveraging their brands and user communities for growth - sort of like judo for nenw technology companies. I expect that we will see a lot more companies launching these types of initiatives. Having an Exchange is almost a requirement for Open Source companies but I also expect others such as Quickbase, Basecamp and even heavyweights like SAP to enter the fray.

Red Hat Talks Up Online Open Source Marketplace
Linux leader looks to certify the growing number of open source programs for its operating system and middleware platform. http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=198001606

Developing an Exchange / Marketplace strategy is one thing, being able to fund, execute and deliver on that strategy is quite another (sounds very late 90s .bomb) . So, what are the critical success factors? I believe that there are at least 5 :

1. Strategic Positioning - how does the marketplace contribute to making customer's existing investments even more valuable? how will the "owner" company benefit from the Exchange? Salesforce, SugarCRM and F5 have all done great jobs of launching Exchanges that are complementary to their core products. From what I have seen of the Red Hat Marketplace, they are missing the mark. Their marketplace is a venue to purchase a limited number of products that you can purchase directly or download for free with an extra click or two. Without value to the end customer, I don't forsee much traction.
2. User Base -the larger the user and partner base, the higher the probability of success. It stands to reason that the more consumers there are, the more developers are inclined to spend time building solutions that they can profit from.
3. Community - I draw a distinction between User Base and Community since one does not imply the other. To be successful there needs to be a vibrant Community which can add new applications (free and for a fee), post answers to user questions and most importantly refer others to the product / service / marketplace.
4. Ease of Engagement - ease of engagement is probably the most important aspect of building a dynamic community and network. If it is difficult to "engage" - customers and partners won't. In a world of distractions and countless alternatives, engaging and captivating customers and partners is critical. From sign-up through documentation to online chat and user forums, engaging customers and partners is the critical challenge.

Will there be a first mover advantage? Will established players such as Microsoft, SAP and Google enter the market and provide superior alternatives? We are in the early stages of an exciting time - traditional software, open source software and SaaS business models are colliding, business models are evolving and revolutionary new players are entering the marketplace (lousy pun...couldn't be avoided). I look forward to seeing how the first crop of Exchanges 2.0 take-off and evovle.