Services: Digital Transformation , Technology Assessments , Reporting, Analytics & Visualization
At a Glance
After years of acquisitions, division spin offs and go-to-market strategy shifts, our client’s marketing technology and data infrastructure become bloated and largely under-utilized. Redundant technologies, coupled with less than ideal integrations between systems, left the client with unreliable data for performance reporting and an underwhelming return on investment.
Over the past decade, an explosion of marketing technology tools have emerged to support digital go-to-market strategies. We have all seen the “MarTech 5000 Supergraphic,” so it is not hard to imagine how easy it can be to acquire use case specific tools to support growth objectives. While some of these technologies can be transformational for growth team workflows, technical debt and data quality issues can soon arise without a strategy. Data wrangling was arduous and time consuming with the average marketing analyst spending 16.4 hours per work on manual reporting tasks.
Market forces related to exponential growth and international expansion put pressure on go-to-market teams to find automation and insights through technology investments. While some of those investments deemed prudent, a lack of global stewardship meant regional and divisional teams could acquire technologies without a strategic vetting process. With a lack of strategy and organizational design, line item investments for technology subscriptions skyrocketed to almost 40% of marketing’s budget. Dozens of technologies with minimal human resources to support those technologies lead to lack luster utilization rates and frustrating data challenges.
Working with client stakeholders, we quickly identified business objectives as our due north. Clear objectives enabled all team members involved to focus on what needed to be accomplished vs what the technology does. With business objectives in hand, our client team engaged through stakeholder interviews and online surveys to inventory technology, categorize, map integrations and document utilization rates. Additionally, organizational structure and technology vetting processes were assessed.
Based on the results from our technology inventory and marketing infrastructure assessment, a strategic roadmap was delivered including recommendations for sunsetting duplicative technology, identified gaps and documented an integration approach.
From an organizational perspective, recommendations for the establishment of a Digital Center of Excellence was delivered including digital stewards, responsibilities and technology vetting, onboarding, and ownership processes.
It’s never been more important for companies to make strategic and holistic decisions about how they collect, store, and process data. But too ofte...
Every new development project should start with both clear goals and a clear plan for how it will be operationalized. Bringing the full project pla...