Technology can play a role in Customer Management is a tested and tried topic today, there are a plenty of case studies around the world proving the statement.

However, players in many developing countries (that have not tasted the fruits of the role of technology in marketing) seemingly believe the value technology can bring to the table, however, as they do not have the firsthand experience in this area, they are a bit wary experimenting on this valid hypotheses. To ensure the experiment is designed well on top of a well thought out hypotheses, these folks in variably get into the spree of evaluating multiple solution/s for automating the marketing function.

In many occasions I have witnessed these folks stumble through the evaluation processes without having clarity on what to evaluate and how to go about it. To summarize, my experience are as follows..

1. A few believe miniature version of the production environment is what the evaluation should encompass of.
2. A few others believe, a few concepts they ‘think’ would add value to their business are to be evaluated in the aforesaid evaluation process.

On top of these high-level parameters, they stack a whole lot of parameters to be considered for evaluation such as usability, scalability, security etc – I do not contest these points on usability and securtity and so on.. I agree they are valuable. However, without having the strong foundation below, i.e., the aforesaid (1) and (2) points, these are useless.

In my opinion, a good solution is a right mix of Rich Functionality and Usability – Period.

If you are someone getting into any Enterprise Automation Solution Evaluation either from Business or Technology perspective, request you to let me know your feedback on the following points.

• Start with No Bias

I know this is easier said than done. It is essential not to have any bias towards any of the solution that is considered for evaluation. The core team dedicated for this evaluation should have an open mind and wait till the end of the evaluation process to prepare a holistic report on this subject.

Needless to say, a seasoned group of individuals with variety of strengths (Process, Technology, Domain Expert) should be involved in the evaluation game to get a fair and unbiased output.

• Address the WHY

Why would you want to automate your marketing function? Think about the way technology solution to solve a few issue, increase throughput, last but not the least get best returns. Color Blue Vs. Yellow in GUI screen is totally irrelevant when you are addressing the WHY part of the equation.

• Address the WHAT/WHICH

What are you trying to automate? Which part of the areas you want to automate? Are you looking for a plain-vanilla Campaign Management tool? Sure, you can plan for that, however, this will not address all the areas you want to improve on for sure.

To cite an example, in any enterprise automation program, what gets into the solution is what gets out. So, if you provide inadequate data, in form of volume and quality, the result will obviously the reflection of the same. When you keep such perspectives in mind, any Plan-Vannilla Campaign Management solution (or, any isolated solution) would lose its appeal.

• Address the HOW

How are you intending to automate your marketing organization? Are you looking for a Quick and Dirty rollout. Or, more meaningfully, a solution with capabilities on giving definite short-term results without compromising on long-term objectives and goals?
In my opinion, anything myopic is meaningless. It is essential to look for immediate business results without having to worry about the value of the investment 24 months from now.

• Address the WHEN

How you want to the solution deployment to be staggered? If you have the knowledge of query-desk taking undue amount of time to provide the data to the business users for marketing campaign, you must consider automating the Campaign Management piece first.

However, if the delay is due to sourcing data from multiple databases, Query-Desk is no one to blame. The data needs to be addressed first.. So, watchout of the solution that are being evaluated on its capability to manage data effectively.

• Address the WHERE

Are you planning to automate the marketing organization across all products and geographies? Or alternately, a combination of few locations and flagship products to start with?

The latter approach will provide a faster ROI, remember, you not loosing focus on scaling it up for other aspects – It’s just a faster way to show the value.

• Have a Comprehensive Evaluation Plan

You must engage in some form of an evaluation processes for the solution you are considering to invest. However, please don’t make IT Folks evaluate the business aspects and business folks evaluating the SOA capability of the solution that being considered.

This is a just a snapshot of things to be considered for any enterprise wide solution evaluation, not definitely a comprehensive list. If you want to know more, please do get intouch.