EFFICIENT MARKETING PLANNING WITH PIVOTAL CRM

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1 WHITEPAPER EFFICIENT MARKETING PLANNING WITH PIVOTAL CRM A Win-Win for Marketing and Sales

2 WHITEPAPER MARKETING PLANNING 2 ABOUT The need for increased collaboration between marketing and sales in a fast changing business environment has become more and more critical for the success of a business over the last couple of years. Marketing and sales share the responsibility for the corporate sales funnel; one is in charge of filling the funnel and the other one of executing and converting for business success.

3 WHITEPAPER MARKETING PLANNING 3 BUSINESS SITUATION HAS CHANGED NEEDING BETTER COLLABORATION BETWEEN SALES AND MARKETING Over the last few decades the growth of business was driven by first going international and then going global in order to increase market share, turnover, profits and finally the shareholder value. Today s situation has changed, it has become more and more difficult to find enough new sales opportunities and the conversion rate has decreased. So it is more and more important to focus on the existing customers in order to keep them or cultivate them. The tasks and needs in both areas have changed. Due to the increasing cost pressure in parallel with the pressure on marketing to control their budget, the need to become more effective, to become a profit centre and become more accountable for the company s success has increased. What is needed to help both sides to overcome these challenges? A robust operational database: a data foundation that captures our business processes, market data and a full digital profile about leads, customer companies and contacts. A roll based interface to address the specific needs of the processes involved in functions and roles (e.g. different screens for sales and marketing). A platform to exchange information on the past, current and planned activities of sales and marketing to support each other. An easy way to set up your KPI s and measure the success of the marketing campaigns, delivering real time insights on ROI of your marketing investments. A flexible system to tailor the company s unique marketing processes. IMPROVING THE SALES AND MARKETING SITUATION Let s look at some key points where better execution can lead to reduced cycle time, improved cost-effectiveness and an altogether win-win situation for both marketing and sales. Improved Communication Ideally you want everybody in your organisation to know what marketing has done, is doing and is going to do, as a start. Communicating the why and when is as important as the what. It is also important for marketing to communicate what is expected from the other departments to support marketing activities for them to become successful and to open a structured way for sales to tell marketing what prospects or customers are expecting. Once the programme is underway, ongoing communication becomes even more critical. A change in one part of the process affects all of the downstream tasks and deliverables. By communicating in a real-time fashion, all affected parties can make adjustments and align themselves to the updated plan. You won t lose additional time and resources because someone failed to learn about the critical adjustments that they should have made. Pivotal CRM provides a single platform for marketing and sales to share information. It enables marketing to capture all important information in marketing campaigns and marketing projects and allows sales to give feedback. Automatic notification functionalities inform about new programs or changes. Efficient cost management With regard to marketing financials, many marketers find themselves in a no man s land between the high level accounts tracked in the company s general ledger system and the need to understand how each activity actually contributes to the success of the business. Additionally, most of the costing information that comes back to marketing focuses exclusively on the costs per piece for direct marketing campaigns.

4 WHITEPAPER MARKETING PLANNING 4 The costs of campaign planning and offer development, content creation and project management are left in one big pool of poorly understood expenses. Providing capability that moves you from spreadsheet based systems to a comprehensive financial monitoring environment; you can move from guesswork to a situation where you can proactively make your financial plans and assess the true costs of executing a marketing programme. By combining your variable costs with costs of executing each activity, you can make decisions about where you should invest. When market conditions change, you know exactly where you stand and can easily make adjustments to your spending. Pivotal CRM enables marketing to plan budgets top down or bottom up. In the marketing projects the expenses can be captured and categorised. By automatically summarising and rolling up this information, Marketing has all financial information at their fingertips. By assigning a Lead to a marketing programme as a source, the costs per lead through to opportunities and then to won projects and revenues help make marketing accountable. Process Improvement Maximizing the quality of marketing While the rest of the enterprise has gone about their investments in Six Sigma and other process improvement initiatives, marketing has largely sat on the sidelines. After all, aren t creative processes immune to this type of rigor? Today, progressive organisations are rapidly implementing structure processes that ensure clear and effective communication of ideas within the creative function. A centralised marketing calendar ensures that everyone is aware of key marketing programmes and events. Pivotal CRM enables marketing to put a structure around creating and managing marketing campaigns and projects. Request and approval processes can be configured as needed to drive marketing. A centralised marketing calendar for marketing campaigns and projects helps to communicate what is going on. Better collaboration Marketing exists to serve its internal stakeholders (sales professionals, partners, distributors and product managers). All of these individuals have a regular need to initiate marketing activities or make requests for materials. This job request process is often fraught with inefficiency and unreliability. It is important to ensure that each request is documented and all required information is gathered so that the resultant process can happen without error. You have the opportunity to transform a process that frequently contributes to poor working relationships into one that will enhance the standing of marketing throughout the organisation. This systematic approach will also help document the amount of resources required to meet customer needs the next time you are asked to defend a budget or a resource request. Pivotal CRM enables the different stakeholders to work together on the platform. Working as a single point of data entry the request and approval process for new marketing programmes is easy to configure to the specific needs of your business. Proper lead-to-revenue management Lead-to-revenue management is a significant business transformation. This transformation is necessary but the leadto-revenue management projects can be at risk if not managed properly. Marketing leaders must collaborate with sales to rationalise lead management processes and to close the divide between the two organisations. Calibrating around revenue is the basis for true alignment between sales and marketing in the technology industry. Pivotal CRM offers the core functionalities for an outstanding lead-to-revenue process meeting your business needs. Lead capture, definition of required information, automated conversion from lead to opportunity, etc. are just a few of these. Using the same integrated platform is the basis for good collaboration and successful management of this process.

5 WHITEPAPER MARKETING PLANNING 5 Using APTEAN s Pivotal CRM platform with its marketing module offers you the right tool to Improve Communication, Quality and Collaboration and finally Manage Costs. Now marketing and sales can work together in a close relationship, not talking about each other but with each other, using the same set of data and visibility about what is going on to drive the company into a successful future, making marketing more accountable and sales more successful and thus generating a win-win for both. Pivotal CRM highlights Microsoft-style interface Personalizable dashboard Role-and-task based navigation SharePoint integration Outlook integration Office suite integration Pivotal CRM: CRM That s Built for You Pivotal CRM is the solution of choice for companies seeking customer relationship management software that can fully and cost-effectively satisfy their users expectations. Built with the user experience in mind, Pivotal CRM offers unparalleled flexibility and customizability, enabling companies to tailor the system precisely to their sales users needs. Microsoft.NET Framework Powerful querying capabilities Custom workflows and sales milestones Mobile CRM Low cost of ownership Highly flexible and usable application development platform. More than 5,000 customers around the world rely on Aptean to give them a competitive edge. By providing innovative, industry-driven enterprise application software, Aptean helps businesses to satisfy their customers, operate more efficiently, and stay at the forefront of their industry. For more information, visit: Copyright Aptean All rights reserved.