Marketing Resource Management

What is Marketing Resource Management?

Marketing efforts are made by you and the competition and there are a few factors that set you apart. Both you and all the players in the market want to make more money, and you both want a better, quicker ROI. In this sense the different companies are quite similar to each other, not in the means through which they reach their middle and long term goals though. If you are to get more out of every dollar spent, you either need to have technological advantage, better staff, or more streamlined work processes that allow you to cut down on unnecessary expenses.

Marketing is one of the important aspects of making the sale, without having a clear understanding of all the workflows related to it you stand no chance against the competitors who do. Either to close the gap or gain some breathing space, you will have to start monitoring how marketing resources are spent.

Marketing resource management is a means to this end, it's a software solution developed with the sole purpose of helping you comb the loose threads. It's either part of your CRM or BI software or there is an available upgrade to your existing IT infrastructure that makes it able to track budgetary, time and staff resources in connection with marketing efforts.

The Software Background

The particular implementation is rarely more than a decision based on its price and the expected ROI. Technical details are often but of secondary importance. If you already have an IT infrastructure, it may make sense to keep it intact adding software to it that are compatible with the running services. Consult with the IT department to find out what key elements are there that need to be taken into consideration when choosing the right piece of software. If you run Windows Server 2003 or 2008, you may want ODBC or .NET support, otherwise XML, ODF or J2EE should be the standards to follow.

If you don't have the hardware up and running, you can consider SaaS(Software as a Service) solutions. These are like any other web-based services, you get an account for a monthly fee and that's it; no server upkeep costs, no software related expenses and fixes are done behind curtains without you ever getting to know that they've occurred.

What Does the Software do for You?

The short version is that it keeps your marketing related efforts organized and tracks key marketing metrics. It keeps track of the paperwork. It also deals with all the time, budgetary and staff assets.

The paperwork is often dealt with through a shared workspace. It allows participants to log in and make adjustments to spreadsheets, copies, direct marketing mails, posters, flyers and brochures collaboratively. With properly set access levels everyone can complete their work without hindering others' performance.

It saves time on paper pushing, rendering turnaround times to virtually non-existent. Speeding up the process like that doesn't break the budget yet can yield in a respectable advantage over the competition. Anything that allows you to better position your advertisements time-wise than your competition will be a huge benefit to your company.

A marketing resource management (MRM) solution stores data regarding every campaign including expenses, estimated completion dates, time budgets and everything that is relevant to the project.

Note that EAI tools (enterprise integration application) may come in very handy when you are managing your marketing resources. An EAI system makes gathering information from all departments much easier. If your marketing staff have the necessary access to data they need, then they will be able to make better marketing decisions for your company.

Other Resources Saved

A properly implemented resource management software allocates jobs to members of the staff either with or without the help of managers. It allows people to work on parts of the job they're most familiar with. Once there is little or no overlap in work done, the redundancy is eliminated. This function alone can save your company 5-10% men hours, and sometimes that's all it takes to set the organization on a constantly progressing growth.

Money

No business intelligence solution is complete without the promise of saving you enormous amounts of investing capita. While it's not a half bad idea to read brochures of MRM software with a healthy amount of skepticism, you should be well aware that however much the provider asks for their solution, the ROI is most probably less than a year. There are certain assets that produce their worth in more than five years, and that makes a good BI or MRM solution a better investment.

Final Words

MRM software are designed in a way that lets you keep track of- and visualize all aspects of ongoing or planned marketing efforts. They can be either on-premise hosted or hidden behind the cloud on-line, it doesn't matter as long as you can justify the investment with the number of features your choice of solution offers.

There are no one size fits all prices, mostly because bigger companies get discounts, and some industries don't need certain features. The best way to assess the upcoming expense is to call some of the providers and ask for quotes directly. Marketingcentral.com is one of these providers, you may also want to contact Tenrox.com and SAP. Note that the latter deals with much wider aspects of Business Management Software, therefore you will have to either buy specialized software or hire a SAP specialist to design the environment you need.