Last Week we discussed the results from a CMO Council Research entitled “Mapping + Tracking: The Optimal Marketing Supply Chain“.  This overview pointed out four key actions marketers could take to Obliterating Obsolescence:

• Leverage Digital Printing Strategies
• Cross Functional Collaboration
• Go-Green to Gain-Green
• Bringing in the Big Marketing Supply Chain Brains

While those are basic strategies any business can employ, we also know that before going down that path it makes sense to do some straightforward self-assessment.  Spend some time with the questions below and answer openly and honestly.  As a marketing leader, you are always looking for ways to ensure your organization gets better and better.

Marketing Operations Self-Assessment

1. What inventoried items have become obsolete?  Why?
2. What regular processes do members of your marketing team do that are wastes of time and skill set?
3. If you could change the way you buy ads, deploy email, manage printed materials, trigger direct mail, hire talent, create copy, or plan your next move, what would that look like?
4. How could you streamline your workday?
5. What marketing processes have failed in the past?
6. Do you ever cross your fingers, hope, and pray that nothing goes wrong when deploying a campaign?  If the answer is yes, it goes on the list.
7. Would it improve your results if marketing campaigns could be deployed faster?  If so, what does an ideal timeframe look like?
8. Is the work flow in your department planned, or haphazard?  How about between departments?
9. What have you done more than twice this week?
10. If you could wave your magic wand and have everything in your marketing department run smoothly and perfectly what would it look like?  What technology would be in place?  What people would you have on your team? What results would you be reporting to your superiors?

I personally love question #10.  Question #10 allows you to create the perfect world and once you can envision that world you can start to impact the day to day reality.  Spend lots of time on #10.  Create a real vision for what you can do and start chipping away.

My daddy always said if you don’t know where you are going then it doesn’t really matter what road you take.  Question #10 is where you are going AND what road you will take depends on your resources and how you answered questions 1-9.

Now comes the challenging part.  If you aren’t sure what your answer would be to #10, call us.  At NextPage we have helped many companies realize great results implementing new marketing technologies and procedures that they didn’t even know were possible.  Read below about a nationally known, multi-million dollar company that has utilized a Marketing Asset Management system to unify their marketing message and cut-out obsolescence.

Ferrellgas, a Fortune 1000 energy provider, needed to manage marketing for their 900-plus locations more quickly and efficiently. In addition, they needed to increase the speed of their direct mail marketing production to ensure their time-sensitive messaging reached customers on time. Learn how NextPage’s Marketing Communications Portal helped Ferrellgas reduce management time by 300 hours per month and speed production times from 10 days to 24 hours.