In an article I was reading in the morning, there was an interesting note from a software solution consulting firm that magnifies and explores the AHT aspect of Contact Center Management.

In my opinion, “Don’t Make your customers wait on IVR queue” – A term pertaining to Contact Center Management has been given undue importance. In real-sense, no customer is unready to wait for a quality response to their requirements or queries. A customer who waited for 4 minutes in IVR listening to Bohemian Chant music would be satisfied if his queries are addressed to his satisfaction.

IMHO it is important to identify and emphasize more on the quality elements to address the customer needs instead of building unnecessary frenzy around time (quantity) of his wait by the software call handler. End of the day, the customer who waited for an extra two minutes is bound to be happy if his requirements are addressed well.

However, when it comes to solutions that are designed to address marketing requirements, it’s essential to look at them through a high-caliber magnifying glass. Why? Technology is relatively a new entrant to the marketing world and thus the solutions that are available in the market are not really matured, except for a couple of them.

In the last decade or so, a whole lot of software players mushroomed creating software solution for marketing management area. Needless to say, a few of these players have indeed good point-solutions, but the limitation is, most of them are a bit myopic in their offering.

To illustrate this in an example, one of the Campaign Management vendors in the world, got rather a decent solution for Campaign Management function, however, it does not have anything around Campaign Management Function to make it effective – A plain vanilla campaign management solution is nothing but a glorified SQL black-box that abstracts the raw code to the user, nevertheless, does nothing more than what an SQL query is expected to deliver. Any enterprise that is considering to invest in a technology solution would want to know the ROI it can bring to the table over a period of time, a plain vanilla solution would sooner or later fail the ROI litmus test.

As an enterprise when it comes to investing in a Marketing Management Solution, please do exercise some caution. Data Management, Customer Analytics, Channel Integration and Marketing Reporting are a few of the core ingredients of marketing function. You might want to consider investing in point-solution if you have existing investments in these areas.

But… Even if you do have existing investments, ensure you do not have any licensing and hardware sizing limitations to use the existing Data Management and Reporting area for marketing management function. In my experience, in most of the cases there is always a challenge to address around these areas. So, I would think its wiser for enterprises that are considering investing into a Marketing Management solution to evaluate the solution basis its width and depth of offering and not get awed by a few screens that resembles the wand of Ron Weasley.

Some enterprises consider going for a full-fledged best-of-breed approach to address marketing management requirements. Sure. But do note the following few words when you consider offerings from multiple vendors – Integration, Security, Metadata Management, User Management, Upgrades, Updates, Scalability… These factors will spring up when you look at multiple solution integration and will make you grow old, real fast.

If you liked this article and want to know on how to look at a marketing management solution, I urge you to visit Transcentis to know more. I would really appreciate if you can either send your comment for this article or contact to let me know your views/feedback.

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.